I'm UBI-curious, but surely inflation would be inevitable if everyone suddenly had $x more disposable income per year? Landlords and grocery stores and everyone else would raise prices because they know people can afford it. Obviously if you're living in poverty, anything is better than nothing, but would the average middle class person be better off? As far as I can tell no country has ever tested true UBI (unconditional and for all residents) so its all theoretical.<p>Musk's idea of a Universal High Income (where money is no longer necessary because robots and AI give us anything we want) sounds great too until you consider scarce resources like land. Who decides who gets to buy the best properties on Earth if money is no longer a factor? What if you want, say, a human hair stylist or therapist: who would do such a job if they don't have to? We would lose the human touch in our lives, and that sounds awful.
If UBI is so high that people can afford paying extra without working for it then maybe, but I don't think that is the idea behind UBI. There still needs to be an incentive for people to work, they should just be in a place where they actually have a choice instead of living in survival mode every day.
Doesn't matter at all how much it is. It'll be (almost entirely or entirely) eaten by landlords.<p>I am a landlord.<p>I am setting prices for renewal.<p>I have come to learn that 100% of my possible customer base now has $200/mo more to spend.<p>I raise prices $200/mo with absolute certainty that I will find a renter.<p>Congrats, mission accomplished.
I am a progessive state government.<p>I am considering legislation for the next fiscal year.<p>I have come to learn that 100% of private landlords have increased their rents by the full amount of the UBI we introduced last year.<p>I ban private rentals and/or private ownership of homes and/or introduce strict rent control policies (depending on precisely how progressive we're feeling this year).<p>Congrats, mission accomplished.
How do you control what other landlords do? Why won't any undercut you by $200 and get your tenants?
In a normal market, they would. But housing is highly regulated with artificial shortages, so that pricing is very distorted.
Regulation is not what suppresses production, but the actual profit margins. It's extremely hard to make money building housing because the cost of land and labor are so high. These costs are high because we now live in an advanced economy where land can do much more valuable things than "be housing", and laborers can do much more productive things than "build housing."
It doesn't matter, because land is scarce resource
Because tenants are not scarce. If you cut your prices, you lose $200/mo forever. If you simply follow the maximum market price and wait, someone will fill your room eventually and you have them locked into a higher rate forever.<p>Competition doesn't work for necessities. Someone <i>will</i> rent your room at <i>any</i> price because it's necessary for survival. One of the major crises of our time is the fact that there are more people who need housing than there are rooms to rent to them.<p>Why don't landlords undercut one another? They literally don't have to. The only outcome is less profit. You'll find a tenant eventually, at any price. Getting tenants in rooms a few months earlier at the cost of lower rent means you make less money, and are less competitive as a business.
You're failing to explain what dictates the price the market will bear.<p>> Why don't landlords undercut one another? They literally don't have to. The only outcome is less profit. You'll find a tenant eventually, at any price.<p>is very obviously not true, otherwise prices <i>right now</i> would be effectively infinite. Why are prices for an apartment in SF only 3k/mo instead of 30k? Surely under your reasoning a landlord could just wait and get a tenant at any price they set?<p>The answer is always supply and demand. As long as the supply is constrained or demand goes up faster the price will rise. But UBI doesn't change that math at all. (I say this as someone not actually a fan of UBI)
> Why are prices for an apartment in SF only 3k/mo instead of 30k? Surely under your reasoning a landlord could just wait and get a tenant at any price they set?<p>No, because local wages cannot sustain those prices<p>If local wages could sustain those prices, then yes all rents would rise to that new higher local income level<p>That is (quite self-evidently) prices are so phenomenally high in ultra high-income areas like SF<p>Every single landlord is setting prices by the same metric: what can the people who would live here be able to afford? Competition between landlords is almost nil, which is why you find almost no "deals" anywhere. The market is totally efficient. Everyone agrees on how to set prices: by local wages.
Everything you've written here presupposes a housing shortage.<p>Fixing the housing shortage is a central tenet of progressive policies (regardless of whether or not they may ever actually accomplish this).
That extra 200 will also allow some people to move to a rural area, decreasing demand, which means you won't find a renter.
Yes if you simply assert an upside down reality, this is a good solution.<p>However, people actually move <i>toward</i> higher COL areas as their income permits them to.<p>If more income meant people moved <i>away</i> from high COL areas, cities wouldn't exist. We'd have a flat distribution of people across approximately all land with ultra-low COL and ultra-low productivity everywhere.
This - since you can live in a rural area with UBI - and you get more time in the day to manage your accommodations, the move to urban housing is not so critical.
Unless of course that UBI is funded by a land value tax.
In places that consist of many people with subsidized incomes, like elderly housing complexes, why aren't local grocery stores and gas stations higher than elsewhere?<p>Also, aside from that question, prices will only rise if there's no competition. In a working market, if more people can afford a higher rent more apartments will be built.
Because the subsidies aren't <i>on top of</i> base income?<p>The subsidy isn't the problem per se, it's the net increase in income.<p>It is obviously self-evident everywhere that high incomes create high cost of living, which can be traced through higher costs all the way down to the land rents (the rent someone is willing to pay to have market access to the high local incomes).
I don't see why UBI would necessarily be an increase of income for everyone. It could be that, but it could also be a decrease in hours worked, or a more equal distribution of wealth, or any combination of these.<p>I don't want a higher income, I want to benefit from the productivity gains I and everyone else made happen by having more time to do things I like.
Because “many” is different than all and these stores would otherwise not exist?
It depends. On its own, UBI puts a downward pressure on the value of money. Some other things (e.g. setting low interest rates) <i>also</i> put a downward pressure on the value of money. However, some things (e.g. taxes) put an upward pressure on the value of money. So it comes down to how all of those factors balance out.
It would not be inflationary if it's paid for with a tax on real value or income. Maybe somewhat inefficient, and prone to political meddling, but it's not introducing new money into the economy.<p>If it's just printed money, it would be.
It would be in a sense, because that money is otherwise mostly hoarded by the wealthy, whose spending would look the same whether or not they are taxed. If money is saved and not spent, it is not really part of the economy in this sense.<p>But if the money is transferred to others and spent on additional goods & services that is when it increases demand and raises prices.
Ah yes, the old "we should actually be grateful to the ultra-rich, because by not spending all the financial resources they accumulate, they save us from inflation!"
That’s one of the flawed arguments used against minimum wage. The answer is, no.
This is kind of like social security, medicare or the 5 day work week, if everyone suddenly had $x more disposable income per year? Landlords and grocery stores and everyone else would raise prices because they know people can afford it.
> What if you want, say, a human hair stylist or therapist: who would do such a job if they don't have to?<p>I have no faith in Musk's vision of an abundance utopia for many reasons, but I suspect a lot of people would still want to do the job of being a human therapist or hair stylist even if they technically didn't need to for money.<p>They may want to work less than 40 hours a week, but most people do have an inate need to feel like their life has some sort of productive value beyond just base level existing.
> I'm UBI-curious, but surely inflation would be inevitable if everyone suddenly had $x more disposable income per year?<p>This does not have to be the case if higher taxes decrease purchasing power for some.
So there are two basic versions of UBI:<p>1. The right-wing UBI is a tool to dismantle the social safety net. The idea of the likes of Milton Friedman is to replace all social safety programs with UBI. This doesn't make sense because, for example, being disabled in today's society makes everything more expensive; and<p>2. Left-wing UBI would seek to have everyone share in the wealth they create by <i>supplementing</i> social safety programs with UBI. UBI becomes a form of super-progressive taxation because it can be viewed as negative taxation.<p>As for your inflation comment, you have a point, to which I'll say: UBI alone isn't sufficient. You need economic reform and planning on top of that.<p>A good example is the US military. If you live off-base you get a housing allowance (ie BAH). Now around military bases, in the US and overseas, all the landlords know this so you'll find that weirdly all the houses to rent cost pretty much what BAH is.<p>So a more equitable economic system, including UBI, needs <i>social housing</i>. That is, the government needs to be a significant supplier of quality, affordable housing so landlords (private and insitutional) can't artificially drive up prices, as is the case now. A prime example is Vienna [1]. Housing simply can't be a speculative asset in a healthy economy.<p>If you wnat to see what an equitable planned economy looks like, look at China.<p>[1]: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=41VJudBdYXY" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=41VJudBdYXY</a>
The only way? What about built out infrastructure? What about universal health care? What about enforcing laws? What about enforcing truth in advertising? What about punishing various types of crooks in the various markets and transactions, financial and otherwise, that ordinary people take part in?<p>The only way? Like a silver bullet? Like that thing that the common idiom says doesn't exist?
When someone says something is "the only way", that's a sure sign they either have some vested interest in that only way, or have an idea fix.
It’s obviously not the only way. The more likely way is what is happening, a new medieval era with lords and serfs.
I recently came across the idea of Universal Basic Capital (UBC): "granting every person a meaningful ownership stake in productive assets from birth." UBC would be enormously difficult to implement, as well as have its own weaknesses. It doesn't seem realistic, but introduces a new idea into the conversation.<p><a href="https://www.digitalistpapers.com/vol2/autorthompson#:~:text=Hedging%20our%20labor%20bets" rel="nofollow">https://www.digitalistpapers.com/vol2/autorthompson#:~:text=...</a>
UBI is the actual solution, and is well understood enough now to know that most of the arguments against it are moot points or simply falsehoods.<p>Unfortunately, with regulatory capture at near 100 percent and electoral capture almost as bad, there is no incentive structure with sufficient influence to make it happen. Wealth will continue to be funneled to the top, and taxation schemes that act as a de-facto sales tax create incentives that favor even more centralized systems.<p>But wouldn’t it be great?<p>An interesting aspect is that I am constantly observing innovators with significant technical and technological skills that are employed in fields outside of their expertise as a “temporary “ measure that often becomes permanent if they get further encumbered, simply because they can keel out an existence while trying to build the next cool thing. So we are wasting probably trillions of GDP in talent because people need to go work in a labor job to support their wife and child instead of continuing his very promising project in training data for humanoid robots, which could easily net 100m+ in the next decade. (Actual example. I offered him $1000 a month to keep on it, but he unfortunately needs more to survive and he has eaten through his savings over the past two years of working on it.)
> <i>most of the arguments against it are moot points or simply falsehoods</i><p>What are the falsehoods in complaints against police unions?
Police unions aren't the same thing as other unions. Most unions exist to equalize labor negotiation through collective bargaining, and police unions tend to include and align with the leadership in the organization that a union would traditionally be negotiating with. In practice they're a lot more like a military contractor than a union (in that their role is to prevent public accountability)
lol. I typed ubi is and the autocorrect put “unions.” It has been corrected . But it is kinda funny anyway.
> Unions the actual solution<p>No, they are not. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodge_v._Ford_Motor_Co" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodge_v._Ford_Motor_Co</a>.<p>Changing the table stakes is what needs to happen: see <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondragon_Corporation" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondragon_Corporation</a> for a counter example.<p>Unions just create an us vs them mentality. The fact that the NUMMI plant ( <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NUMMI" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NUMMI</a> ) was not reproducible is a pretty strong indicator of that.
Sorry, my AI autocorrected “ubi is” to “unions”. When I came back to all these “unions bad” comments I was like WTF are they on about??? lol.<p>But, I will say, often, unions are very positive things. Other times, basically evil. So, I think unions are a mixed bag. But the threat of potential unionization is almost a universal good, so it’s a right worth exercising once in a while.
If its an easy 100m do a startup and get funding
I’m working on that, but there’s an incentive alignment problem for early stage investment capital that requires investors with a little longer view to avoid kneecapping the value proposition, as well as the potential positive aspects to society.<p>(Am I allowed to be a little ideological when we are facing the potential extinction of humanity?)
> most of the arguments against it are moot points or simply falsehoods.<p>Ah the “I am sure we can all agree … that I’m right” argument.<p>In actuality, there are plenty of very good arguments against unions. That you don’t like them changes nothing
The goal we all seek - liberation - is a distant one. That said I’m skeptical that UBI is the right way. UBI assumes and requires an elite ownership class and a powerful state to force them to share their profits. But as we’ve seen, such class members will organize to penetrate the state and contort it for their own ends. Thus any successful UBI will be a compromise or it will be dismantled by the powerful class that owns the economy.<p>In my mind, only community ownership of the means of production can truly achieve what we desire. Of course with all distant goals, it is hard to see how we get there. And to be clear I do not mean state ownership.<p>But I am curious, on my basic point of elite capture of the state, does that make sense?<p>I am struck that TFA’s title says UBI is “the only way to share”, amusing to me since literally directly sharing is another way. I understand we all have spooky ideas of what that means, but think for example of the concept of library economies. You borrow what you need, but you don’t own it nor have the right to destroy it. We share.
> UBI assumes and requires an elite ownership class and a powerful state to force them to share their profits.<p>It makes no assumption about an elite ownership class at all. It merely assumes profits, and rearranges how those profits are distributed (away from shareholders, towards labor). There is no need for community ownership of the means of production (though that might have some different benefits, along with some different disadvantages).<p>You need high marginal (or maybe not even marginal) corporate taxes and a committment to the concept of UBI. Who owns the companies, from the perspective of UBI, is immaterial.<p>Community ownership does not share the productivity in sector A with workers in sector B. UBI does.
UBI is good on paper but far from enough. Without Universal Ownership of the State, UBI is easily removed by inflation.<p>A better yet more difficult model is universal basic resources (food stamp to exchange for packages, social housing, etc.). People can work X hours on these social projects after reviewing some training (e.g. training of plumbing to maintain the social housing apartments). This also gives them some meaning in life. Of course this will degrade in the future if there is no ownership of the state by the people, but I think it’s going to last longer.
What if we build UBI but we turn out not to need it? Thats my worry. AI might possibly be “just another technology”. If we put in UBI we may disincentivize labor from adapting to an economic shift.<p>The real solution is to regulate the industry and break up monopolies. UBI is the modern equivalent of Walmart workers on Medicaid and food stamps. It’s raiding public funds for private profit.
instead of UBI, we could just reduce working hours, while keeping the same pay. Easier to manage shifts than to upend the whole economy. Something like 3 days a week, with a german approach to sundays (everything closed).
Does UBI really solve the problem, wouldn’t it just make everything more expensive?
Not necessarily. It's straightforward to make it revenue neutral.<p>You make it revenue neutral for the average tacpayer. If you want UBI to be $1000/month, you increase the average tax by $1000. The average taxpayer still benefit because even though they don't get more money, they have a safety net.<p>People making less than average get more UBI than the tax increase, and those making more pay more.<p>Most people get more money because the median income us a lot lower than the average.
Right, but people with lower incomes spend, and mostly on necessities, I think the idea is that most of those necessities would become more expensive (naturally or artificially due to price-fixing) if the poorest suddenly had more financial power. In the system as it stands, it seems to me like it'd just result in a bunch of money going to grocery giants and their suppliers, landlords, medical, etc.
This assumes all goods are wanted and consumed equally. Housing, milk, meat, eggs, etc. do not see downward pressure from this.
If the <i>only</i> money is UBI money then things start to get weird. If UBI coexists with regular income in moderation then it doesn't change much. Consider that about 1/3 Americans receive some form of government assistance. There's already a kind of fallback UBI distributed across SNAP + Medicare + Medicaid + Unemployment + Social Security + etc, and no one on those programs is clamoring for them to be shut down so that lentils become cheaper. Giving money to everyone does increase inflation (though you can play with the tax rate to offset that), but the important effect is it transfers purchasing power to net recipients. Basically: the economy wide money supply would at worst go up by a modest factor, the income of the poorest goes up by an absolute amount (or a massive factor if you want to view it that way), which is a huge benefit to them.
"Solve the problem" probably not, but trigger inflation, probably not, since the amount is so low, it will have very little impact on the behavior of the richest, but it would have a massive impact on the behavior of the poorest, and their purchase habits generally don't impact inflation as much.<p>UBI is just a band-aid on not taxing the rich, though.
Not everything, only stuff that are suddenly in higher demand that can't increase supply. If you take food as an example i don't imagine demand would increase? And if it did we could probably just produce more? And also it's not like everyone will have unlimited money, so you'll still have to prioritize and luckily we don't all have the same priorities. I'm pretty sure the idea is to fund this by taxing production and not by printing money, so inflation shouldn't be a problem.
Yes, it does cause huge inflation, but that's not even the biggest problem with it. That would be: people do not really like to share fruits of their labor with strangers, so UBI would significantly undermine the motivation to do anything other than bare minimum.<p>UBI is not possible until robots and AI take over most jobs (but then we risk that one day the AI decides to just get rid of "those useless humans")
I don't think we should worry about the advent of AGI deciding to get rid of us; I'm more worried about the people who own the AI current AI infrastructure, as well as the current US regime, who don't see the value in the pesky humans beyond revenue and votes, respectively.
Isn't UBI just a sort of tax, which people pay already, whether they like it or not? I agree with your second paragraph though.
UBI will likely be necessary but that won’t appease society. Everyone wants to have a chance to climb the ladder. If it becomes self evident that humans can no longer have a meaningful impact on their outcome, there’ll be riots whether they have a roof and food or not.
Well, there's definitely other ways. I would prefer a system where company ownership public and private has a mandatory public stake in both ownership and voting on company policy and major business decisions.<p>I would prefer it illegal for the wealthy to possess an excessive amount of assets. If your assets became more valuable than the limit, the asset share would automatically rebalance toward other employees and owners in the organization who are below the asset ownership limit.<p>You don't even really need UBI if healthcare, housing, food, and education are considered basic human rights that are included and free of cost at point of usage.
If you believe UBI can work, why do you think communism failed?
UBI will require a more progressive tax system. The Oligarchs are having none of that.
Communists shared alright 110 years ago in Russia, tens of millions of people failed to cope with that much prosperity and wellbeing, and then even more with unbearable freedom and peace.
I think folks may not realize that communism was more popular in the early 20th century US just because of how desperate a lot of the population became without any safety nets at all provided by the government. Educated proponents genuinely wanted to improve the plight of other folks. But, where it was practiced it became just a worse kind of power and resource monopoly - concentrated in the government instead of among a minority of robber barren types. I think the learning is you have to never stop pushing for no entity to have too much power - not the government and not private sector monopolies.