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I have another (hope not stupid) fundamental question: do we have to give people a different UBI based on their location (aka cost-of-life)? If no, it will be p

by yulaow 10y ago

I have another (hope not stupid) fundamental question: do we have to give people a different UBI based on their location (aka cost-of-life)? If no, it will be pretty hard to find a right value. If yes, should we also change it as soon as they relocate?

trishume 10y ago
My preferred answer (although others may differ) is that it should be the same for everyone. If you can't afford to live where you are now, move somewhere cheaper or get a job. If you're jobless and can't afford an expensive city that means the economy is telling you to make room for someone who can make productive use of the limited space in an area that many need to be to work together. If you want to stay near family and friends, find a nice cheap place an hour or two away, if you want a shorter commute that's a luxury, not a necessity, and you should work for it. Basic incomes are for the minimum needed to live a decent life, living in a specific expensive location is a luxury you should have to work for.
- zo1 10y ago
  >"If you can't afford to live where you are now, move somewhere cheaper or get a job. If you're jobless and can't afford an expensive city that means the economy is telling you to make room for someone who can make productive use of the limited space in an area that many need to be to work together." That's exactly how it should work, even in a system with no UBI. Sadly, people see the state as the grand fixer and enabler of everything. Eventually, we'd all realize that certain places simply cost more to live in due to reasons outside of everyone's control. E.g. maybe it's hard to create affordable safe housing in a very earthquake/tornado prone area. Or hard to deliver fresh healthy produce to a city in the middle of nowhere like a desert. I exaggerate, of course, but these minor details still affect prices to a certain extent. We can't have cosmic-justice.
mac01021 10y ago
That doesn't seem like a huge issue to me. Give everyone the same amount and then let them work harder to live where they want or relocate to a place where the UBI exceeds the cost of living. There are already neighborhoods now where most people, including me, cannot afford to live, and I don't see it as a tremendous injustice.
dcosson 10y ago
I think this is a critical problem to solve with UBI. If you give people in expensive areas more money, more people might crowd into cities, intensifying the affordability crises in places like SF and NYC. Plus there are strong incentives to cheat the system and lie about your address, or even to live homeless in the most expensive cities to collect the higher UBI payments, etc. So ideally we'd avoid this and everyone would get the same amount of money. But, if we continue to let city prices shoot up, we might end up in a place where people want a job but can't get one because they live somewhere cheap and can't afford to move to the city where all the jobs are on their smaller basic income payment. With or without basic income, we're clearly on an unsustainable path of letting cities get so much more expensive so quickly.
- zanny 10y ago
  It isn't nearly as much of a problem if you have your necessities covered by UBI and can spend your time however you want. It gives you all the time to be innovative that you need, and if there were actual meaningful work to be done going undone in cities, owners would subsidize the costs of moving rural workers in to attract talent.

by yulaow 10y ago

trishume 10y ago

My preferred answer (although others may differ) is that it should be the same for everyone. If you can't afford to live where you are now, move somewhere cheaper or get a job. If you're jobless and can't afford an expensive city that means the economy is telling you to make room for someone who can make productive use of the limited space in an area that many need to be to work together. If you want to stay near family and friends, find a nice cheap place an hour or two away, if you want a shorter commute that's a luxury, not a necessity, and you should work for it. Basic incomes are for the minimum needed to live a decent life, living in a specific expensive location is a luxury you should have to work for.

zo1 10y ago
>"If you can't afford to live where you are now, move somewhere cheaper or get a job. If you're jobless and can't afford an expensive city that means the economy is telling you to make room for someone who can make productive use of the limited space in an area that many need to be to work together." That's exactly how it should work, even in a system with no UBI. Sadly, people see the state as the grand fixer and enabler of everything. Eventually, we'd all realize that certain places simply cost more to live in due to reasons outside of everyone's control. E.g. maybe it's hard to create affordable safe housing in a very earthquake/tornado prone area. Or hard to deliver fresh healthy produce to a city in the middle of nowhere like a desert. I exaggerate, of course, but these minor details still affect prices to a certain extent. We can't have cosmic-justice.

mac01021 10y ago

That doesn't seem like a huge issue to me. Give everyone the same amount and then let them work harder to live where they want or relocate to a place where the UBI exceeds the cost of living. There are already neighborhoods now where most people, including me, cannot afford to live, and I don't see it as a tremendous injustice.

dcosson 10y ago

I think this is a critical problem to solve with UBI. If you give people in expensive areas more money, more people might crowd into cities, intensifying the affordability crises in places like SF and NYC. Plus there are strong incentives to cheat the system and lie about your address, or even to live homeless in the most expensive cities to collect the higher UBI payments, etc. So ideally we'd avoid this and everyone would get the same amount of money. But, if we continue to let city prices shoot up, we might end up in a place where people want a job but can't get one because they live somewhere cheap and can't afford to move to the city where all the jobs are on their smaller basic income payment. With or without basic income, we're clearly on an unsustainable path of letting cities get so much more expensive so quickly.

zanny 10y ago
It isn't nearly as much of a problem if you have your necessities covered by UBI and can spend your time however you want. It gives you all the time to be innovative that you need, and if there were actual meaningful work to be done going undone in cities, owners would subsidize the costs of moving rural workers in to attract talent.