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Note that this is not necessarily an equilibrium where the welfare recipients are no better off. It depends on the negotiation position of the direct recipients

Note that this is not necessarily an equilibrium where the welfare recipients are no better off. It depends on the negotiation position of the direct recipients compared to those that can extort wealth from them. If they've got no choice but to stay in a jurisdiction that has a police force that writes extortionate tickets backed up by a modern-day debtor's prison, the police system is going to squeeze that out of them. If it's straightforward to just pack up and leave to Montana or something, the police system won't push most people to that point. (Or they will, and it won't matter, because the people they're squeezing will be better off and in Montana.)

DougN7 10y ago
But shouldn't that already be happening now? The poor today are already making a whole lot more than they were 100 years ago. The problem is inflation kept up (or passed) their increased income. I think the same will happen with UBI. It's kind of like the new Monopoly money in the modern version of the game -- they added a bunch of 0's to the end of the bill's value, but it didn't change anything.
- ThrustVectoring 10y ago
  It's not inflation that I'm talking about. It's how much money goes to rent, or payday loans, or parking tickets, or court fees, or overdraft fees, or any other nickel-and-diming that claws wealth from the poor. There's a class of economic actors that can make life miserable for the poor unless they're given money, and if the poor have more money, the profit-maximizing price goes up and these rentiers wind up with the windfall.