> My problem with UBI is that all tests to date look great, but have only been done on a micro level. The fundamental issue I would like addressed is the macro

> My problem with UBI is that all tests to date look great, but have only been done on a micro level. The fundamental issue I would like addressed is the macro scale inflation you would expect when redistributing trillions of dollars without commensurate economic value being created directly. The thing is though, most people who would benefit from UBI are not currently generating enough economic value to live, or barely so, and many are probably not capable of doing so for any number of reasons. We can do this because: > Money is a complicated subject, but essentially it represents a transfer of a future scarce resource. For commodities, the cost is essentially the sum of labor to generate it (either to mine the raw resources, build the factory, etc). ...the costs of all of these things are plummeting due previously to outsourcing, and now to automation. As manufacturing becomes more and more automated and the costs of these items continues to drop, you start seeing volume sales/renewing subscriptions being the only possible way to make money on some products. > If no economic resource is being added to the economy, then you are just devaluing money. That is usually very regressive, and in this case could be made worse by people slightly reducing their economic labor because of the extra income stream. I could see this leading to a bad cycle, where any economic gains due to increasing UBI are later undermined. This is my one beef with UBI and the one thing that does make me worry about it, but the way I see it is that whatever effect this does have the overall value of the currency cannot possibly approach the effects that the results of borrowing and printing currency to fund things like the outrageous defense budget (of the US) do, the economic benefits of which are muddy at best. For me this is both an issue of economics -and- of people. To me, in a country as rich as mine it's embarrassing that we still have such vast areas of the country that look more like the slums of Brazil than the cities they're usually parked next to. It's also the simple fact that if you continue to displace more and more people, as we've done, who are too old/not smart enough to change careers, eventually something is going to give. Frankly I pitch UBI as how we avoid the second Civil War, where instead of North vs South, we have Urban vs Rural when the much larger (and better armed) population gets tired of the cities and their nonchalant attitude towards their plight. These are legit questions and I hope we get better answers than mine (I'm no economist), but speaking as someone on the higher end of the income brackets who would never see a dime from UBI, I really don't think continuing to pretend that the rich can keep on getting richer and the poor poorer is a good plan. When it comes right down to it, there are more of the poor than the rich, and the cash won't save you when they break down your door with pitchforks.