7 ms·

Housing, Education, Healthcare are supply limited and pretty important to the poor and UBI doesn't fix that.

vkou 9y ago
There is no law of economics that says the latter two have to be supply limited, to the grotesque extent that they are. I'll give you housing though. One of the reasons housing is expensive, though, is because it is closely tied to job opportunities.
- haltingthoughts 9y ago
  Exactly, there are many laws that result in those being very supply limited.
  - vkou 9y ago
    I strongly doubt that. Which laws do this for education? Could you point me to a couple? There isn't some sinister cabal of teachers, that restricts supply, for the purposes of keeping their wages high. There isn't a grotesque system of receipts payable, and the user not paying the real price of service, and hidden, unitemizable fees at my local high school (Two of those do, however, start appearing when you go to university.) There is more then enough education to go around. The problem is that it's not evenly distributed. I'm not talking about sending every kid to Harvard, here. Healthcare certainly has people restricting its supply, but also has the exact same problem. We have the budgets for it, we have the doctors, and nurses to provide it - but we don't provide it very evenly.
- redahs 9y ago
  Housing is expensive because public spending is currently paid for using taxes on labor and its products rather than taxes on land. Public spending on infrastructure and services raises land values, as parks, police, and fire departments make locations more attractive to live in. This subsidizes landholders and allows them to charge higher rent whenever these services are paid for by a tax on labor rather than a tax on land. With a land value tax, landholders have to privately invest in improving the private property on their land, such as expanding the supply of housing units, in order to increase their profits. Without a land value tax, landholders can earn greater rent and profit without actually privately investing in improving their property. They simply have to lobby for higher public spending paid for via taxes on income or consumption and then they can raise rents without competing to improve their supply.
  - prostoalex 9y ago
    > Public spending on infrastructure and services raises land values, as parks, police, and fire departments make locations more attractive to live in. This sounds like how the property tax works today. At municipal level, where a property tax bill is comprised of (a) land value, (b) improvements and (c) special assessments, which are voter-approved voluntary taxes to pay for things such as new tram line or a pump for the water district. The land value periodically gets reassessed to account for improvements, public services, and general real estate prices in the area. How does your system differ from the property tax status quo?
    - redahs 9y ago
      The base assessment rate is only determined by the unimproved land value. The value of real property improvements is subtracted\untaxed. If an abandoned lot is adjacent to a well maintained house, the tax rate is the same for both owners, despite the real estate value of the house being much higher due to the labor invested by the homeowner. Values would be reassessed quarterly rather than only upon change of ownership. There would be no negotiated exemptions on taxes for commercial developers and they would have to pay the land value tax even if they leave the lot abandoned. If commercial developers want to decrease their land taxes, then they can build vertically and leave more land left over for housing and wildnerness. There would be no sales, earnings, payroll, income, excise, personal property, tariffs,state, or federal taxes for residents. Residents in land tax counties would only pay the single land value tax to the county assessor. The county would then pay negotatiated state taxes on behalf of its residents, and ideally the state would also pay negotiated federal taxes on behalf of its counties.
bitJericho 9y ago
Ubi does fix that. If ubi isn't enough to cover those then it's not high enough.
- haltingthoughts 9y ago
  It's basically not possible to do that without making those things cheaper somehow. Convert the entire US federal budget to UBI and it is around 10k per person. Healthcare alone per person is already 9k. Housing is maybe another 5k. And this is before those things get more expensive as people consume more of them.
  - bitJericho 9y ago
    Ubi goes hand in hand with taxing the rich
    - lordlimecat 9y ago
      The US federal budget is 3.8 Trillion. Using parent's numbers, you would need $5.3 Trillion to just cover healthcare + housing, assuming zero inflation. What tax rate are you proposing will genenerate $5.3 Trillion off of taxing the rich?
      - bitJericho 9y ago
        Trivial. Tax the top 1 percent at least 75 percent for about 2 trillian or more once you close off loopholes, ban insurance companies altogether and make hospitals publish their prices, and require estimates for any work to be done, and you suddenly have a balanced budget.
        prostoalex 9y ago
        > make hospitals publish their prices They already do http://www.oshpd.ca.gov/Chargemaster/ http://www.oshpd.ca.gov/Chargemaster/ > ban insurance companies So lose the negotiating advantage and be forced to haggle on prices on a case-by-case basis?
rpearl 9y ago
Well, it's believed to be cheaper to house the homeless than to leave them on the streets. [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/25/housing-first-homeless-charlotte_n_5022628.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/25/housing-first-homel... ] And there's plenty of housing, just not really in places that are convenient to jobs. If you didn't need a job, that becomes less of a problem. So giving people enough money for a secure housing and food situation--somewhere, anywhere--strictly decreases suffering.
- rocqua 9y ago
  If you consider UBI as simply replacing jobs, that works. However, the reason UBI works is because it allows people to spend their life doing things that are valuable but wouldn't make a living wage.
  - rpearl 9y ago
    UBI does several things. There's no single "the reason".
falcolas 9y ago
Housing, supply limited? Except in the land-limited big cities, I don't see this as the case at all. Education would certainly be important, but most don't pay for that directly (just through Taxes); no reason for that to change. Healthcare, yeah, that also needs addressing, regardless of the UBI decisions.
bryanlarsen 9y ago
Education & Healthcare are already universally covered in Nordic countries, yet cheaper than in America.
PeterisP 9y ago
Housing is one of things that can be solved by UBI - currently in many regions housing is scarce in places "where all the jobs are" and plentiful, cheap, and even empty and abandoned in places with few jobs. This imbalance happens in 'competition' between different centers, and also in the process of urbanization. We have people leaving their granparent's houses, and leaving them empty, just to go to the big city where they can actually earn a living. UBI can change that by making it feasible for underemployed people to live in those cheaper areas. If there's no economic reason (good for society) to have them work at all, then there's no economic reason for them to live in the scarce housing in the economically most active areas - and they will revitalize the cheaper areas by bringing their spending there.
- mjevans 9y ago
  I agree this could help a little, but the "nice" places are still where people will /want/ to live. Where you see a city now is either a nice place, or someplace that has strategic value of some kind. (real cities, not suburb towns) Markets work best when lightly regulated, when there's corrective action to smooth out the ups and downs of overshoot and collapse tendencies. Something I see lacking is the will to ensure sufficient supply so that demand can have choice, instead of captivity and vulnerability.
  - adrianN 9y ago
    I think a lot more people would live closer to greenery if they wouldn't have to commute to a job.
- redahs 9y ago
  Housing costs can be solved without massive social transfer payments simply by eliminating all income and consumption taxes and switching to a land value tax in order to pay for public services. If UBI transfer payments are paid out of a consumption or income tax, then landholders and mortgage companies will simply be able to charge all residents higher rent. If residents experience an increase in housing costs associated with savings which must be put away for purchases, rent, and mortgage payments that is in proportion to the increase income they receive via UBI, then UBI will not have made them better off. UBI will only have redistributed money from workers and entrepreneurs to landholders and banks invested in mortgages. Under a land value tax, landholders cannot charge higher rent due to an increase in land values brought on by public spending on public services. If they want to increase their profits, they have to invest in real property improvements, such as by expanding the stock of available housing. If UBI is paid out of taxes on labor rather than taxes on land, they will be able to charge higher rent.
pyoung 9y ago
Traditional education is supply limited. But the internet is rapidly changing things. As an example, Udacity and Coursera are both offering various forms of certificates. I could see a future where people use UBI to bootstrap an education. Move to a low cost of living area, take some online courses and work on some projects. Once they have built up a small portfolio, attempt to re-enter the workforce etc...
samlevine 9y ago
> Housing, ... supply limited The US is incredibly sparsely populated, there would be billions of residents if we were as dense as Western Europe. We do have limited supply of housing in artificially low dense cities that have good jobs, but that's politics and not economics.

vkou 9y ago

There is no law of economics that says the latter two have to be supply limited, to the grotesque extent that they are. I'll give you housing though. One of the reasons housing is expensive, though, is because it is closely tied to job opportunities.

haltingthoughts 9y ago
Exactly, there are many laws that result in those being very supply limited.
- vkou 9y ago
  I strongly doubt that. Which laws do this for education? Could you point me to a couple? There isn't some sinister cabal of teachers, that restricts supply, for the purposes of keeping their wages high. There isn't a grotesque system of receipts payable, and the user not paying the real price of service, and hidden, unitemizable fees at my local high school (Two of those do, however, start appearing when you go to university.) There is more then enough education to go around. The problem is that it's not evenly distributed. I'm not talking about sending every kid to Harvard, here. Healthcare certainly has people restricting its supply, but also has the exact same problem. We have the budgets for it, we have the doctors, and nurses to provide it - but we don't provide it very evenly.
redahs 9y ago
Housing is expensive because public spending is currently paid for using taxes on labor and its products rather than taxes on land. Public spending on infrastructure and services raises land values, as parks, police, and fire departments make locations more attractive to live in. This subsidizes landholders and allows them to charge higher rent whenever these services are paid for by a tax on labor rather than a tax on land. With a land value tax, landholders have to privately invest in improving the private property on their land, such as expanding the supply of housing units, in order to increase their profits. Without a land value tax, landholders can earn greater rent and profit without actually privately investing in improving their property. They simply have to lobby for higher public spending paid for via taxes on income or consumption and then they can raise rents without competing to improve their supply.
- prostoalex 9y ago
  > Public spending on infrastructure and services raises land values, as parks, police, and fire departments make locations more attractive to live in. This sounds like how the property tax works today. At municipal level, where a property tax bill is comprised of (a) land value, (b) improvements and (c) special assessments, which are voter-approved voluntary taxes to pay for things such as new tram line or a pump for the water district. The land value periodically gets reassessed to account for improvements, public services, and general real estate prices in the area. How does your system differ from the property tax status quo?
  - redahs 9y ago
    The base assessment rate is only determined by the unimproved land value. The value of real property improvements is subtracted\untaxed. If an abandoned lot is adjacent to a well maintained house, the tax rate is the same for both owners, despite the real estate value of the house being much higher due to the labor invested by the homeowner. Values would be reassessed quarterly rather than only upon change of ownership. There would be no negotiated exemptions on taxes for commercial developers and they would have to pay the land value tax even if they leave the lot abandoned. If commercial developers want to decrease their land taxes, then they can build vertically and leave more land left over for housing and wildnerness. There would be no sales, earnings, payroll, income, excise, personal property, tariffs,state, or federal taxes for residents. Residents in land tax counties would only pay the single land value tax to the county assessor. The county would then pay negotatiated state taxes on behalf of its residents, and ideally the state would also pay negotiated federal taxes on behalf of its counties.

bitJericho 9y ago

Ubi does fix that. If ubi isn't enough to cover those then it's not high enough.

haltingthoughts 9y ago
It's basically not possible to do that without making those things cheaper somehow. Convert the entire US federal budget to UBI and it is around 10k per person. Healthcare alone per person is already 9k. Housing is maybe another 5k. And this is before those things get more expensive as people consume more of them.
- bitJericho 9y ago
  Ubi goes hand in hand with taxing the rich
  - lordlimecat 9y ago
    The US federal budget is 3.8 Trillion. Using parent's numbers, you would need $5.3 Trillion to just cover healthcare + housing, assuming zero inflation. What tax rate are you proposing will genenerate $5.3 Trillion off of taxing the rich?
    - bitJericho 9y ago
      Trivial. Tax the top 1 percent at least 75 percent for about 2 trillian or more once you close off loopholes, ban insurance companies altogether and make hospitals publish their prices, and require estimates for any work to be done, and you suddenly have a balanced budget.
      - prostoalex 9y ago
        > make hospitals publish their prices They already do http://www.oshpd.ca.gov/Chargemaster/ http://www.oshpd.ca.gov/Chargemaster/ > ban insurance companies So lose the negotiating advantage and be forced to haggle on prices on a case-by-case basis?

rpearl 9y ago

Well, it's believed to be cheaper to house the homeless than to leave them on the streets. [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/25/housing-first-homeless-charlotte_n_5022628.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/25/housing-first-homel... ] And there's plenty of housing, just not really in places that are convenient to jobs. If you didn't need a job, that becomes less of a problem. So giving people enough money for a secure housing and food situation--somewhere, anywhere--strictly decreases suffering.

rocqua 9y ago
If you consider UBI as simply replacing jobs, that works. However, the reason UBI works is because it allows people to spend their life doing things that are valuable but wouldn't make a living wage.
- rpearl 9y ago
  UBI does several things. There's no single "the reason".

falcolas 9y ago

Housing, supply limited? Except in the land-limited big cities, I don't see this as the case at all. Education would certainly be important, but most don't pay for that directly (just through Taxes); no reason for that to change. Healthcare, yeah, that also needs addressing, regardless of the UBI decisions.

bryanlarsen 9y ago

Education & Healthcare are already universally covered in Nordic countries, yet cheaper than in America.

PeterisP 9y ago

Housing is one of things that can be solved by UBI - currently in many regions housing is scarce in places "where all the jobs are" and plentiful, cheap, and even empty and abandoned in places with few jobs. This imbalance happens in 'competition' between different centers, and also in the process of urbanization. We have people leaving their granparent's houses, and leaving them empty, just to go to the big city where they can actually earn a living. UBI can change that by making it feasible for underemployed people to live in those cheaper areas. If there's no economic reason (good for society) to have them work at all, then there's no economic reason for them to live in the scarce housing in the economically most active areas - and they will revitalize the cheaper areas by bringing their spending there.

mjevans 9y ago
I agree this could help a little, but the "nice" places are still where people will /want/ to live. Where you see a city now is either a nice place, or someplace that has strategic value of some kind. (real cities, not suburb towns) Markets work best when lightly regulated, when there's corrective action to smooth out the ups and downs of overshoot and collapse tendencies. Something I see lacking is the will to ensure sufficient supply so that demand can have choice, instead of captivity and vulnerability.
- adrianN 9y ago
  I think a lot more people would live closer to greenery if they wouldn't have to commute to a job.
redahs 9y ago
Housing costs can be solved without massive social transfer payments simply by eliminating all income and consumption taxes and switching to a land value tax in order to pay for public services. If UBI transfer payments are paid out of a consumption or income tax, then landholders and mortgage companies will simply be able to charge all residents higher rent. If residents experience an increase in housing costs associated with savings which must be put away for purchases, rent, and mortgage payments that is in proportion to the increase income they receive via UBI, then UBI will not have made them better off. UBI will only have redistributed money from workers and entrepreneurs to landholders and banks invested in mortgages. Under a land value tax, landholders cannot charge higher rent due to an increase in land values brought on by public spending on public services. If they want to increase their profits, they have to invest in real property improvements, such as by expanding the stock of available housing. If UBI is paid out of taxes on labor rather than taxes on land, they will be able to charge higher rent.

pyoung 9y ago

Traditional education is supply limited. But the internet is rapidly changing things. As an example, Udacity and Coursera are both offering various forms of certificates. I could see a future where people use UBI to bootstrap an education. Move to a low cost of living area, take some online courses and work on some projects. Once they have built up a small portfolio, attempt to re-enter the workforce etc...

samlevine 9y ago

> Housing, ... supply limited The US is incredibly sparsely populated, there would be billions of residents if we were as dense as Western Europe. We do have limited supply of housing in artificially low dense cities that have good jobs, but that's politics and not economics.