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Another problem that I see is that it will very quickly become "not basic" in that we might give everyone $2,000 a month, but then quickly politicians will advo

Another problem that I see is that it will very quickly become "not basic" in that we might give everyone $2,000 a month, but then quickly politicians will advocate for certain constituents to get more. "People who work as teachers in poor neighborhoods should get an extra $500 a month" or "People who have been convicted of X Y or Z crime should get $500 less for the rest of their lives".

ravenstine 9y ago
We might also see the same thing that's happened with minimum wage and student loans. (where basic income no longer covers even the basics)
- zlynx 9y ago
  Yes, well, as long as it covers the basics somewhere. Someone living on only basic income won't be able to afford to live in Manhattan. They'll have to move to rural Alabama.
  - frgtpsswrdlame 9y ago
    Maybe you still can't live in Manhattan but I don't really see the point in a UBI so low that you can't afford to live in a city at all.
    - indubitable 9y ago
      I think helping with the economic development of smaller areas would be a huge benefit in and of itself. But basic income opens up really revolutionary ideas beyond this. Imagine you get 10,000 people together and the income is set to something quite low - $1000 a month. That's $10 million a month that, if a moderate sized group of people were willing to coordinate and work together, could be used to build new cities and developments from the ground up. In a way a basic income can almost be seen as a decentralization of government as it enables citizens to direct government funded spending at their discretion.
      - NinoScript 9y ago
        I had never thought about it like this. This makes so much sense.
  - SilasX 9y ago
    But that's the thing: you can do that today: live minimally for a year at big-city wages, then buy a trailer in rural Alabama. If people don't consider that a viable option now, neither will they with any feasible basic income level.
- SilasX 9y ago
  Right, that's IMHO the biggest problem with BI schemes, and it gets little attention: we don't have a good grasp on the dynamics behind why (certain) prices go up to gobble up every gain in income or government grant. It's illustrated well in Churchill's story about the do-gooders who bought out a bridge and lifted the toll, only to find that rents went up by the exact cost of regularly crossing the bridge. http://www.landvaluetax.org/current-affairs-comment/winston-churchill-said-it-all-better-then-we-can.html http://www.landvaluetax.org/current-affairs-comment/winston-... (Search for "bridge".) If rents just advance to capture the BI, all you've done is give a big subsidy to landowners.
  - mrguyorama 9y ago
    From my point of view, people who push for basic income also tend to push for things such as rent control. They see wealth/capital consolidation as a bad thing to ban.
  - dragonwriter 9y ago
    > we don't have a good grasp on the dynamics behind why (certain) prices go up to gobble up every gain in income or government grant. We actually do, both when it is driven by rational (e.g., shifting money into a monopolized market) and irrational (encouraging time-deferred costs that people are known empirically to discount) forces. > If rents just advance to capture the BI, all you've done is give a big subsidy to landowners. But they can't, because UBI is a redistributive scheme; without price discrimination based on income before both UBI and the taxes funding it, you can't adjust rents to capture it.
    - SilasX 9y ago
      >We actually do, both when it is driven by rational (e.g., shifting money into a monopolized market) and irrational (encouraging time-deferred costs that people are known empirically to discount) forces. "It's driven by rational and irrational forces" isn't an explanation. >But they can't, because UBI is a redistributive scheme; without price discrimination based on income before both UBI and the taxes funding it, you can't adjust rents to capture it. So you're saying the bridge scenario didn't and can't happen?
Simulacra 9y ago
Good point. Another for the mix that I think someone may have already touched on, and that is if you're low income, and if business, etc. knows the government is giving you a basic income, then they'll just raise prices to offset that income. Kind of like the arguments against raising the minimum wage.

ravenstine 9y ago

We might also see the same thing that's happened with minimum wage and student loans. (where basic income no longer covers even the basics)

zlynx 9y ago
Yes, well, as long as it covers the basics somewhere. Someone living on only basic income won't be able to afford to live in Manhattan. They'll have to move to rural Alabama.
- frgtpsswrdlame 9y ago
  Maybe you still can't live in Manhattan but I don't really see the point in a UBI so low that you can't afford to live in a city at all.
  - indubitable 9y ago
    I think helping with the economic development of smaller areas would be a huge benefit in and of itself. But basic income opens up really revolutionary ideas beyond this. Imagine you get 10,000 people together and the income is set to something quite low - $1000 a month. That's $10 million a month that, if a moderate sized group of people were willing to coordinate and work together, could be used to build new cities and developments from the ground up. In a way a basic income can almost be seen as a decentralization of government as it enables citizens to direct government funded spending at their discretion.
    - NinoScript 9y ago
      I had never thought about it like this. This makes so much sense.
- SilasX 9y ago
  But that's the thing: you can do that today: live minimally for a year at big-city wages, then buy a trailer in rural Alabama. If people don't consider that a viable option now, neither will they with any feasible basic income level.
SilasX 9y ago
Right, that's IMHO the biggest problem with BI schemes, and it gets little attention: we don't have a good grasp on the dynamics behind why (certain) prices go up to gobble up every gain in income or government grant. It's illustrated well in Churchill's story about the do-gooders who bought out a bridge and lifted the toll, only to find that rents went up by the exact cost of regularly crossing the bridge. http://www.landvaluetax.org/current-affairs-comment/winston-churchill-said-it-all-better-then-we-can.html http://www.landvaluetax.org/current-affairs-comment/winston-... (Search for "bridge".) If rents just advance to capture the BI, all you've done is give a big subsidy to landowners.
- mrguyorama 9y ago
  From my point of view, people who push for basic income also tend to push for things such as rent control. They see wealth/capital consolidation as a bad thing to ban.
- dragonwriter 9y ago
  > we don't have a good grasp on the dynamics behind why (certain) prices go up to gobble up every gain in income or government grant. We actually do, both when it is driven by rational (e.g., shifting money into a monopolized market) and irrational (encouraging time-deferred costs that people are known empirically to discount) forces. > If rents just advance to capture the BI, all you've done is give a big subsidy to landowners. But they can't, because UBI is a redistributive scheme; without price discrimination based on income before both UBI and the taxes funding it, you can't adjust rents to capture it.
  - SilasX 9y ago
    >We actually do, both when it is driven by rational (e.g., shifting money into a monopolized market) and irrational (encouraging time-deferred costs that people are known empirically to discount) forces. "It's driven by rational and irrational forces" isn't an explanation. >But they can't, because UBI is a redistributive scheme; without price discrimination based on income before both UBI and the taxes funding it, you can't adjust rents to capture it. So you're saying the bridge scenario didn't and can't happen?

Simulacra 9y ago

Good point. Another for the mix that I think someone may have already touched on, and that is if you're low income, and if business, etc. knows the government is giving you a basic income, then they'll just raise prices to offset that income. Kind of like the arguments against raising the minimum wage.