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I used to like the idea of Basic Income, but now I think that all the money would go into rents and property owners would absorb all the value. the problem of

I used to like the idea of Basic Income, but now I think that all the money would go into rents and property owners would absorb all the value. the problem of affordable housing is actually very simple and the solution is obvious; too many people are moving to big cities; so everyone ends up competing for increasingly limited real estate (in a desperate bid to cut their commute times to less than 2 hours per day). One of the main reasons why so many people are moving to urban centers is because that's where all the jobs are; it's a direct result of the centralization of capital in the hands of corporations. Corporate HQs are in big cities because they want to get access to the best talent and corporations are more likely to find talent in places where there are lots of people to choose from. One solution would be for the government to introduce legislation to encourage companies to hire remote workers. Another solution would be for the government to introduce legislation to make the economy less focused on corporate growth. Due in a large part to corporate lobbying, whenever a politician is presented a choice between a free solution and an expensive one; they tend to pick the expensive one.

DoreenMichele 8y ago
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_room_occupancy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_room_occupancy SROs used to be pretty commonly available. We tore down up to 80 percent of them over the course of two decades, probably because Baby Boomers were wealthy enough to not need something that cheap. We never rebuilt them. I think rebuilding them would be a step in the right direction.
- coolaliasbro 8y ago
  I see your point, but AFAIK, there is ample empty housing to ensure everyone in the United States has a roof over their head, so maybe appropriating dis/misused properties toward this end would also be an option?
  - DoreenMichele 8y ago
    I don't know. I've spent years researching this issue. I had a class on Homelessness and Public Policy through SFSU when I was living in Fairfield, CA. This was long before I was homeless. Then I spent nearly six years homeless and researching how to get myself off the street and back into housing and this was very eye opening. I would like to read through the several thousand page Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance, but I'm having trouble finding the time. I haven't gotten very far. I am trying to create pilot programs and find things that actually work. I would like to stop just shooting down suggestions that don't work and start saying "Well, we did x, y and z in my small town and that got such and such results and here is how you can try to replicate that." But I'm still struggling to make ends meet myself, and yadda. So it's slow going.
    - snthpy 8y ago
      Please excuse my ignorance but I'm just really curious because it's been a few times that I have seen comments on HackerNews by people the were homeless at some point. How does this happen in the US? In my mind if you have the interest to read HackerNews you would have the skills to get a decent job that would get you off the street. I'm clearly unaware of the obstacles that prevent that and would like to learn more. I live in South Africa and the inequality here is horrendous but most of that is due to a disparity of education. There is a shortage of skilled workers so in my mind someone with HN interests wouldn't struggle to find enough work to avoid homelessness.
      - DoreenMichele 8y ago
        I don't have a nutshell answer for you. Part of it is that housing policy here has serious issues. We have changed zoning, etc, such that it is nearly impossible to build the kind of walkable communities that existed in this country before the automobile took over. The New Urbanist movement tried to build walkable communities. They found it very challenging to get such plans approved at all. Another piece is that we don't have good health care policies. Most people on the street in the US have some kind of health issue, whether medical or mental health. Our policies in the US don't do a good job of providing for such people. Most developed countries have much better policies for dealing with people with serious issues of that sort. Here are a couple of my blogs if you want to try to read through them, though I don't know if that will really answer your question: https://streetlifesolutions.blogspot.com/ https://streetlifesolutions.blogspot.com/ https://sandiegohomelesssurvivalguide.blogspot.com/ https://sandiegohomelesssurvivalguide.blogspot.com/ I would like to see the affordable housing shortage tackled and the health care issue resolved. I think if those issues are not resolved, basic income will likely actually make things worse for poor people who will then get dismissed as not trying hard enough, not managing their UBI, etc. I think giving UBI to people in the current American climate will just mask the real problems and make people who are comfortably well off even more callous about "Not my problem. It's just a personal issue and the world isn't obligated to fix your personal issue." I already get told on a regular basis that the housing crisis isn't really a problem. It isn't a problem for the well-heeled, so they don't see why others find it so monstrous and impossible.
- amaccuish 8y ago
  These still exist in Russia, they're called коммуналка (kommynalka), very good for students etc. I lived in one for uni, I guess it's kinda like halls, but like, all sorts of people live in them.
  - DoreenMichele 8y ago
    They still exist in the US, but are much less common and have a generally terrible reputation. These days, new ones seem to only get built as supportive housing for long-term homeless people with addictions and the like who just can't make their lives work on their own. This means some of them aren't even available to the public as a general rental. They end up part of the welfare system, in essence, and you can't get into them without proving need, which is problematic in its own right. They used to be just normal rentals for people just starting out who didn't have much money. If you watch old movies or movies set in a prior era (like "A walk in the clouds"), this was normal market-rate housing for folks without tons of money. And that's mostly not the case anymore in the US. Also, the last time I looked -- back when I actually lived in the San Francisco Bay Area well over a decade ago -- SROs in San Francisco were already more than $1000/month.
cwkoss 8y ago
> it's a direct result of the centralization of capital in the hands of corporations. We need a progressive tax on corporate revenue (ex > 100M 0.1%, >250M 0.3%, >500M 0.5%) so companies have to pay more if they use economies of scale to consolidate power. It should be more expensive to be big.
- jondubois 8y ago
  >> It should be more expensive to be big. It is, but they can afford it because when it comes to access to capital, they're at the front of the line. When the Fed creates new money through government loans or engages in open market operations, corporations are the first entities to get a hold of that money. It's like they have pipelines that feed new Fed-generated cash straight into their bank accounts. Just look at Oracle; their software is mostly legacy. They make all their money from huge government contracts. The government doesn't really care about how inefficient or expensive Oracle is because the money comes from taxpayers; if the government overspends, they can just get more money from the Fed.
  - manicdee 8y ago
    > When the Fed creates new money through government loans or engages in open market operations Perhaps the government needs to create that money through UBI instead.
    - jondubois 8y ago
      Interesting, I guess from that point of view, UBI does seem better.
closeparen 8y ago
There are only “too many” people moving to big cities if you take as given that most of their land area must retain its small-town character forever. You want the population clustering into big, transit-centric cities to unwind car-dependence and avert climate change.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- zhdc1 8y ago
  People forget that the suburbanization of American cities was a very unique situation brought about by a mix of government policy, rural mythos, and racism. The current urban migration is basically a reversal to the mean and should be beneficial in the long term.
  - DoreenMichele 8y ago
    It was a unique situation. But it was largely brought about by huge pent up demand for housing combined with the relatively sudden the means to meet it. Racism absolutely played a role in how it went down, as did government policy. But the invention of the modern suburb grew directly out of the events of WW2 making it possible for the US to rapidly build large numbers of homes.
    - zhdc1 8y ago
      Except that suburbanization in tbe United States began well before WW2 and accelerated in the 60s and 70s, long after any post-war prosperity effect. People moved away from urban centers because they believed (correctly) that living in dense cities detrimentally impacted their health. This later accelerated in part because of racial reasons. Housing demand could have easily been met (and was met in Asia and Europe) by building denser urban structures, which is what you would expect to happen if there was a confluence of housing demand, increased wealth, and a general interest in living in cities. There was no interest in the latter, which is why suburbanization took place.
s73v3r_ 8y ago
Even if they're encouraged to hire remote workers, lots of them will still choose to live in urban areas because that's where the new and exciting things are for many software devs (yes, I know not everyone is into that. I'd still say that more are than are not).
- jondubois 8y ago
  Yes, but as you say not everyone wants that; also, maybe a large number of people will decide to live 2 hours away from the city center instead of 1 hour away (especially if they only go to the city on weekends) and that should also help to bring down prices.
jondubois 8y ago
There are some interesting comments in this thread. I still think that rents would absorb a lot of the value from UBI, but I'm starting to think that UBI might work from the perspective that injecting money into the system so that it is captured by lots of small landlords is a better alternative than injecting money into the system so that it is captured by large corporations and then hoping that it's going to trickle down. Capital naturally wants to aggregate and trickle up, not trickle down. So if most of the newly minted Fed money was injected at the bottom (instead of at the top as is the case now), it would probably flow through the whole system more efficiently.
asah 8y ago
another option: use economic incentives to move jobs out of the big cities. Note that the University system is a form of this - and it worked! springing up "college towns" all over the country, many then creating job centers for decades. The problem is that big cities (esp Silicon Valley) have figured out how to "poach" newly formed companies: you can have my capital, but I need you to relocate...

DoreenMichele 8y ago

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_room_occupancy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_room_occupancy SROs used to be pretty commonly available. We tore down up to 80 percent of them over the course of two decades, probably because Baby Boomers were wealthy enough to not need something that cheap. We never rebuilt them. I think rebuilding them would be a step in the right direction.

coolaliasbro 8y ago
I see your point, but AFAIK, there is ample empty housing to ensure everyone in the United States has a roof over their head, so maybe appropriating dis/misused properties toward this end would also be an option?
- DoreenMichele 8y ago
  I don't know. I've spent years researching this issue. I had a class on Homelessness and Public Policy through SFSU when I was living in Fairfield, CA. This was long before I was homeless. Then I spent nearly six years homeless and researching how to get myself off the street and back into housing and this was very eye opening. I would like to read through the several thousand page Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance, but I'm having trouble finding the time. I haven't gotten very far. I am trying to create pilot programs and find things that actually work. I would like to stop just shooting down suggestions that don't work and start saying "Well, we did x, y and z in my small town and that got such and such results and here is how you can try to replicate that." But I'm still struggling to make ends meet myself, and yadda. So it's slow going.
  - snthpy 8y ago
    Please excuse my ignorance but I'm just really curious because it's been a few times that I have seen comments on HackerNews by people the were homeless at some point. How does this happen in the US? In my mind if you have the interest to read HackerNews you would have the skills to get a decent job that would get you off the street. I'm clearly unaware of the obstacles that prevent that and would like to learn more. I live in South Africa and the inequality here is horrendous but most of that is due to a disparity of education. There is a shortage of skilled workers so in my mind someone with HN interests wouldn't struggle to find enough work to avoid homelessness.
    - DoreenMichele 8y ago
      I don't have a nutshell answer for you. Part of it is that housing policy here has serious issues. We have changed zoning, etc, such that it is nearly impossible to build the kind of walkable communities that existed in this country before the automobile took over. The New Urbanist movement tried to build walkable communities. They found it very challenging to get such plans approved at all. Another piece is that we don't have good health care policies. Most people on the street in the US have some kind of health issue, whether medical or mental health. Our policies in the US don't do a good job of providing for such people. Most developed countries have much better policies for dealing with people with serious issues of that sort. Here are a couple of my blogs if you want to try to read through them, though I don't know if that will really answer your question: https://streetlifesolutions.blogspot.com/ https://streetlifesolutions.blogspot.com/ https://sandiegohomelesssurvivalguide.blogspot.com/ https://sandiegohomelesssurvivalguide.blogspot.com/ I would like to see the affordable housing shortage tackled and the health care issue resolved. I think if those issues are not resolved, basic income will likely actually make things worse for poor people who will then get dismissed as not trying hard enough, not managing their UBI, etc. I think giving UBI to people in the current American climate will just mask the real problems and make people who are comfortably well off even more callous about "Not my problem. It's just a personal issue and the world isn't obligated to fix your personal issue." I already get told on a regular basis that the housing crisis isn't really a problem. It isn't a problem for the well-heeled, so they don't see why others find it so monstrous and impossible.
amaccuish 8y ago
These still exist in Russia, they're called коммуналка (kommynalka), very good for students etc. I lived in one for uni, I guess it's kinda like halls, but like, all sorts of people live in them.
- DoreenMichele 8y ago
  They still exist in the US, but are much less common and have a generally terrible reputation. These days, new ones seem to only get built as supportive housing for long-term homeless people with addictions and the like who just can't make their lives work on their own. This means some of them aren't even available to the public as a general rental. They end up part of the welfare system, in essence, and you can't get into them without proving need, which is problematic in its own right. They used to be just normal rentals for people just starting out who didn't have much money. If you watch old movies or movies set in a prior era (like "A walk in the clouds"), this was normal market-rate housing for folks without tons of money. And that's mostly not the case anymore in the US. Also, the last time I looked -- back when I actually lived in the San Francisco Bay Area well over a decade ago -- SROs in San Francisco were already more than $1000/month.

cwkoss 8y ago

> it's a direct result of the centralization of capital in the hands of corporations. We need a progressive tax on corporate revenue (ex > 100M 0.1%, >250M 0.3%, >500M 0.5%) so companies have to pay more if they use economies of scale to consolidate power. It should be more expensive to be big.

jondubois 8y ago
>> It should be more expensive to be big. It is, but they can afford it because when it comes to access to capital, they're at the front of the line. When the Fed creates new money through government loans or engages in open market operations, corporations are the first entities to get a hold of that money. It's like they have pipelines that feed new Fed-generated cash straight into their bank accounts. Just look at Oracle; their software is mostly legacy. They make all their money from huge government contracts. The government doesn't really care about how inefficient or expensive Oracle is because the money comes from taxpayers; if the government overspends, they can just get more money from the Fed.
- manicdee 8y ago
  > When the Fed creates new money through government loans or engages in open market operations Perhaps the government needs to create that money through UBI instead.
  - jondubois 8y ago
    Interesting, I guess from that point of view, UBI does seem better.

closeparen 8y ago

There are only “too many” people moving to big cities if you take as given that most of their land area must retain its small-town character forever. You want the population clustering into big, transit-centric cities to unwind car-dependence and avert climate change.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
zhdc1 8y ago
People forget that the suburbanization of American cities was a very unique situation brought about by a mix of government policy, rural mythos, and racism. The current urban migration is basically a reversal to the mean and should be beneficial in the long term.
- DoreenMichele 8y ago
  It was a unique situation. But it was largely brought about by huge pent up demand for housing combined with the relatively sudden the means to meet it. Racism absolutely played a role in how it went down, as did government policy. But the invention of the modern suburb grew directly out of the events of WW2 making it possible for the US to rapidly build large numbers of homes.
  - zhdc1 8y ago
    Except that suburbanization in tbe United States began well before WW2 and accelerated in the 60s and 70s, long after any post-war prosperity effect. People moved away from urban centers because they believed (correctly) that living in dense cities detrimentally impacted their health. This later accelerated in part because of racial reasons. Housing demand could have easily been met (and was met in Asia and Europe) by building denser urban structures, which is what you would expect to happen if there was a confluence of housing demand, increased wealth, and a general interest in living in cities. There was no interest in the latter, which is why suburbanization took place.

s73v3r_ 8y ago

Even if they're encouraged to hire remote workers, lots of them will still choose to live in urban areas because that's where the new and exciting things are for many software devs (yes, I know not everyone is into that. I'd still say that more are than are not).

jondubois 8y ago
Yes, but as you say not everyone wants that; also, maybe a large number of people will decide to live 2 hours away from the city center instead of 1 hour away (especially if they only go to the city on weekends) and that should also help to bring down prices.

jondubois 8y ago

There are some interesting comments in this thread. I still think that rents would absorb a lot of the value from UBI, but I'm starting to think that UBI might work from the perspective that injecting money into the system so that it is captured by lots of small landlords is a better alternative than injecting money into the system so that it is captured by large corporations and then hoping that it's going to trickle down. Capital naturally wants to aggregate and trickle up, not trickle down. So if most of the newly minted Fed money was injected at the bottom (instead of at the top as is the case now), it would probably flow through the whole system more efficiently.

asah 8y ago

another option: use economic incentives to move jobs out of the big cities. Note that the University system is a form of this - and it worked! springing up "college towns" all over the country, many then creating job centers for decades. The problem is that big cities (esp Silicon Valley) have figured out how to "poach" newly formed companies: you can have my capital, but I need you to relocate...