4 ms·
Sure, a massive influx of newly minted money will cause inflation. That's a given. But it's not sustainable and clearly not a sensible way to implement this pol
by ball_of_lint 8y ago
Sure, a massive influx of newly minted money will cause inflation. That's a given. But it's not sustainable and clearly not a sensible way to implement this policy. If we instead took this money from other taxes most likely there'd be some inflation, but not enough to make the money useless. Finally, I know 1m was a hyperbole but basic income doesn't need to guarantee you can live comfortably anywhere without working, only somewhere. Downtown SF? Nope. Most of CA? Still probably too expensive. Midwest? Now we're talking.
- notahacker 8y agoI think the problem is less overall inflation, which can be stabilised, and more distributional impact. Sure, the costs of slum housing won't rise 1 to 1 so people living in it will still feel slightly better off, but slum landlords in many areas with limited housing availability will still capture much/most of those gains (which are difficult to tax away without also affecting productive businesses) in the form of massive price increases of limited-supply budget housing. Meanwhile, someone on the other end is losing out by paying for the UBI, and that probably includes people in middle class incomes facing higher taxes and cost pressures on their own taxes. Of course, any redistribution programme has undesirable distributional impacts as well as desired ones, but they're likely to be worse if your programme is as unsophisticated as "let's just give everybody exactly the same entitlements irrespective of need and put gross taxes up to pay for any difference"