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I see the "UBI will just go to landlords" argument everywhere, and it is a very bad one. Literally any policy that gives more money to the poor will increase d

I see the "UBI will just go to landlords" argument everywhere, and it is a very bad one. Literally any policy that gives more money to the poor will increase demand for goods/services that low income people want (eg housing), and thus cause similar price pressure. Increasing purchasing demand from the poor is literally what redistribution is! If you're opposed to UBI on this basis, you equally ought to give up on anything redistributive (or maybe you were just right wing all along). The correct response to landlords sucking up money from the poor is to note: - You can easily solve that via land taxes and wealth taxes more generally - Even if the gains are swallowed up in aggregate, a UBI still has benefits in terms of equalizing demand (lowering housing inequality) and increasing income predictability.

ohazi 7y ago
> If you're opposed to UBI on this basis, you equally ought to give up on anything redistributive (or maybe you were just right wing all along). I never said I was opposed to UBI. I'm simply highlighting an aspect of the housing market that makes it behave less like the libertarian ideal of a perfectly efficient market with perfect mobility and perfect information flow. In my experience, the right wingers are the ones who want to continue pretending that an obviously tilted market is somehow still acceptably efficient when it clearly isn't. Do you disagree with my assertion that moving is more difficult than buying rice from the next vendor over? That's really the only claim I made, and this is what leads me to believe that landlords are more powerful than rice vendors. Lots of people proposing "if you're worried about landlords, then you can simply do X" in this thread... I don't think the fix for this problem is going to be simple.
- redblacktree 7y ago
  You made another claim that djrobstep was responding to: > The difference would all go to landlords.

ohazi 7y ago

> If you're opposed to UBI on this basis, you equally ought to give up on anything redistributive (or maybe you were just right wing all along). I never said I was opposed to UBI. I'm simply highlighting an aspect of the housing market that makes it behave less like the libertarian ideal of a perfectly efficient market with perfect mobility and perfect information flow. In my experience, the right wingers are the ones who want to continue pretending that an obviously tilted market is somehow still acceptably efficient when it clearly isn't. Do you disagree with my assertion that moving is more difficult than buying rice from the next vendor over? That's really the only claim I made, and this is what leads me to believe that landlords are more powerful than rice vendors. Lots of people proposing "if you're worried about landlords, then you can simply do X" in this thread... I don't think the fix for this problem is going to be simple.

redblacktree 7y ago
You made another claim that djrobstep was responding to: > The difference would all go to landlords.