6 ms·

Seriously there is NO WAY in the world an UBI will cover the rent - even the rent alone - in any place where it makes sense starting a business. I would imagin

Seriously there is NO WAY in the world an UBI will cover the rent - even the rent alone - in any place where it makes sense starting a business. I would imagine an UBI will be mostly used by people to exclude themselves from active workforce to "retire" in low-cost destinations. Because that will be the only thing it will really allow doing. Say you impose a super huge 30% income tax (anything above that will cause a revolt in the middle classes, and mass exodus in upper classes), that will only give an equivalent of a minimum wage to everyone (ok 20% above national minimum wage but some states have it higher)... how far does that get you?

jononor 7y ago
Internet makes possible lots of businesses where one does not need to be based in a particular location to be successful.
- anovikov 7y ago
  But it is already a fantasy for >99% of those trying. Competition is too tough and most people are absolutely unprepared and can't be prepared - it means competition with mega corporation and the insane amounts of data and brains they have to optimize themselves. Will be even more of a fantasy if new tens of millions will join.
rpedela 7y ago
There are plenty of places in the US with rents in the $100s and you could start a business whether that business is a hotdog stand or a software business.
- shrubble 7y ago
  Could you name them, please? Rents in boring Ohio cities for example, are still $650 for a 1 bedroom unit.
  - freehunter 7y ago
    I think they meant "in the hundreds" not "between $100 and $200". Rent for less than $1000.
    - rpedela 7y ago
      Yes exactly, thanks.
Red_Leaves_Flyy 7y ago
How are you accounting for the increased economic velocity of a sustained cash injection across the entire country?
- anovikov 7y ago
  But there will be less injection that now right, in case UBI is implemented? No "new" money will appear (unless you suggest printing more and more trillions). This is the same money taken away as taxes. Except now it goes to those in need, instead it will go to everyone: now almost all of that money is consumed and so is indeed a "cash injection", instead the portion of the money - that goes to those already doing OK - will be saved. Providing a "cash injection" doesn't require the UBI. It only requires taxing the rich. But the rich - yes, they mostly CAN actually leave the country to escape taxation, and operate from elsewhere, they can move their assets - increasingly virtual such as intellectual properly - onto offshore entities too... So there's really no option of taxing the rich.
  - gonational 7y ago
    > No "new" money will appear... ... except that part where $1,000 per month per person in the US comes out to about $4 trillion, which is 100% of all taxes collected. There is no universe in which this much money can be given to every citizen in the US without creating new money.
    - AnthonyMouse 7y ago
      The pretty obvious solution would be for more nominal taxes to be collected. It would also replace a very large fraction of existing government spending. Or you might have a one-time election between receiving the UBI and receiving social security, and a lot of people in or near retirement would choose social security and then not have to be provided with a UBI, and everyone else wouldn't have to be provided with social security. Doing the accounting in a naive way is also misleading with a UBI, because it's effectively a tax credit. If you paid $15,000 in taxes and received a $12,000 UBI, you're really in the same situation as if you paid $3000 in taxes and had no UBI. The fact that you're nominally paying $12,000 more in taxes doesn't actually affect you because you get all that back.
snidane 7y ago
> Seriously there is NO WAY in the world an UBI will cover the rent - even the rent alone - in any place where it makes sense starting a business. Wrong. UBI financed by monopoly taxes makes rents go rock bottom. High uncompeted markup prices - Rents - are by definition caused by some kind of monopoly situation, because they are not competed away. You need to tax monopolies and not call it tax but a 'privilege fee' and reinvest the money into infrastructure or resistribute as dividends - which is UBI basically. There is NO WAY anything like UBI would ever work without curbing monopoly pricing because any money raised by income tax, VAT or any other means freely given to people will end up rising up rents and monopoly prices even higher.
- AnthonyMouse 7y ago
  > You need to tax monopolies and not call it tax but a 'privilege fee' Probably better to just get rid of the monopolies, e.g. by relaxing zoning restrictions on density so that housing supply can respond to demand.
  - anovikov 7y ago
    But you need to destroy democracy in order to be able to do that? Isn't that a too high price to pay? Also it will mean leaving tens of millions of largely elderly or at least 55+ people, bankrupt and destitute, and having to deal with the problem of feeding like 50M+ elderly people, instead of the same amount of young people who now can't afford rents? Is that REALLY worth the trouble? See it's not some imaginary "world jewry" or someone like that who owns all the apartments, it's the same ordinary American people, just older ones. Why forcibly taking money from one large demographic to another - from one who can't really change things for themselves much anymore to those who can - by destroying democracy in the process - is supposed to change anything at all for the better? And how is it even basically 'fair'? To me it feels both politically impossible, morally unjustifiable, and socially bullshit. "Get too many people very angry for no benefit at all".
    - AnthonyMouse 7y ago
      No need for melodrama. People often sell a big house and buy a small house when they retire and then use the difference to live on, but reducing housing scarcity makes both costs go down. Which means the reduction in the difference (surplus) is less than the total reduction in the price of the housing, and is a net benefit to the country overall. Meanwhile housing costs have knock on effects for all other costs, so they go down too. Having lower costs is a major benefit for people on a fixed income. Reducing housing costs helps the indigent elderly at least as much as it does the average person. Who it hurts is the affluent elderly who own a big mansion and would get whacked harder than usual by a reduction in its value, but I'm not sure why I'm supposed to have a lot of sympathy for rich people trying to profit from artificial scarcity.
AnthonyMouse 7y ago
> Seriously there is NO WAY in the world an UBI will cover the rent - even the rent alone - in any place where it makes sense starting a business. You can get a one bedroom in Austin for less than $800/month, to say nothing of arrangements that involve roommates or shared facilities or couples who would then have a second UBI. > I would imagine an UBI will be mostly used by people to exclude themselves from active workforce to "retire" in low-cost destinations. Because that will be the only thing it will really allow doing. You're forgetting the possibility for supplemental income. Combine the UBI with a part time job and you could live just outside of New York City and spend the other half of your time on the business for as long as it takes until it makes enough for you to quit the part time job. There is also a whole lot of work that really doesn't care about location at all. You can do software development in Kansas if you want to, as well as anything else that involves selling your product over the internet. > Say you impose a super huge 30% income tax (anything above that will cause a revolt in the middle classes, and mass exodus in upper classes) The marginal rate isn't what causes revolts, it's the effective rate. Middle class people don't care about paying $12,000 in tax if they also get a $12,000 UBI. Upper middle class people aren't going to revolt over a difference between the two of an amount similar to what they pay already for the existing welfare system we would no longer need. And the whole point of using VAT is that billionaires and international corporations can't avoid it.
- gonational 7y ago
  > You can get a one bedroom in Austin for less than $800/month ... because there is currently no program in Austin whereby residents each get $1,000 of free money month.
  - AnthonyMouse 7y ago
    True, if only people in Austin got a $1000 UBI then many people would want to move there for the UBI and rents there would go up by supply and demand. But if everybody in the country gets the same UBI then people are going to move from where to where exactly? If the answer is from places with higher housing costs to places with lower housing costs, I think you're going to find that there's more than enough empty space in the middle of nowhere to satisfy all of that demand without significant rent increases.

jononor 7y ago

Internet makes possible lots of businesses where one does not need to be based in a particular location to be successful.

anovikov 7y ago
But it is already a fantasy for >99% of those trying. Competition is too tough and most people are absolutely unprepared and can't be prepared - it means competition with mega corporation and the insane amounts of data and brains they have to optimize themselves. Will be even more of a fantasy if new tens of millions will join.

rpedela 7y ago

There are plenty of places in the US with rents in the $100s and you could start a business whether that business is a hotdog stand or a software business.

shrubble 7y ago
Could you name them, please? Rents in boring Ohio cities for example, are still $650 for a 1 bedroom unit.
- freehunter 7y ago
  I think they meant "in the hundreds" not "between $100 and $200". Rent for less than $1000.
  - rpedela 7y ago
    Yes exactly, thanks.

Red_Leaves_Flyy 7y ago

How are you accounting for the increased economic velocity of a sustained cash injection across the entire country?

anovikov 7y ago
But there will be less injection that now right, in case UBI is implemented? No "new" money will appear (unless you suggest printing more and more trillions). This is the same money taken away as taxes. Except now it goes to those in need, instead it will go to everyone: now almost all of that money is consumed and so is indeed a "cash injection", instead the portion of the money - that goes to those already doing OK - will be saved. Providing a "cash injection" doesn't require the UBI. It only requires taxing the rich. But the rich - yes, they mostly CAN actually leave the country to escape taxation, and operate from elsewhere, they can move their assets - increasingly virtual such as intellectual properly - onto offshore entities too... So there's really no option of taxing the rich.
- gonational 7y ago
  > No "new" money will appear... ... except that part where $1,000 per month per person in the US comes out to about $4 trillion, which is 100% of all taxes collected. There is no universe in which this much money can be given to every citizen in the US without creating new money.
  - AnthonyMouse 7y ago
    The pretty obvious solution would be for more nominal taxes to be collected. It would also replace a very large fraction of existing government spending. Or you might have a one-time election between receiving the UBI and receiving social security, and a lot of people in or near retirement would choose social security and then not have to be provided with a UBI, and everyone else wouldn't have to be provided with social security. Doing the accounting in a naive way is also misleading with a UBI, because it's effectively a tax credit. If you paid $15,000 in taxes and received a $12,000 UBI, you're really in the same situation as if you paid $3000 in taxes and had no UBI. The fact that you're nominally paying $12,000 more in taxes doesn't actually affect you because you get all that back.

snidane 7y ago

> Seriously there is NO WAY in the world an UBI will cover the rent - even the rent alone - in any place where it makes sense starting a business. Wrong. UBI financed by monopoly taxes makes rents go rock bottom. High uncompeted markup prices - Rents - are by definition caused by some kind of monopoly situation, because they are not competed away. You need to tax monopolies and not call it tax but a 'privilege fee' and reinvest the money into infrastructure or resistribute as dividends - which is UBI basically. There is NO WAY anything like UBI would ever work without curbing monopoly pricing because any money raised by income tax, VAT or any other means freely given to people will end up rising up rents and monopoly prices even higher.

AnthonyMouse 7y ago
> You need to tax monopolies and not call it tax but a 'privilege fee' Probably better to just get rid of the monopolies, e.g. by relaxing zoning restrictions on density so that housing supply can respond to demand.
- anovikov 7y ago
  But you need to destroy democracy in order to be able to do that? Isn't that a too high price to pay? Also it will mean leaving tens of millions of largely elderly or at least 55+ people, bankrupt and destitute, and having to deal with the problem of feeding like 50M+ elderly people, instead of the same amount of young people who now can't afford rents? Is that REALLY worth the trouble? See it's not some imaginary "world jewry" or someone like that who owns all the apartments, it's the same ordinary American people, just older ones. Why forcibly taking money from one large demographic to another - from one who can't really change things for themselves much anymore to those who can - by destroying democracy in the process - is supposed to change anything at all for the better? And how is it even basically 'fair'? To me it feels both politically impossible, morally unjustifiable, and socially bullshit. "Get too many people very angry for no benefit at all".
  - AnthonyMouse 7y ago
    No need for melodrama. People often sell a big house and buy a small house when they retire and then use the difference to live on, but reducing housing scarcity makes both costs go down. Which means the reduction in the difference (surplus) is less than the total reduction in the price of the housing, and is a net benefit to the country overall. Meanwhile housing costs have knock on effects for all other costs, so they go down too. Having lower costs is a major benefit for people on a fixed income. Reducing housing costs helps the indigent elderly at least as much as it does the average person. Who it hurts is the affluent elderly who own a big mansion and would get whacked harder than usual by a reduction in its value, but I'm not sure why I'm supposed to have a lot of sympathy for rich people trying to profit from artificial scarcity.

AnthonyMouse 7y ago

> Seriously there is NO WAY in the world an UBI will cover the rent - even the rent alone - in any place where it makes sense starting a business. You can get a one bedroom in Austin for less than $800/month, to say nothing of arrangements that involve roommates or shared facilities or couples who would then have a second UBI. > I would imagine an UBI will be mostly used by people to exclude themselves from active workforce to "retire" in low-cost destinations. Because that will be the only thing it will really allow doing. You're forgetting the possibility for supplemental income. Combine the UBI with a part time job and you could live just outside of New York City and spend the other half of your time on the business for as long as it takes until it makes enough for you to quit the part time job. There is also a whole lot of work that really doesn't care about location at all. You can do software development in Kansas if you want to, as well as anything else that involves selling your product over the internet. > Say you impose a super huge 30% income tax (anything above that will cause a revolt in the middle classes, and mass exodus in upper classes) The marginal rate isn't what causes revolts, it's the effective rate. Middle class people don't care about paying $12,000 in tax if they also get a $12,000 UBI. Upper middle class people aren't going to revolt over a difference between the two of an amount similar to what they pay already for the existing welfare system we would no longer need. And the whole point of using VAT is that billionaires and international corporations can't avoid it.

gonational 7y ago
> You can get a one bedroom in Austin for less than $800/month ... because there is currently no program in Austin whereby residents each get $1,000 of free money month.
- AnthonyMouse 7y ago
  True, if only people in Austin got a $1000 UBI then many people would want to move there for the UBI and rents there would go up by supply and demand. But if everybody in the country gets the same UBI then people are going to move from where to where exactly? If the answer is from places with higher housing costs to places with lower housing costs, I think you're going to find that there's more than enough empty space in the middle of nowhere to satisfy all of that demand without significant rent increases.