That's not the way price economics works. In competitive markets, goods generally fall in price to the baseline level needed to get a competitive return on ass

That's not the way price economics works. In competitive markets, goods generally fall in price to the baseline level needed to get a competitive return on assets employed. While anti-market people often claim this doesn't happen, it actually does happen for most goods. Food, consumer goods, most computers, household staples, vehicles, etc., are dominated by fairly thin margin goods that are sold at just a bit above the total cost of production. (See grocery financials to see this in action.) There are exceptions. Some products have constraints on supply. Some are natural constraints, some are government-created supply constraints. Housing in big cities is mostly government-created supply constraints through zoning regulation implemented on the behalf of wealthy NIMBY landowners. In this case, yes, you could see some housing price increases, because municipalities restrict the ability of builders to respond to price signals. The price of land is a minor factor as well, but usually density can overcome that, and density is what the city NIMBY monopolists oppose. However, this would be far less true outside of America's biggest cities. Much of the housing stock in the US is not nearly as exposed to tight restrictions in supply. And so an increase in income would result in increased housing supply, without an increase in price, because housing supply in most areas is restricted only by cost of construction. The cost of production of all those other items - the household staples that is most of what we buy on a day to day basis - does not change if people receive a check from the government. Their price will still stay near the cost of production. Sellers of oranges still compete with each other on price to sell you fruit. Ford still competes on price with Toyota. If prices were to rise, then Ford would run their production line at a higher output to capture the excess profits, supply would increase, and then price would fall back until Ford no longer wants to run that extra shift. And so the "prices will increase" argument against UBI is largely illusory. It could occur in certain monopolized areas of the economy, mainly expensive real estate in a few big cities. But most of America is not like that, and people who would benefit most from UBI (i.e., people with low income) mostly do not live in the highest priced real estate areas, so their real estate costs would not increase with the introduction of UBI. That inflation effect would be strongest with the wealthiest. Perhaps that's why we hear the argument so often.