7 ms·

Or all the UBI money would pump up rents to the point that living costs make it infeasible again.

by SilasX 6y ago

epistasis 6y ago
Rents only get pumped up if we don't have enough housing to go around... in which case regular incomes do the same thing.
- iguy 6y ago
  But we do have lots of housing, it's just located in places people don't want to live. Rents are high in places they do want to be, and that's partly a positional thing -- if you want to live where the top-10% of earners live, you need to bid against them for housing.
  - epistasis 6y ago
    From this angle, a UBI is even more powerful, in that it will go a lot further in areas that are less economically productive, and let us use "surplus" housing there. Ideally we'd just let more people live closer together like they want to, but the elites won't let more people get close to them.
  - rubicon33 6y ago
    Exactly. The high costing of housing really has more to do with the type of person you've living around/near, than the house.
  - PeterisP 6y ago
    Thing is, requirement for on-site employment requires you to live where lots of people live; only the very wealthy can afford to live in places without jobs nearby - as UBI decouples income from where you live, then it would be a pressure to equalize rents, as underemployed people - the demand for whose labor is decreasing and will decrease further - can afford live in the many places which are currently shedding population because of lack of jobs despite being actually very nice to live in.
    - iguy 6y ago
      Maybe. But the counter is that entrepreneurship has strong network effects, it really pays to be around other talented people and hear about the future they're busy inventing. Maybe we'd see the opposite, people leaving a stable job which ties them to some unexciting place, to try to make it in NYC.
      - tsimionescu 6y ago
        > But the counter is that entrepreneurship has strong network effects, it really pays to be around other talented people and hear about the future they're busy inventing. The actual powerful network effects are essentially a somewhat benign form of cronyism, not mere inspiration from other entrepreneurs. People do more business with less haggling with friends than with strangers.
        nlitened 6y ago
        > People do more business with less haggling with friends than with strangers. This is how humans work. This cannot change with UBI.
        tsimionescu 6y ago
        Agreed, wasn't trying to claim that it would, just pointing out that network effects are not about inspiration, mainly.
        iguy 6y ago
        I think you're talking about networking for money, and that's a thing. But there are also ideas. Even in fields where there's basically no money, half the world's innovation happening within a circle of a few miles is routine. For instance this happens in music, repeatedly.
        orf 6y ago
        When has it happened with music in the last 60 years? If you’re talking about mostly classical music clusters then there are a lot more reasons for that than you’re suggesting
  - Lammy 6y ago
    The supply of housing in the places people do want to live is artificially constrained, intentionally driving up prices to achieve the New Segregation.
  - triceratops 6y ago
    > it's just located in places people don't want to live Often because there aren't any good jobs there. With UBI entrepreneurs can self-select and live in places with low rent and weak job markets.
- SilasX 6y ago
  Meaning that, unless you fix housing, UBI doesn't make a difference.
  - epistasis 6y ago
    I would think almost the opposite. The prices are high where there are high incomes--California, NY, Boston, Washington... If you don't need to chase a high income, you can move where there's cheaper rent and try to innovate there. Assuming that you don't need any of the spatial resources of the expensive areas. (A big if... but perhaps you can grow your idea then move to the areas with lots of capital.)
- rasz 6y ago
  When you write 'enough housing to go around' you are thinking about housing everyone in need. In a free market economy 'enough housing to go around' means enough real estate assets to safely park capital (for example Chinese one).
  - epistasis 6y ago
    The "not enough housing to go around" isn't because of a "free market" (if such a thing even exists), it's because wealthy people have enforced housing austerity and refuse to allow new housing to be built near them. Without wealthy people controlling zoning and restricting what can be built, far more people would be building their own homes, or would at least be allowed to pool together to build. Instead we hand over huge imputed rents to landlords and make anybody who is not super wealthy fight each other for the remains. I think we should have robust social housing, as in Vienna or Singapore. But one thing that both places do that we do not is allow for far more housing to be built per person in high-demand areas (i.e. pricy areas). Their defining characteristic for affordability isn't so much the social housing, it's that they build for everyone as if housing were a human right, rather than a financial investment vehicle like we treat it here by enforcing scarcity. To the extent that there is a "free market" it's only on existing housing once it's built. For existing housing, we let the wealthy do whatever they want, and use their market power to buy whatever they want, including hoarding it. However, it's only because of housing austerity in the building of housing that this real estate becomes such a sought after commodity. It is only through scarcity and austerity of building permits that continued financial climbs are guaranteed. Most of the political spectrum in the US has housing completely wrong, and thinks that everything is going to be OK if they can just keep the "wrong" people out. Instead, we should adopt radical inclusion and welcome all people, and adopt the true belief that everyone deserves housing, every single person. Not just the cool ones, everyone. That is, unless we want to continue the current meatgrinder of capitalism. Eviction may be the blades at the end of the grinder, but the auger is the housing scarcity and exclusion practiced by nearly every single person in the US.
    - pnutjam 6y ago
      If rich people were the ones who had to build their estates far away, (instead of lower-middle class suburbs being pushed away from the urban areas) we'd have light rail and all sorts of ways for them to easily commute.
tenebrisalietum 6y ago
UBI needs to be paired with restricting rent increases or eliminating zoning restrictions that limit housing supply then.
- thisisnico 6y ago
  As a landlord, and landlording in an area with restricted rent, it makes zero difference. It's only good if you stay where you rent, but if you move, it's market rent. You can't adequately control market rent because there are so so many variable on what market rent is for every individual unit, location, type, etc. I'm all for the eliminating zoning restrictions though.
  - nostrademons 6y ago
    That's the case for rent restrictions. It's actually worse - rent control decreases housing mobility (nobody wants to give up a rent-controlled apartment, even if it no longer meets their needs) and disincentivizes development, so the prevailing market rate for non-rent-controlled apartments goes up. But eliminating zoning restrictions and building more housing actually does work. Then when you move, you have your pick of many apartments to choose from, and nobody has pricing power to charge more.
    - sudosysgen 6y ago
      I live in a rent-restricted area. There is quite a bit of construction, and the average person moves almost once every two years. The effects of rent-restriction you quote are theoretical effects. In the real world, it does work, as long as the rent-restrictions are well-thought-out.
      - xapata 6y ago
        My interpretation of the evidence leads to the opposite conclusion. Here's a good summary: https://www.slowboring.com/p/induced-demand https://www.slowboring.com/p/induced-demand
mc32 6y ago
Soviet style housing is an answer and also not an answer. It would provide housing for people on UBI, but because it’s operating on a thin budget, over time it becomes less desirable. Now, it’s not always the case _if_ you can get the tenants to coöperate and pitch in on basic maintenance and keep anti social behavior at bay ala Singapore, but my feeling is we’re not of the same mindset as Singaporeans.
- eeZah7Ux 6y ago
  Any creation of affordable housing contributes to slowing down increasing prices. Many countries do this by putting legal limits against gentrification.
  - ch4s3 6y ago
    > Many countries do this by putting legal limits against gentrification. What does that even mean? I'm not aware of any country that restricts the change in the income mix of housing, or the renovation of dilapidated housing by new residents.
    - eeZah7Ux 6y ago
      There are thousands of building regulations. Here are few examples among some EU countries: setting a minimum density and number of floors in urban areas to prevent "mcmansions". Mandated commercial areas (aka shops) on the ground floor on new buildings. Requirements on walkability applied to new road design to prevent sprawls e.g. limit cul-de-sacs. Minimum and maximum percentage of buildings for industrial / office / shop / domestic use. Minimum and maximum apartment size. Tons of limitations on renovation of historical buildings. A lot of this stuff makes it very difficult to quickly transform an already urbanized area into a bunch of super-luxury villas or similar.
      - eeZah7Ux 6y ago
        There you go, silent downvotes for providing information...
scotty79 6y ago
Then you can tax landlords an funnel money back into UBI
JKCalhoun 6y ago
I imagine UBI would be good for landlords.
- SilasX 6y ago
  Henry George held that belief on steroids and thought that, unless you taxed away the site value of land, then almost all of the benefits of any good policy or improved economic activity would accrue to landowners.
  - JKCalhoun 6y ago
    And never mind that Big Money is following the business plan that the future of America is all of us are renters. Well, you know, everyone but the uber-wealthy.
JoeAltmaier 6y ago
Old scarecrow, with no foundation. Read some more.

Or all the UBI money would pump up rents to the point that living costs make it infeasible again.

by SilasX 6y ago

Or all the UBI money would pump up rents to the point that living costs make it infeasible again.

Rents only get pumped up if we don't have enough housing to go around... in which case regular incomes do the same thing.

iguy 6y ago
But we do have lots of housing, it's just located in places people don't want to live. Rents are high in places they do want to be, and that's partly a positional thing -- if you want to live where the top-10% of earners live, you need to bid against them for housing.
- epistasis 6y ago
  From this angle, a UBI is even more powerful, in that it will go a lot further in areas that are less economically productive, and let us use "surplus" housing there. Ideally we'd just let more people live closer together like they want to, but the elites won't let more people get close to them.
- rubicon33 6y ago
  Exactly. The high costing of housing really has more to do with the type of person you've living around/near, than the house.
- PeterisP 6y ago
  Thing is, requirement for on-site employment requires you to live where lots of people live; only the very wealthy can afford to live in places without jobs nearby - as UBI decouples income from where you live, then it would be a pressure to equalize rents, as underemployed people - the demand for whose labor is decreasing and will decrease further - can afford live in the many places which are currently shedding population because of lack of jobs despite being actually very nice to live in.
  - iguy 6y ago
    Maybe. But the counter is that entrepreneurship has strong network effects, it really pays to be around other talented people and hear about the future they're busy inventing. Maybe we'd see the opposite, people leaving a stable job which ties them to some unexciting place, to try to make it in NYC.
    - tsimionescu 6y ago
      > But the counter is that entrepreneurship has strong network effects, it really pays to be around other talented people and hear about the future they're busy inventing. The actual powerful network effects are essentially a somewhat benign form of cronyism, not mere inspiration from other entrepreneurs. People do more business with less haggling with friends than with strangers.
      - nlitened 6y ago
        > People do more business with less haggling with friends than with strangers. This is how humans work. This cannot change with UBI.
        tsimionescu 6y ago
        Agreed, wasn't trying to claim that it would, just pointing out that network effects are not about inspiration, mainly.
      - iguy 6y ago
        I think you're talking about networking for money, and that's a thing. But there are also ideas. Even in fields where there's basically no money, half the world's innovation happening within a circle of a few miles is routine. For instance this happens in music, repeatedly.
        orf 6y ago
        When has it happened with music in the last 60 years? If you’re talking about mostly classical music clusters then there are a lot more reasons for that than you’re suggesting
- Lammy 6y ago
  The supply of housing in the places people do want to live is artificially constrained, intentionally driving up prices to achieve the New Segregation.
- triceratops 6y ago
  > it's just located in places people don't want to live Often because there aren't any good jobs there. With UBI entrepreneurs can self-select and live in places with low rent and weak job markets.
SilasX 6y ago
Meaning that, unless you fix housing, UBI doesn't make a difference.
- epistasis 6y ago
  I would think almost the opposite. The prices are high where there are high incomes--California, NY, Boston, Washington... If you don't need to chase a high income, you can move where there's cheaper rent and try to innovate there. Assuming that you don't need any of the spatial resources of the expensive areas. (A big if... but perhaps you can grow your idea then move to the areas with lots of capital.)
rasz 6y ago
When you write 'enough housing to go around' you are thinking about housing everyone in need. In a free market economy 'enough housing to go around' means enough real estate assets to safely park capital (for example Chinese one).
- epistasis 6y ago
  The "not enough housing to go around" isn't because of a "free market" (if such a thing even exists), it's because wealthy people have enforced housing austerity and refuse to allow new housing to be built near them. Without wealthy people controlling zoning and restricting what can be built, far more people would be building their own homes, or would at least be allowed to pool together to build. Instead we hand over huge imputed rents to landlords and make anybody who is not super wealthy fight each other for the remains. I think we should have robust social housing, as in Vienna or Singapore. But one thing that both places do that we do not is allow for far more housing to be built per person in high-demand areas (i.e. pricy areas). Their defining characteristic for affordability isn't so much the social housing, it's that they build for everyone as if housing were a human right, rather than a financial investment vehicle like we treat it here by enforcing scarcity. To the extent that there is a "free market" it's only on existing housing once it's built. For existing housing, we let the wealthy do whatever they want, and use their market power to buy whatever they want, including hoarding it. However, it's only because of housing austerity in the building of housing that this real estate becomes such a sought after commodity. It is only through scarcity and austerity of building permits that continued financial climbs are guaranteed. Most of the political spectrum in the US has housing completely wrong, and thinks that everything is going to be OK if they can just keep the "wrong" people out. Instead, we should adopt radical inclusion and welcome all people, and adopt the true belief that everyone deserves housing, every single person. Not just the cool ones, everyone. That is, unless we want to continue the current meatgrinder of capitalism. Eviction may be the blades at the end of the grinder, but the auger is the housing scarcity and exclusion practiced by nearly every single person in the US.
  - pnutjam 6y ago
    If rich people were the ones who had to build their estates far away, (instead of lower-middle class suburbs being pushed away from the urban areas) we'd have light rail and all sorts of ways for them to easily commute.

tenebrisalietum 6y ago

UBI needs to be paired with restricting rent increases or eliminating zoning restrictions that limit housing supply then.

thisisnico 6y ago
As a landlord, and landlording in an area with restricted rent, it makes zero difference. It's only good if you stay where you rent, but if you move, it's market rent. You can't adequately control market rent because there are so so many variable on what market rent is for every individual unit, location, type, etc. I'm all for the eliminating zoning restrictions though.
- nostrademons 6y ago
  That's the case for rent restrictions. It's actually worse - rent control decreases housing mobility (nobody wants to give up a rent-controlled apartment, even if it no longer meets their needs) and disincentivizes development, so the prevailing market rate for non-rent-controlled apartments goes up. But eliminating zoning restrictions and building more housing actually does work. Then when you move, you have your pick of many apartments to choose from, and nobody has pricing power to charge more.
  - sudosysgen 6y ago
    I live in a rent-restricted area. There is quite a bit of construction, and the average person moves almost once every two years. The effects of rent-restriction you quote are theoretical effects. In the real world, it does work, as long as the rent-restrictions are well-thought-out.
    - xapata 6y ago
      My interpretation of the evidence leads to the opposite conclusion. Here's a good summary: https://www.slowboring.com/p/induced-demand https://www.slowboring.com/p/induced-demand

mc32 6y ago

Soviet style housing is an answer and also not an answer. It would provide housing for people on UBI, but because it’s operating on a thin budget, over time it becomes less desirable. Now, it’s not always the case _if_ you can get the tenants to coöperate and pitch in on basic maintenance and keep anti social behavior at bay ala Singapore, but my feeling is we’re not of the same mindset as Singaporeans.

eeZah7Ux 6y ago
Any creation of affordable housing contributes to slowing down increasing prices. Many countries do this by putting legal limits against gentrification.
- ch4s3 6y ago
  > Many countries do this by putting legal limits against gentrification. What does that even mean? I'm not aware of any country that restricts the change in the income mix of housing, or the renovation of dilapidated housing by new residents.
  - eeZah7Ux 6y ago
    There are thousands of building regulations. Here are few examples among some EU countries: setting a minimum density and number of floors in urban areas to prevent "mcmansions". Mandated commercial areas (aka shops) on the ground floor on new buildings. Requirements on walkability applied to new road design to prevent sprawls e.g. limit cul-de-sacs. Minimum and maximum percentage of buildings for industrial / office / shop / domestic use. Minimum and maximum apartment size. Tons of limitations on renovation of historical buildings. A lot of this stuff makes it very difficult to quickly transform an already urbanized area into a bunch of super-luxury villas or similar.
    - eeZah7Ux 6y ago
      There you go, silent downvotes for providing information...

scotty79 6y ago

Then you can tax landlords an funnel money back into UBI

JKCalhoun 6y ago

I imagine UBI would be good for landlords.

SilasX 6y ago
Henry George held that belief on steroids and thought that, unless you taxed away the site value of land, then almost all of the benefits of any good policy or improved economic activity would accrue to landowners.
- JKCalhoun 6y ago
  And never mind that Big Money is following the business plan that the future of America is all of us are renters. Well, you know, everyone but the uber-wealthy.

JoeAltmaier 6y ago

Old scarecrow, with no foundation. Read some more.