4 ms·

> UBI means that anyone who's able to live frugally may, at any time, retire Will never happen: a soon as it starts rolling to a significant number of people,

> UBI means that anyone who's able to live frugally may, at any time, retire Will never happen: a soon as it starts rolling to a significant number of people, the minimal rent set by landlords will be the amount of UBI. In addition to its other issues, it can't work in a market where landlords can freely set their rents.

lmm 5y ago
Landlords' bargaining power goes down a lot once people don't have to live somewhere where there are jobs available.
- 988747 5y ago
  On the other hand: with UBI even the landlords in the middle of nowhere can demand higher rent, since everyone now has a spare $1000 per month Laws of economy are like laws of physics: you cannot cheat them. All the UBI will do is it will raise the nominal prices of everything, but no poor person will be better off because of it. Small scale experiments on UBI are successful only because they are small scale, so they cannot affect economy at large. Once you make UBI truly universal the reality kicks in, and inflation eats it all.
  - goodpoint 5y ago
    > with UBI even the landlords in the middle of nowhere can demand higher rent If that was happen it would only encourage people on UBI to buy the cheapest houses or by land to build. Not being bound to a location, they would be able to do so easily. > All the UBI will do is it will raise the nominal prices of everything [...] inflation eats it all. Plain false. UBI does not create new money out of nowhere.
    - 988747 5y ago
      Of course UBI will create new money - how else are you going to finance it? Giving each adult American $1000 per month would cost at least $2.5 trillion. Let's assume that UBI replaces all other Social Security spending - that's currently $1.2T, so you are still $1.3T short. You cannot collect that much in new taxes. Even assuming that you somehow manage to finance UBI with tax raises alone think about what you'll be doing: you would be moving money from the rich to the poor, which sounds good in theory, until you realize that rich people and corporations keep their money in financial assets. Now, the reason why all the FED money printing so far caused only mild inflation is because the money flew to financial markets. If you use taxes to redirect it to common people then you are doubly screwing them: you are crashing stock markets, ruining their 401(k) savings, and at the same time causing price inflation of everyday things.
      - goodpoint 5y ago
        > Of course UBI will create new money Not at all. In a lot of countries it's not possible to arbitrarily create money out of nowhere. Most proposed UBI implementation replace the existing welfare and a plethora of financial aids, programs and tax reliefs, leaving the overall tax rates roughly similar to the existing one. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_basic_income https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_basic_income
  - jacobr1 5y ago
    That dynamic only really works when the supply is fixed. Many places don't restrict the supply of building more, or denser, homes the way the big coastal cities foolishly prefer. As demand and prices rise, supply will to rise to meet it, if not physically or legally constrained.
  - lmm 5y ago
    > On the other hand: with UBI even the landlords in the middle of nowhere can demand higher rent, since everyone now has a spare $1000 per month There are still no jobs there, so either those landlords keep the rent low enough that people can afford some kind of existence on UBI, or their houses stand empty (like they do at the moment). And competition would limit rent - on a national scale there is already a lot more housing than needed and the result is that rent is very low in flyover country, but people still can't afford to live there, whereas landlords in the cities that have jobs are currently a de facto oligopoly that can squeeze and squeeze. > Laws of economy are like laws of physics: you cannot cheat them. All the UBI will do is it will raise the nominal prices of everything, but no poor person will be better off because of it. At first order UBI is wealth transfer not wealth creation - the working poor will be better off, the middle/upper class will be worse off. At second order UBI unlocks a lot of real value that's currently a deadweight loss: people who could work for a few hours a week, but don't because that would lose them their benefits. It frees up the labour that's currently burned on complex benefit administration to be redirected to doing something productive instead. And by making it easier for people to change jobs, get training/education, or start a business, it increases labour efficiency. There is no free lunch in economics, and if anyone tells you their policy will make people better off then you're right to ask where the brass tacks of that value creation actually lie. But UBI has some compelling answers.
dgb23 5y ago
Where I live it is reasonably common to have housing co-ops in larger towns and cities. Rent is much more affordable because their goal is sustainability, not profit extraction.
Qwertious 5y ago
>Will never happen: a soon as it starts rolling to a significant number of people, the minimal rent set by landlords will be the amount of UBI. https://old.reddit.com/r/VanDwellers https://old.reddit.com/r/VanDwellers There are plenty of country towns that are rapidly emptying due to lack of jobs, and literally offer to sell you a house for $1 if you commit to living in it (and maintaining it) for a year. An awful lot of small towns are desperate for new residents. There's no actual housing shortage. There's a shortage of housing near the jobs. But even if that's not the case, riddle me this: how much does rural land cost? An average of ~$3000/acre in the USA (an acre is 4046sqm). Source: https://www.landsoar.com/acre-of-land-cost/ https://www.landsoar.com/acre-of-land-cost/ If landlords increase the cost of rent, people will just build cheap houses in cheap areas.
imtringued 5y ago
It's true locally but you can always move away so it is not a global problem. The bigger problem is that you have to punish working people with an income tax that funds the UBI. In most cases taxation is basically a punishment for bad behavior. You can optimize taxes the same way you can optimize profits. Tax involving activities cut into profits, so they should be avoided, at least from the perspective of an accountant. i.e. people don't stop working because they have money, they stop working because they get less money from work

lmm 5y ago

Landlords' bargaining power goes down a lot once people don't have to live somewhere where there are jobs available.

988747 5y ago
On the other hand: with UBI even the landlords in the middle of nowhere can demand higher rent, since everyone now has a spare $1000 per month Laws of economy are like laws of physics: you cannot cheat them. All the UBI will do is it will raise the nominal prices of everything, but no poor person will be better off because of it. Small scale experiments on UBI are successful only because they are small scale, so they cannot affect economy at large. Once you make UBI truly universal the reality kicks in, and inflation eats it all.
- goodpoint 5y ago
  > with UBI even the landlords in the middle of nowhere can demand higher rent If that was happen it would only encourage people on UBI to buy the cheapest houses or by land to build. Not being bound to a location, they would be able to do so easily. > All the UBI will do is it will raise the nominal prices of everything [...] inflation eats it all. Plain false. UBI does not create new money out of nowhere.
  - 988747 5y ago
    Of course UBI will create new money - how else are you going to finance it? Giving each adult American $1000 per month would cost at least $2.5 trillion. Let's assume that UBI replaces all other Social Security spending - that's currently $1.2T, so you are still $1.3T short. You cannot collect that much in new taxes. Even assuming that you somehow manage to finance UBI with tax raises alone think about what you'll be doing: you would be moving money from the rich to the poor, which sounds good in theory, until you realize that rich people and corporations keep their money in financial assets. Now, the reason why all the FED money printing so far caused only mild inflation is because the money flew to financial markets. If you use taxes to redirect it to common people then you are doubly screwing them: you are crashing stock markets, ruining their 401(k) savings, and at the same time causing price inflation of everyday things.
    - goodpoint 5y ago
      > Of course UBI will create new money Not at all. In a lot of countries it's not possible to arbitrarily create money out of nowhere. Most proposed UBI implementation replace the existing welfare and a plethora of financial aids, programs and tax reliefs, leaving the overall tax rates roughly similar to the existing one. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_basic_income https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_basic_income
- jacobr1 5y ago
  That dynamic only really works when the supply is fixed. Many places don't restrict the supply of building more, or denser, homes the way the big coastal cities foolishly prefer. As demand and prices rise, supply will to rise to meet it, if not physically or legally constrained.
- lmm 5y ago
  > On the other hand: with UBI even the landlords in the middle of nowhere can demand higher rent, since everyone now has a spare $1000 per month There are still no jobs there, so either those landlords keep the rent low enough that people can afford some kind of existence on UBI, or their houses stand empty (like they do at the moment). And competition would limit rent - on a national scale there is already a lot more housing than needed and the result is that rent is very low in flyover country, but people still can't afford to live there, whereas landlords in the cities that have jobs are currently a de facto oligopoly that can squeeze and squeeze. > Laws of economy are like laws of physics: you cannot cheat them. All the UBI will do is it will raise the nominal prices of everything, but no poor person will be better off because of it. At first order UBI is wealth transfer not wealth creation - the working poor will be better off, the middle/upper class will be worse off. At second order UBI unlocks a lot of real value that's currently a deadweight loss: people who could work for a few hours a week, but don't because that would lose them their benefits. It frees up the labour that's currently burned on complex benefit administration to be redirected to doing something productive instead. And by making it easier for people to change jobs, get training/education, or start a business, it increases labour efficiency. There is no free lunch in economics, and if anyone tells you their policy will make people better off then you're right to ask where the brass tacks of that value creation actually lie. But UBI has some compelling answers.

dgb23 5y ago

Where I live it is reasonably common to have housing co-ops in larger towns and cities. Rent is much more affordable because their goal is sustainability, not profit extraction.

Qwertious 5y ago

>Will never happen: a soon as it starts rolling to a significant number of people, the minimal rent set by landlords will be the amount of UBI. https://old.reddit.com/r/VanDwellers https://old.reddit.com/r/VanDwellers There are plenty of country towns that are rapidly emptying due to lack of jobs, and literally offer to sell you a house for $1 if you commit to living in it (and maintaining it) for a year. An awful lot of small towns are desperate for new residents. There's no actual housing shortage. There's a shortage of housing near the jobs. But even if that's not the case, riddle me this: how much does rural land cost? An average of ~$3000/acre in the USA (an acre is 4046sqm). Source: https://www.landsoar.com/acre-of-land-cost/ https://www.landsoar.com/acre-of-land-cost/ If landlords increase the cost of rent, people will just build cheap houses in cheap areas.

imtringued 5y ago

It's true locally but you can always move away so it is not a global problem. The bigger problem is that you have to punish working people with an income tax that funds the UBI. In most cases taxation is basically a punishment for bad behavior. You can optimize taxes the same way you can optimize profits. Tax involving activities cut into profits, so they should be avoided, at least from the perspective of an accountant. i.e. people don't stop working because they have money, they stop working because they get less money from work