10 ms·

I used to be a proponent of universal basic income, but after this past year it's become clear, rent and housing prices will just increase to match whatever ext

I used to be a proponent of universal basic income, but after this past year it's become clear, rent and housing prices will just increase to match whatever extra income people receive. Unless there is real housing reform (not treating housing as an investment) UBI won't be effective.

spywaregorilla 5y ago
I don't think this a complete problem. More broadly is that wages will need to rise and prices will need to rise until an equilibrium is reached such that poor people need to work to survive. While wages rise, other countries with no universal income gain a competitive advantage in labor costs, across the board.
brutal_chaos_ 5y ago
Disagreed. We have corpoeations/Private Equity Firms buying up property to squeeze out as much money possible from these places. Creating an artificial inflation of housing costs and making a UBI look untenable. If the property rush wasn't happening we wouldn't see this. A decent UBI would adjust with the cost of living. Including handling a price surge like this. Edit to add: More than just a UBI would be needed for the surges probably. Perhaps a more functional Congress would be needed too, at this point.
- zbobet2012 5y ago
  This represents a small amount of the property in the US. Investors own 16% of US housing. And keep in mind that includes investors with 1 or 2 additional properties that they rent secondary to their own home. https://www.nationalmortgagenews.com/news/investors-bought-more-single-family-homes-than-ever-in-q2 https://www.nationalmortgagenews.com/news/investors-bought-m... It's just not true. Housing prices are rising due to record low interest rates (most people folks on monthly payments, not net cost) and demand shifts due to covid. Housing prices in core cities have largely fallen.
  - james4k 5y ago
    Do you think everybody's house is on the market?
    - zbobet2012 5y ago
      Large investors represent 1 to 2 percent of purchases. The number of home purchases from all investors has been FALLING since 2013: https://www.vox.com/22524829/wall-street-housing-market-blackrock-bubble https://www.vox.com/22524829/wall-street-housing-market-blac... Housing prices (in certain areas) are high due to low interest rates, covid related demand changes (moves of high income earners from core cities), and wage growth for high income earners.
    - djbebs 5y ago
      Everyone's house is on the market. Some are just too expensive to bother with. I bet if I offered you a billion dollars a square foot you'd sell you beloved childhood home. And If you're the 1 in a billion who'd turn down that deal with that amount of money on the line, I can simply bribe the local government for them to expropriate you.
  - to11mtm 5y ago
    I think you're more or less right on your reasons. I do have add-on thought as far as demand shifts contributing to price increases; A lot of the demand was driven by people wanting to move into bigger houses. Those who didn't have enough equity built-up early on could just tack what they wanted onto their selling price and hope for the best. One more interesting anecdote; In my neighborhood, housing prices have stayed relatively flat since summer of 2020. There are other nearby cities where the prices have increased more, however they often do not have the same property tax rates as where I reside. (prop Taxes are over 1/3 of my monthly 30y mortgage payment, lol)
  - LordDragonfang 5y ago
    >And keep in mind that includes investors with 1 or 2 additional properties that they rent secondary to their own home. That directly contradicts the definition in literally the second line of your source. >Investors — any institute or business that deals in real estate Institute or business, which doesn't include unincorporated individuals with just a couple of extra properties they rent out. You can tell they're not included because it says in the article that "investors" only bought "26.5% of multifamily homes" (i.e. multi-unit apartments), so unless you're suggesting that 75% of multifamily buildings aren't being bought as an investment, the numbers don't add up.
- Aunche 5y ago
  > We have corpoeations/Private Equity Firms buying up property to squeeze out as much money possible from these places. This isn't some groundbreaking revelation they had. Corporations and firms are always trying to squeeze as much money as possible. After a few purchases, the stimulus checks go into the hands of the corporations, who are are now flush with newly printed cash. Given that there are few real growth opportunities to invest in, everyone just throws their money at property.
  - brutal_chaos_ 5y ago
    Oh I understand that. I just meant the recent mass buys that have been happening. (this may just be a feeling based on my news readings and not a reflection of reality)
  - gremlinsinc 5y ago
    Land value tax is the answer..only allow real people to own residential dwellings, no corps. Secondly every property as a 0.25% higher tax than the previous one, sorted by lowest value, so you're paying lower taxes on the lower costing houses, and the highest taxes on the highest costing. Finally, the base tax is gotta be way above primary dwelling, normal homeowners shouldn't be penalized. All the $$ raised is to be used for UBI or Medicare For All, it cannot be borrowed from or repurposed.
shuntress 5y ago
My extreme political opinion is that no one should be allowed to own more than one property in which they do not reside. Edit: To clarify - if you own two properties, rent one, and live in the other, you own one property in which you reside and one property in which you do not reside.
- HenryKissinger 5y ago
  Here's where the lawyers will get you. What counts as "own"? What counts as "property"? What counts as "reside"?
  - bena 5y ago
    It's even simpler than that. What about workspaces? What about shopping areas? Entertainment? There are lots of pieces of property that aren't residential that are owned.
    - shuntress 5y ago
      > What about workspaces? > What about shopping areas? > Entertainment? What about them? > There are lots of pieces of property that aren't residential that are owned. Agreed.
      - gruez 5y ago
        >What about them? who's going to own them? are they not property?
        shuntress 5y ago
        They are property and people will own them. I don't think I understand the point of these questions unless you misread my original statement. I have edited it to add some clarification.
        bena 5y ago
umvi 5y ago
I don't know if that's due to UBI-esque covid stimulus money so much as crazy supply/demand constraints exacerbated by remote-work-enabled migration from expensive cities to cheaper suburbs. My wife and I looked at a single family home in 2017 in Boise that was $400k. That was a bit out of our price range at the time. 4 years and a few raises later $400k is now in our price range for a house, but now the same house is $800k. Sigh...
beardedscotsman 5y ago
France has a great system. You can’t rent a house unless the rent is under 1/3rd of your income. It’s not legally enforced, but is very difficult to rent for more of your pay check. Unlike ireland where rents can be 60% of your take home pay.
- monetus 5y ago
  I know a lot of people who would be forced out of their homes if this was the case. (In the US) I wonder how it could be implemented without having to massively expand government housing.
  - glogla 5y ago
    It also puts downward pressure on landlords, since as they increase the rent, there's less and less people who can be tenants. Sadly it might not help around here, because right now, it is very profitable to just buy property and leave it empty, since the prices are perpetually rising.
  - t-writescode 5y ago
    It's already a thing in a lot / most places in the US. If your established income is less than something like 1/3 or 1/4, you'll need a guarantor who can pay that.
armchairhacker 5y ago
Rent and housing prices have already been increasing. Maybe they’ve been increasing more this past year, but even if so it could be blamed on other things. Lots of people didn’t have to pay rent last year, so landlords (especially smaller ones) had to increase rent for those who could. Also other prices are increasing from inflation and supply shortages. As long as the price of inflation doesn’t completely cover UBI (which is possible but imo unlikely), it will be at least partly effective.
- bena 5y ago
  This is anecdotal and I'm not offering it up as proof of anything, but if I don't say this to someone somewhere, I'm going to go mad from the absurdity of it: My rent actually went down. I attribute the decrease to the two new complexes built next to where we were. But yeah, I was shocked as shit. I moved earlier this year, but still, it was weird.
  - carabiner 5y ago
    Rents dropped in most big cities in the US because office workers were able to work remotely and started moving to cheaper areas. I don't know why everyone forgot this, it was the prevailing narrative in housing during the middle of lockdown. Everyone was talking about SF emptying out.
carabiner 5y ago
Well, rents in big cities have dropped significantly as remote work has taken over: https://zumpermedia.s3.amazonaws.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/18141234/QuarterlyrentreportAug2021-04-1-1536x804.jpg https://zumpermedia.s3.amazonaws.com/blog/wp-content/uploads... . Then again, rents in secondary cities like Austin and Boise have increased: https://www.kvue.com/article/money/economy/boomtown-2040/austin-rent-rates-apartment-list-report/269-8c004a52-a30e-447b-8a50-1063fe28b83e https://www.kvue.com/article/money/economy/boomtown-2040/aus..., https://boisedev.com/news/2021/07/28/boise-rent-prices-up-39-percent-since-last-march/ https://boisedev.com/news/2021/07/28/boise-rent-prices-up-39.... So, as always, "it depends." But this doesn't seem driven by poor people getting money from the government; it does seem related to affluent remote workers fleeing coastal cities. I have to doubt that recipients of pandemic benefits are the ones buying $800k houses and driving the housing boom.
- zbobet2012 5y ago
  Yes, this is accurate. Housing prices are at historic highs in many non-core cities as demand from covid related changes move high income earners and historically low interest rates allow low monthly payments. A million dollars in financed money is under 4000$ a month in payments. Many, many couples can afford this. About twenty percent of all income earning couples in the us can afford this. https://www.vox.com/22524829/wall-street-housing-market-blackrock-bubble https://www.vox.com/22524829/wall-street-housing-market-blac...
  - kodah 5y ago
    > Housing prices are at historic highs in many non-core cities as demand from covid related changes move high income earners and historically low interest rates allow low monthly payments. Things were already going this way. When I left Dallas housing was nearly unaffordable anywhere near the city (where most jobs are) at $110k/year. This was directly caused by comparatively rich people on the coasts getting disillusioned and moving to cheaper areas and folks who can't afford the coasts in the first place moving to cheaper areas. It turned supply and demand upside down, and it destroyed the ability for people who grew up in those areas to have a stake in the city. Why people care about it now is beyond me. The only difference I see that it's not comparatively rich people anymore, it's actual rich people that are moving.
flatline 5y ago
And the rest will be captured by predatory lenders. I too am a fan of the concept but there are a lot of incentives in the US in particular that work against the idea.
guerrilla 5y ago
I never understood this but I'm still open minded. How would it not just lead to inflation? You're saying it actually has but I also think our circumstances right now are a bit complicated so I'm not entirely convinced yet.
- gruez 5y ago
  note that he didn't say all prices would increase, just rent/housing. This makes sense, because unlike TVs and milk, the supply for housing isn't very elastic (due to NIMBY reasons), so pumping more money isn't going to get us more supply, only higher prices.
  - totony 5y ago
    Higher price on lower end housing, but that incentivises building more lower end housing (since higher end housing is more elastic and won't have as big of a markup). EDIT: actually, thinking more about this I don't think lower end housing will see such an increase, since most people already have a home. You'll certainly see a rise in price of lower end housing, but it won't offset UBI, since I doubt people will just take ubi to put it into their housing
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- totony 5y ago
  One of the direct consequences of UBI is inflation IMO. Of course things are going to be more expensive if we give everyone money. That doesn't mean poor people won't be better off. If your food costs 20% more but you have 200% the money, that's a good thing. UBI is like printing money, yes you have inflation, but the money is still useful. Inflation won't eat the whole UBI (probably), because there's still supply and demande that other revenue generate. E.g. if I pay 20% of my income for food and UBI doesn't affect my income much, I won't be inclined to increase my spending on food by a big %.
james4k 5y ago
You think housing went up because of unemployment? Who exactly do you think has been purchasing our limited housing stock?
micromacrofoot 5y ago
It has to be tied to cost of living in some way. If UBI can't cover essentials then it's not UBI. There are probably a lot of problems that should be covered before UBI really, or they're just going to siphon off UBI. Predatory lending is a good one, loans based on UBI payments seem like an easy scam to get into.
- iammisc 5y ago
  Except if UBI is $10, then cost of living will increase $10. This is an impossibly recursive feedback loop. UBI's effects on the COL is ultimately a turing complete equation, and thus suffers from an inability to analyze when exactly such a recursive scenario will halt.
  - micromacrofoot 5y ago
    Will it increase $10? I can't go out and buy a cost of living, so it seems like it would be hard to pin down. Who would increases prices under UBI? Housing? grocery? childcare? that aspect seems unclear to me. If UBI is too hard to figure out, what's the alternative? more government housing? medicare for all? What's the least complicated way to ensure everyone gets housing, food, and healthcare?
    - iammisc 5y ago
      > Housing? grocery? childcare? that aspect seems unclear to me. All of them would, because with extra money, there would be more demand for these goods and services, but the supply of the good itself hasn't increased. Thus, companies will charge more. In sum, the total increase in charge will be $10.
  - michaelmrose 5y ago
    Why would it be by magic exactly correlated with the exact figure provided by UBI. In addition you are using turing complete in a completely nonsensical way as nobody is using cost of living to compute with. Based on what you are saying any economic change would be completely unpredictable and the entire human race would be paralyzed by the decision on how to price a Taco. In reality we muddle through while making general predictions about the effects of our actions and reassessing as we go.
dv_dt 5y ago
It’s really not clear that the increases are due to extra income to regular people. There is a lot of aid money injected into the financial markets, which combined with logistical problems which, to me, are bigger contributors to the increases.
bkberry352 5y ago
Agreed. The experience over the last year and the cost of college in the US makes me think that, in absence of some sort of regulation to the contrary, UBI will simply lead to comparable cost increases. This is very similar to what happened with the cost of college in the US: the government gave students free money (they were called student loans, but basically the same), and colleges ate them up through tuition increases. Why wouldn't the exact same happen with UBI?
kfprt 5y ago
A better question would be whether housing prices are increasing the same everywhere.
iammisc 5y ago
Can I ask why, when you were a proponent of UBI, you thought this scenario would not happen? Most of UBI's detractors paint exactly this scenario as an argument against UBI, so you must have had a reason. Out of curiosity... what was it?
Zababa 5y ago
Wouldn't UBI reduce the need for everyone to live in the same place though?
hardwaregeek 5y ago
Yeah, there's something really naive about assuming you can just give people cash and have the economy work out. The last time we solved severe inequality it took regulation, innumerable fights against large corporations, and yes, a "bully pulpit". Cash can jump start and right previous wrongs, but to move forward we need legislation.
rickydroll 5y ago
I'm not sure that's a hard and fast correlation. We have indicators that suggest that housing prices are increasing because of equity funds literally engaging in rent seeking behavior by buying of housing stock and turning into rental property.
Proven 5y ago
[dead]

spywaregorilla 5y ago

I don't think this a complete problem. More broadly is that wages will need to rise and prices will need to rise until an equilibrium is reached such that poor people need to work to survive. While wages rise, other countries with no universal income gain a competitive advantage in labor costs, across the board.

brutal_chaos_ 5y ago

Disagreed. We have corpoeations/Private Equity Firms buying up property to squeeze out as much money possible from these places. Creating an artificial inflation of housing costs and making a UBI look untenable. If the property rush wasn't happening we wouldn't see this. A decent UBI would adjust with the cost of living. Including handling a price surge like this. Edit to add: More than just a UBI would be needed for the surges probably. Perhaps a more functional Congress would be needed too, at this point.

zbobet2012 5y ago
This represents a small amount of the property in the US. Investors own 16% of US housing. And keep in mind that includes investors with 1 or 2 additional properties that they rent secondary to their own home. https://www.nationalmortgagenews.com/news/investors-bought-more-single-family-homes-than-ever-in-q2 https://www.nationalmortgagenews.com/news/investors-bought-m... It's just not true. Housing prices are rising due to record low interest rates (most people folks on monthly payments, not net cost) and demand shifts due to covid. Housing prices in core cities have largely fallen.
- james4k 5y ago
  Do you think everybody's house is on the market?
  - zbobet2012 5y ago
    Large investors represent 1 to 2 percent of purchases. The number of home purchases from all investors has been FALLING since 2013: https://www.vox.com/22524829/wall-street-housing-market-blackrock-bubble https://www.vox.com/22524829/wall-street-housing-market-blac... Housing prices (in certain areas) are high due to low interest rates, covid related demand changes (moves of high income earners from core cities), and wage growth for high income earners.
  - djbebs 5y ago
    Everyone's house is on the market. Some are just too expensive to bother with. I bet if I offered you a billion dollars a square foot you'd sell you beloved childhood home. And If you're the 1 in a billion who'd turn down that deal with that amount of money on the line, I can simply bribe the local government for them to expropriate you.
- to11mtm 5y ago
  I think you're more or less right on your reasons. I do have add-on thought as far as demand shifts contributing to price increases; A lot of the demand was driven by people wanting to move into bigger houses. Those who didn't have enough equity built-up early on could just tack what they wanted onto their selling price and hope for the best. One more interesting anecdote; In my neighborhood, housing prices have stayed relatively flat since summer of 2020. There are other nearby cities where the prices have increased more, however they often do not have the same property tax rates as where I reside. (prop Taxes are over 1/3 of my monthly 30y mortgage payment, lol)
- LordDragonfang 5y ago
  >And keep in mind that includes investors with 1 or 2 additional properties that they rent secondary to their own home. That directly contradicts the definition in literally the second line of your source. >Investors — any institute or business that deals in real estate Institute or business, which doesn't include unincorporated individuals with just a couple of extra properties they rent out. You can tell they're not included because it says in the article that "investors" only bought "26.5% of multifamily homes" (i.e. multi-unit apartments), so unless you're suggesting that 75% of multifamily buildings aren't being bought as an investment, the numbers don't add up.
Aunche 5y ago
> We have corpoeations/Private Equity Firms buying up property to squeeze out as much money possible from these places. This isn't some groundbreaking revelation they had. Corporations and firms are always trying to squeeze as much money as possible. After a few purchases, the stimulus checks go into the hands of the corporations, who are are now flush with newly printed cash. Given that there are few real growth opportunities to invest in, everyone just throws their money at property.
- brutal_chaos_ 5y ago
  Oh I understand that. I just meant the recent mass buys that have been happening. (this may just be a feeling based on my news readings and not a reflection of reality)
- gremlinsinc 5y ago
  Land value tax is the answer..only allow real people to own residential dwellings, no corps. Secondly every property as a 0.25% higher tax than the previous one, sorted by lowest value, so you're paying lower taxes on the lower costing houses, and the highest taxes on the highest costing. Finally, the base tax is gotta be way above primary dwelling, normal homeowners shouldn't be penalized. All the $$ raised is to be used for UBI or Medicare For All, it cannot be borrowed from or repurposed.

shuntress 5y ago

My extreme political opinion is that no one should be allowed to own more than one property in which they do not reside. Edit: To clarify - if you own two properties, rent one, and live in the other, you own one property in which you reside and one property in which you do not reside.

HenryKissinger 5y ago
Here's where the lawyers will get you. What counts as "own"? What counts as "property"? What counts as "reside"?
- bena 5y ago
  It's even simpler than that. What about workspaces? What about shopping areas? Entertainment? There are lots of pieces of property that aren't residential that are owned.
  - shuntress 5y ago
    > What about workspaces? > What about shopping areas? > Entertainment? What about them? > There are lots of pieces of property that aren't residential that are owned. Agreed.
    - gruez 5y ago
      >What about them? who's going to own them? are they not property?
      - shuntress 5y ago
        They are property and people will own them. I don't think I understand the point of these questions unless you misread my original statement. I have edited it to add some clarification.
        bena 5y ago

umvi 5y ago

I don't know if that's due to UBI-esque covid stimulus money so much as crazy supply/demand constraints exacerbated by remote-work-enabled migration from expensive cities to cheaper suburbs. My wife and I looked at a single family home in 2017 in Boise that was $400k. That was a bit out of our price range at the time. 4 years and a few raises later $400k is now in our price range for a house, but now the same house is $800k. Sigh...

beardedscotsman 5y ago

France has a great system. You can’t rent a house unless the rent is under 1/3rd of your income. It’s not legally enforced, but is very difficult to rent for more of your pay check. Unlike ireland where rents can be 60% of your take home pay.

monetus 5y ago
I know a lot of people who would be forced out of their homes if this was the case. (In the US) I wonder how it could be implemented without having to massively expand government housing.
- glogla 5y ago
  It also puts downward pressure on landlords, since as they increase the rent, there's less and less people who can be tenants. Sadly it might not help around here, because right now, it is very profitable to just buy property and leave it empty, since the prices are perpetually rising.
- t-writescode 5y ago
  It's already a thing in a lot / most places in the US. If your established income is less than something like 1/3 or 1/4, you'll need a guarantor who can pay that.

armchairhacker 5y ago

Rent and housing prices have already been increasing. Maybe they’ve been increasing more this past year, but even if so it could be blamed on other things. Lots of people didn’t have to pay rent last year, so landlords (especially smaller ones) had to increase rent for those who could. Also other prices are increasing from inflation and supply shortages. As long as the price of inflation doesn’t completely cover UBI (which is possible but imo unlikely), it will be at least partly effective.

bena 5y ago
This is anecdotal and I'm not offering it up as proof of anything, but if I don't say this to someone somewhere, I'm going to go mad from the absurdity of it: My rent actually went down. I attribute the decrease to the two new complexes built next to where we were. But yeah, I was shocked as shit. I moved earlier this year, but still, it was weird.
- carabiner 5y ago
  Rents dropped in most big cities in the US because office workers were able to work remotely and started moving to cheaper areas. I don't know why everyone forgot this, it was the prevailing narrative in housing during the middle of lockdown. Everyone was talking about SF emptying out.

carabiner 5y ago

Well, rents in big cities have dropped significantly as remote work has taken over: https://zumpermedia.s3.amazonaws.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/18141234/QuarterlyrentreportAug2021-04-1-1536x804.jpg https://zumpermedia.s3.amazonaws.com/blog/wp-content/uploads... . Then again, rents in secondary cities like Austin and Boise have increased: https://www.kvue.com/article/money/economy/boomtown-2040/austin-rent-rates-apartment-list-report/269-8c004a52-a30e-447b-8a50-1063fe28b83e https://www.kvue.com/article/money/economy/boomtown-2040/aus..., https://boisedev.com/news/2021/07/28/boise-rent-prices-up-39-percent-since-last-march/ https://boisedev.com/news/2021/07/28/boise-rent-prices-up-39.... So, as always, "it depends." But this doesn't seem driven by poor people getting money from the government; it does seem related to affluent remote workers fleeing coastal cities. I have to doubt that recipients of pandemic benefits are the ones buying $800k houses and driving the housing boom.

zbobet2012 5y ago
Yes, this is accurate. Housing prices are at historic highs in many non-core cities as demand from covid related changes move high income earners and historically low interest rates allow low monthly payments. A million dollars in financed money is under 4000$ a month in payments. Many, many couples can afford this. About twenty percent of all income earning couples in the us can afford this. https://www.vox.com/22524829/wall-street-housing-market-blackrock-bubble https://www.vox.com/22524829/wall-street-housing-market-blac...
- kodah 5y ago
  > Housing prices are at historic highs in many non-core cities as demand from covid related changes move high income earners and historically low interest rates allow low monthly payments. Things were already going this way. When I left Dallas housing was nearly unaffordable anywhere near the city (where most jobs are) at $110k/year. This was directly caused by comparatively rich people on the coasts getting disillusioned and moving to cheaper areas and folks who can't afford the coasts in the first place moving to cheaper areas. It turned supply and demand upside down, and it destroyed the ability for people who grew up in those areas to have a stake in the city. Why people care about it now is beyond me. The only difference I see that it's not comparatively rich people anymore, it's actual rich people that are moving.

flatline 5y ago

And the rest will be captured by predatory lenders. I too am a fan of the concept but there are a lot of incentives in the US in particular that work against the idea.

guerrilla 5y ago

I never understood this but I'm still open minded. How would it not just lead to inflation? You're saying it actually has but I also think our circumstances right now are a bit complicated so I'm not entirely convinced yet.

gruez 5y ago
note that he didn't say all prices would increase, just rent/housing. This makes sense, because unlike TVs and milk, the supply for housing isn't very elastic (due to NIMBY reasons), so pumping more money isn't going to get us more supply, only higher prices.
- totony 5y ago
  Higher price on lower end housing, but that incentivises building more lower end housing (since higher end housing is more elastic and won't have as big of a markup). EDIT: actually, thinking more about this I don't think lower end housing will see such an increase, since most people already have a home. You'll certainly see a rise in price of lower end housing, but it won't offset UBI, since I doubt people will just take ubi to put it into their housing
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
totony 5y ago
One of the direct consequences of UBI is inflation IMO. Of course things are going to be more expensive if we give everyone money. That doesn't mean poor people won't be better off. If your food costs 20% more but you have 200% the money, that's a good thing. UBI is like printing money, yes you have inflation, but the money is still useful. Inflation won't eat the whole UBI (probably), because there's still supply and demande that other revenue generate. E.g. if I pay 20% of my income for food and UBI doesn't affect my income much, I won't be inclined to increase my spending on food by a big %.

james4k 5y ago

You think housing went up because of unemployment? Who exactly do you think has been purchasing our limited housing stock?

micromacrofoot 5y ago

It has to be tied to cost of living in some way. If UBI can't cover essentials then it's not UBI. There are probably a lot of problems that should be covered before UBI really, or they're just going to siphon off UBI. Predatory lending is a good one, loans based on UBI payments seem like an easy scam to get into.

iammisc 5y ago
Except if UBI is $10, then cost of living will increase $10. This is an impossibly recursive feedback loop. UBI's effects on the COL is ultimately a turing complete equation, and thus suffers from an inability to analyze when exactly such a recursive scenario will halt.
- micromacrofoot 5y ago
  Will it increase $10? I can't go out and buy a cost of living, so it seems like it would be hard to pin down. Who would increases prices under UBI? Housing? grocery? childcare? that aspect seems unclear to me. If UBI is too hard to figure out, what's the alternative? more government housing? medicare for all? What's the least complicated way to ensure everyone gets housing, food, and healthcare?
  - iammisc 5y ago
    > Housing? grocery? childcare? that aspect seems unclear to me. All of them would, because with extra money, there would be more demand for these goods and services, but the supply of the good itself hasn't increased. Thus, companies will charge more. In sum, the total increase in charge will be $10.
- michaelmrose 5y ago
  Why would it be by magic exactly correlated with the exact figure provided by UBI. In addition you are using turing complete in a completely nonsensical way as nobody is using cost of living to compute with. Based on what you are saying any economic change would be completely unpredictable and the entire human race would be paralyzed by the decision on how to price a Taco. In reality we muddle through while making general predictions about the effects of our actions and reassessing as we go.

dv_dt 5y ago

It’s really not clear that the increases are due to extra income to regular people. There is a lot of aid money injected into the financial markets, which combined with logistical problems which, to me, are bigger contributors to the increases.

bkberry352 5y ago

Agreed. The experience over the last year and the cost of college in the US makes me think that, in absence of some sort of regulation to the contrary, UBI will simply lead to comparable cost increases. This is very similar to what happened with the cost of college in the US: the government gave students free money (they were called student loans, but basically the same), and colleges ate them up through tuition increases. Why wouldn't the exact same happen with UBI?

kfprt 5y ago

A better question would be whether housing prices are increasing the same everywhere.

iammisc 5y ago

Can I ask why, when you were a proponent of UBI, you thought this scenario would not happen? Most of UBI's detractors paint exactly this scenario as an argument against UBI, so you must have had a reason. Out of curiosity... what was it?

Zababa 5y ago

Wouldn't UBI reduce the need for everyone to live in the same place though?

hardwaregeek 5y ago

Yeah, there's something really naive about assuming you can just give people cash and have the economy work out. The last time we solved severe inequality it took regulation, innumerable fights against large corporations, and yes, a "bully pulpit". Cash can jump start and right previous wrongs, but to move forward we need legislation.

rickydroll 5y ago

I'm not sure that's a hard and fast correlation. We have indicators that suggest that housing prices are increasing because of equity funds literally engaging in rent seeking behavior by buying of housing stock and turning into rental property.

Proven 5y ago

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