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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 comp

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.
- iammisc 5y ago
  > In addition you are using turing complete in a completely nonsensical way as nobody is using cost of living to compute with. And yet, emergent behavior does indeed compute the cost of living. When the emergent behavior itself is based on a stat that itself is based on the cost of living, the emergent behavior will never converge. > 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. No. I'm saying that if you raise UBI by $10, then the price of tacos go up by $10, so basing UBI on cost of living is non-sensical because it's a recursive loop. > Why would it be by magic exactly correlated with the exact figure provided by UBI. Because if everyone has $10 extra to spend, then there will be more demand for the same number of goods, so sellers will raise their prices. This is not just 'goods' either. There will be more demand for financial assets like stocks, and more importantly, foreign currencies. With the higher demand for foreign currency, it would take more dollars to buy pounds (for example), which means the dollar would lose value relatively. In other words, the dollar will be undergoing inflation.
the_benno 5y ago
What is this gobbledygook? These technical terms have meanings that you clearly either (a) do not understand or (b) are abusing to trick less-educated folks into thinking your political opinions are authoritative and intellectual or whatever. To an audience that _does_ speak theoretical CS, your sprinkling in of its terminology weakens whatever point you're trying to make and comes off instead as silly and pretentious.
- iammisc 5y ago
  Hey... I'm not tricking anyone. I used a term that was related to work I was currently doing. It's not the best term, you're right. But my meaning was quite clear. If you base UBI on cost of living, and cost of living depends on UBI, then you find yourself in a feedback loop. My use of turing complete was not really accurate, but it was the context my mind was in when writing this comment. I make mistakes and sometimes speak unclearly. No need to be pedantic.
  - the_benno 5y ago
    Your meaning was indeed clear but I find your reasoning flawed and the cargo-cult intellectualism... silly and pretentious. The main flaw, to me, is the 1:1 correspondence you draw between the magnitude of UBI-style benefits and cost of living. That may be true (at least under some simplified/idealized econ101 assumptions) if UBI was the sole source of money in the economy, but that's obviously not the case. The crux of the "UBI doesn't cause spiraling inflation" argument is that UBI accounts for a sufficiently small fraction of total incomes that its benefit (greater spending power for lower incomes, and the downstream economic benefits of that spending) outweighs its nonzero but noncrippling inflationary effect. That is, though the $10 cash benefit you describe may of course increase COL, it does so by some amount between $0 and $10 that is influenced by all sorts of factors you're glossing over.
    - iammisc 5y ago
      I dunno what cargo-cult intellectualism is. Contrary to what it may seem, I rarely read economics blogs / political philosophy, etc. It just seems obvious to me that if you increase everyone's income by $10, price of goods will go up by $10. > The crux of the "UBI doesn't cause spiraling inflation" argument is that UBI accounts for a sufficiently small fraction of total incomes that its benefit (greater spending power for lower incomes, and the downstream economic benefits of that spending) outweighs its nonzero but noncrippling inflationary effect. How could you have greater spending power if we agree that UBI's inflationary effect is proportional to its amount. The moment you give the money out, the spending power goes down. In my view, this will just lead to the rich getting richer, because companies end up providing the services people will pay money for, and these profits go into the pockets of the rich, who don't really need the money for life necessities, so instead use it as capital. The poor are no better off and are incentivized to spend the money because of inflationary effects (saving the money results in it having less spending power when they want to sell it), while the rich have no incentive to spend the money since they're already wealthy. > That is, though the $10 cash benefit you describe may of course increase COL, it does so by some amount between $0 and $10 that is influenced by all sorts of factors you're glossing over. Can you identify, name, and explain those factors. You accuse me of 'glossing over' some factors in my 'simple' explanation, while you yourself do not identify any of the factors that supposedly would not cause COL to increase.
gremlinsinc 5y ago
So you can guarantee without UBI, there will never be a COL raise/adjustment? Gas,bread, rent won't go up? If they do, how come? They shouldn't unless everyone gets UBI, it's black and white...right? The fact is it won't go up, because it'll increase opportunities... there's a lot of alternatives lately to normal housing like land co-ops with tiny houses, yurts, etc... Pool 100k in resources, by some land and you can build a earth bag home that's pretty awesome for under 10k. It's economical, ecological, and very well insulated.

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.

iammisc 5y ago
> In addition you are using turing complete in a completely nonsensical way as nobody is using cost of living to compute with. And yet, emergent behavior does indeed compute the cost of living. When the emergent behavior itself is based on a stat that itself is based on the cost of living, the emergent behavior will never converge. > 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. No. I'm saying that if you raise UBI by $10, then the price of tacos go up by $10, so basing UBI on cost of living is non-sensical because it's a recursive loop. > Why would it be by magic exactly correlated with the exact figure provided by UBI. Because if everyone has $10 extra to spend, then there will be more demand for the same number of goods, so sellers will raise their prices. This is not just 'goods' either. There will be more demand for financial assets like stocks, and more importantly, foreign currencies. With the higher demand for foreign currency, it would take more dollars to buy pounds (for example), which means the dollar would lose value relatively. In other words, the dollar will be undergoing inflation.

the_benno 5y ago

What is this gobbledygook? These technical terms have meanings that you clearly either (a) do not understand or (b) are abusing to trick less-educated folks into thinking your political opinions are authoritative and intellectual or whatever. To an audience that _does_ speak theoretical CS, your sprinkling in of its terminology weakens whatever point you're trying to make and comes off instead as silly and pretentious.

iammisc 5y ago
Hey... I'm not tricking anyone. I used a term that was related to work I was currently doing. It's not the best term, you're right. But my meaning was quite clear. If you base UBI on cost of living, and cost of living depends on UBI, then you find yourself in a feedback loop. My use of turing complete was not really accurate, but it was the context my mind was in when writing this comment. I make mistakes and sometimes speak unclearly. No need to be pedantic.
- the_benno 5y ago
  Your meaning was indeed clear but I find your reasoning flawed and the cargo-cult intellectualism... silly and pretentious. The main flaw, to me, is the 1:1 correspondence you draw between the magnitude of UBI-style benefits and cost of living. That may be true (at least under some simplified/idealized econ101 assumptions) if UBI was the sole source of money in the economy, but that's obviously not the case. The crux of the "UBI doesn't cause spiraling inflation" argument is that UBI accounts for a sufficiently small fraction of total incomes that its benefit (greater spending power for lower incomes, and the downstream economic benefits of that spending) outweighs its nonzero but noncrippling inflationary effect. That is, though the $10 cash benefit you describe may of course increase COL, it does so by some amount between $0 and $10 that is influenced by all sorts of factors you're glossing over.
  - iammisc 5y ago
    I dunno what cargo-cult intellectualism is. Contrary to what it may seem, I rarely read economics blogs / political philosophy, etc. It just seems obvious to me that if you increase everyone's income by $10, price of goods will go up by $10. > The crux of the "UBI doesn't cause spiraling inflation" argument is that UBI accounts for a sufficiently small fraction of total incomes that its benefit (greater spending power for lower incomes, and the downstream economic benefits of that spending) outweighs its nonzero but noncrippling inflationary effect. How could you have greater spending power if we agree that UBI's inflationary effect is proportional to its amount. The moment you give the money out, the spending power goes down. In my view, this will just lead to the rich getting richer, because companies end up providing the services people will pay money for, and these profits go into the pockets of the rich, who don't really need the money for life necessities, so instead use it as capital. The poor are no better off and are incentivized to spend the money because of inflationary effects (saving the money results in it having less spending power when they want to sell it), while the rich have no incentive to spend the money since they're already wealthy. > That is, though the $10 cash benefit you describe may of course increase COL, it does so by some amount between $0 and $10 that is influenced by all sorts of factors you're glossing over. Can you identify, name, and explain those factors. You accuse me of 'glossing over' some factors in my 'simple' explanation, while you yourself do not identify any of the factors that supposedly would not cause COL to increase.

gremlinsinc 5y ago

So you can guarantee without UBI, there will never be a COL raise/adjustment? Gas,bread, rent won't go up? If they do, how come? They shouldn't unless everyone gets UBI, it's black and white...right? The fact is it won't go up, because it'll increase opportunities... there's a lot of alternatives lately to normal housing like land co-ops with tiny houses, yurts, etc... Pool 100k in resources, by some land and you can build a earth bag home that's pretty awesome for under 10k. It's economical, ecological, and very well insulated.