Yeah, I was thinking of RC/NG, although I'd never force people do only have a choice of an armed force. The market-distorting effects only happen if it's a hig

Yeah, I was thinking of RC/NG, although I'd never force people do only have a choice of an armed force. The market-distorting effects only happen if it's a high percentage of population (either overall, or in a specific area). Even things like the FB "$500/mo extra for rent if you live within a mile of the office in downtown PA" turned into "all rents go up $500/mo" once the density of FB employees in that area was high enough. (and it only has to be people renting at the margin; established residents were already in place filling most of the apartments.) 100 BI recipients per state wouldn't distort things much. Once BI was universal, as long as some people made substantially more money than BI (and that making money in supplement to BI was considered good, in general), there would probably be enough market incentive to provide goods in the BI price range, or slightly augmented BI price range, to keep cheap food/housing/etc. cheap. After all, slumlords usually live in nice places themselves. If it were universal, it would also replace the "game student loan recipients" (U of Phoenix...) with "game BI", but since BI is much more flexible, it's harder to game. It's just "there's a much greater demand for products in the $10-30k/yr income bracket", which should reduce prices (through competition, economy of scale, etc.) for goods with declining marginal cost to produce, like say cheap phones. Real estate would be interesting, but if you didn't need to work a $20k/yr job, you might live in an entirely different place on $20k/yr BI. The US is huge; it's only real estate within proximity to certain things which is inherently expensive.