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UBI is implemented tomorrow. Every citizen gets $1000 per month.

Landlord now knows you have an extra $1000 that you never had before. Why wouldn't the landlord raise prices?

Now you have an extra $1000 a month and instead of eating rice and beans for a few meals you go out to a restaurant. The restaurant owners know everyone is eating out more so why not raise prices and maximize shareholder profit as always. The restaurant/corporation is on TV saying, "well, demand increased and it is a simple Economic principle that prices had to increase. There's nothing we can do about it".

Your state/country has toll roads. The state needs money for its deficit. UBI is implemented and the state/country sees it as the perfect time to incrementally raise toll prices.

Next thing you know UBI is effectively gone because everything costs more and billionaires keep hitting higher and higher all time net worth records.

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  • I can see that being very possible. You see this when taxes are levied to "improve something" and then that money doesn't go to that something in a directly helpful way. And then the budget that is the main staple of survivability of that something is kept static because of the "new influx."

    For example, say that you have a toll road increase to help the infrastructure of your roads. Say your Annual Budget for Transportation is $50mil for 2021. In 2022, you requested $60mil. You decide to implement tolls in new ways and increase tolls in other ways (like fines, mileage taxes, and so on) to make up that shortfall. This brings in an additional $10mil, let's say, in 2022. The revenue is forwarded to 2023. But in 2023, you actually need $80mil because of the two years of shortfalls where it stayed at $50mil, yet costs continued to increase. That $10mil from 2022 now puts you $10 mil behind in 2023. The fact that the previous budget needed steady increases were ignored because "well, we'll just make things more expensive to make up 2022's shortfalls of the $60mil request."

    That's IF that $10mil isn't siphoned for other things. Fresh money brings fresh ways to spend it. Grifters via backroom contracts to "fix roads" that go over budget with nothing to show for it. So these new fees and increases actually made things worse due to no oversight.

    So yeah, I could totally see UBI being siphoned off by similar things.

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