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You'd increase taxes along with UBI, so most middle class people would end up neutral (or slightly positive). You can't just dump tons of money into the economy without turning other dials to keep it stable.

A wealth tax would essentially be redirecting money from the top 1% and guarantee a stable monetary floor for everyone.

Probably there's a dozen other changes, along with bankruptcy protections, interest rates, and anti scam protection would also need to be implemented.

You identified an obvious problem, which has been considered by intelligent UBI advocates that have studied this for a long time.

It's the same argument behind stimulus checks tbh. You give people money so that they can spend it on necessities and that money goes right back into the economy. Since our economy is based on growth and spending, more people spending money overall helps the economy, not hurts it. In addition, you're spending less money on solving societal issues. Well fed sheltered people cause less problems.

Landlords only have control over you, because you have to find a place where there are good income sources. If you have an UBI, you have a lot less pressure to move to a city with high-paying jobs.

All of a sudden, you have a bunch of new options. You can move to a rural town. You can move to places with lower average incomes. Hell, you can just buy a lot of land in the middle of nowhere and build a house.

With consumer goods, it's a bit different, because their prices are less about artificial scarcity and more about production costs. However, as noted in some of the other comments, if you just don't print money but finance it with taxes, it won't be that much of an issue.

No, because having money is power. The more money you have, the more leverage you have, in general. This argument comes up a lot and I think it's mostly coming from a widespread attitude of learned helplessness about money. Especially a UBI that is funded by some form of redistribution would mean a lasting shift in wealth inequality that could not be undone just because some businesses would like it to be.

In your hypothetical, the market just jumping in cost like that creates opportunity for competition in the market. Because everyone who could not establish a biz charging X can get into the game charging between X amd X+Y, undercutting the gougers and driving prices lower over time. Theoretically.

That doesn’t seem to happen when you raise minimum wage, so probably not. Also, it hasn’t happened in the places that have tried UBI.

If my landlord raises my rent to match the UBI I'm getting then I'm going to move to the Apartment down the street that DIDN'T raise their rents because I FINALLY can afford to do that! Or are you saying that Landlords are ILLEGALLY colluding with one another to ensure Rent remains high? If that's the case why are you bringing up UBI?

Any UBI system worth it's salt wouldn't be providing a flat amount, it should be based on regional cost of living. So if prices all went up, UBI would have to go up as well.

I’ve been saying this for a while, and that’s why I think a complex problem like this needs a more complex solution than UBI.

Essentially I think successful UBI would need to be something like UBS instead (Universal Basic Support). Instead of only being money it needs to consist of free services. That way it’s harder for third parties to leech it away.

So instead of “Here’s $1000 a month, do whatever you want” it would need to be more like “You can get free healthcare here, free electricity through this company, free food rations from this grocery store.” Then if you want things above UBS you need to have some source of income.

This is a problem due to monopolies. Any industry that is a monopoly should be nationalized or very heavily regulated.

I mean, if demand for restaurants goes up, wouldn't there just be more restaurants opening up?

I agree with the landlord thing though, cause landlords are generally dicks. Maybe if local governments imposed more rent caps.

Plenty of arguments given here for why it's unlikely to happen, but I'd like to provide a slightly different perspective of how I think UBI would ideally be implemented.

I think UBI should come with abolishment of minimum wage and a uniform decrease in everyone's income from work (e.g. if UBI is 1k per month, then reduce everyone's income by approximately 1k/month), so there wouldn't be an obvious overall increase in everyone's income. Workers now have more leverage to negotiate wages because they don't need to worry about dying if they lose their job, and that should push up their wages to wherever is appropriate for their line of work. So overall, it'll probably lead to a bit of inflation, but through the the same mechanism that inflation has always occurred rather than telling your landlords that everyone has an extra 1k for you to take now.

Does this make sense? Good or bad idea? Discuss.

When the first COVID stimulus check came in, Walmart sold tvs for, after tax, the exact amount the check was worth.

Bottom line is you'd have to freeze price increases, or reduce them somehow. It's a mess of a problem.

With what leverage? If you have no-strings-attached income, you are not facing destitution at the loss of your job, and it becomes a lot less risky to walk away from a job and move somewhere else. If all the landlords in one area do that, employers in that area will probably have to pay more.

But imo, some type ubi system should be paid for with a vat tax that just pulls it's income directly out of economic activity, which would make it harder to avoid paying for. The result would be higher prices anyway which would probably offset the income, but new situation would be that workers have a lot more leverage in their employment and living situation.

My other hot take is that with a ubi, minimum wage should be abolished. Basically, with ubi the need for it would be lessened and more people might be willing to work jobs that they might not have been able to live off of without a ubi. But again, these are basically my hot takes

I won't spend my money at those asshole places. If they're the type of place to pull this shit, I probably already don't shop there.

If rent everywhere suddenly jumps then the DOJ has a slam dunk case of price collusion.

I mean... kinda?

I think you're putting too much evil intent behind the motivations though. Supply and demand isn't some made up excuse. If the prices were to stay the same and everyone had more money, then there would be shortages. It's not as if a factory can instantly increase production and the supply chain can instantly get the products on the shelves over night. There are real world factors involved in increasing production.

So what happens is prices increase for many products and this results in inflation. Nobody wants inflation, not even the wealthy. So the central bank will want to tamp down that inflation and the lever they use for that is increasing interest rates. So you wanted to put that UBI towards a mortgage or a car payment? Well a lot of it will be going towards the increased interest on the money you're borrowing.

And the thing about inflation is that it doesn't really get reversed. So the inflation from the initial shock to the economy would take a bite out of UBI (and also the income besides UBI). Your employer may be less likely to give you a raise to offset that inflation because you have UBI. and the fix for the inflation will mean paying more interest on a mortgage.

So yeah, UBI wouldn't gain people much. It's mostly just a poison pill promoted to kids by wealthy people like Andrew Yang so you don't push for an increase in minimum wage. An increase in minimum wage would be a direct transfer of wealth from businesses to employees. They don't want this so they promote UBI which isn't actually feasible to distract from minimum wage increases (which almost everyone supports) and make taxing the wealthy less likely (which is also supported by most, but not when it's to pay for UBI).

That only works if literally every landlord is conspiring together. If they're not, then people will flock to the landlords that don't increase the price, or only increase a little. Meanwhile, you think car salesmen will see an extra $1000/mo and not try to take advantage? Why do you think landlords will successfully take all $1000 and nobody else will get a penny?

Everyone will try to get that $1000/mo, but they will have to compete with each other and the people with the money are rational actors who will pick the best use for their funds.

Meanwhile, the question of whether it's inflationary will depend on where the money comes from. If it's matched by a tax that pulls money out of the system at the same time the UBI puts money in, then it won't be inflationary it will just redistribute wealth from the taxed (in every plan I've seen, the wealthy) to everyone else.

Yes, but the idea is that UBI money still spends, and there's still overall much more money than that in the economy, so there should be a floor for the housing and food that a UBI will buy you, even if housing and food use up most or all of it.

Kind of like how increasing a rocket's size increases its fuel need increases its size some more, anyone implementing UBI needs to make logical guesses about the amount of inflation and knock-on effects and try to accommodate them, but the idea is to make sure no one is flat broke and starving even if it doesn't really lift people out of poverty directly. SOMEBODY will fill the market niche for people seeking housing and food on UBI, and it will be up to the government to ensure they meet minimum health standards and to incentivize/mandate enough of it. Also, any UBI system probably also needs to have a very graceful downward curve (if you have one at all) as other income increases, so that people will be willing to work to supplement it rather than fearing that they have to choose between UBI and backbreaking labor in exchange for "UBI plus a dollar."

UBI is not a magic bullet, but it is a sort of quick and dirty social safety net that inserts the government's money into the system without the political and administrative overhead of running housing etc. programs itself. Theoretically that might mean things happen more efficiently, and if it's more than the literal bare minimum to live then it also affords a certain amount of agency to the people on it to use their remaining resources how they see fit, but it could go really wrong too. You still need regulation and the power to adjust amounts to ensure that the UBI people receive is adequate for the intended purpose, and a bad UBI program could be run in a way where a government uses it as an excuse to simply abdicate any further responsibility for its people's well being.

Wouldn't ubi make more sense if it were more like stamps for necessary things to live: food, clothing, materials, etc?

The fact that the landlord is also getting an extra 1000 a month means they'll be less incentivised to put up the price. Also market forces, it'd just take a couple of landlords to have some morals, or prioritise having their properties filled to keep prices down.

With the restaurant example market forces again. If the shitty big chain restaurant put up their prices and the nice local restaurant didn't then suddenly they'll see more people going to them. It would also make it really easy for shitty chain B to undercut shitty chain A.

Then you also have the backup of government regulations and using tax systems to make it not viable to price gouge that way.

Hot take here and I would love discussion- but this is a small reason why I am against a full UBI in cash, but want UBI in voucher form with only a small portion in cash. Vouchers limit potential inflation spill over from sectors and you can now control how much people are getting depending on factors to better and more fairly suit their situations. This is also why I am a huge fan of "food stamps" or food welfare programs. This is essentialy what they are doing already, just make it universal. Then we look at things like housing vouchers, another great program that we can now just scale up and make universal as well. Then you only need to give a smaller cash handout for incidental spending. You know people are going to have to spend money on housing and food, so make those the priorities for funding vouchers and you can put rules in place to minimize inflation within those industries. Then if you have people who are well of enough to not need the full voucher, let them convert the voucher over to cash at a penalty rate, say 2 to 1 for cash, or some progressive scale for remaining money. They don't need the money as much, but you also don't want them to be completely left out unfairly and have them resentful of the system. This could even expand into other industries or normal costs. Transportation, cable/internet, cell service, even some insurance (like car, rental, umbrella- assuming that if you are at a level of providing UBI, you are already providing universal health care). Now for each voucher you can make it needs and situation based and evaluate a fair amount for each person through an automated system depending on some quick metrics of their life. Each voucher system is also industry specific with its own oversight and regulations and inflation reductions built into it. I think it would be a better system and am open to others thoughts.