XXX
XXX
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.
You're viewing a single thread.
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.
Not sure I really understand that. So I'm working and making a decent wage, say $100k/yr. Now for some reason I can easily tell my employer to take a hike because $12k of it is guaranteed? How does this suddenly make $110k jobs available to switch to?
How does this suddenly make $110k jobs available to switch to?
I don't think it does. Did I say something that implied this?
I wasn't actually replying to you, at least not intentionally. However I do see what might be considered a flaw. I can see some part time jobs only paying say $15k a year. In your scenario the employer would only have to pay those workers $3k a year. This would be great for the employer, cheap labor and it would be easy to kick someone to the curb because he only has to cough up say $4k a year to attract a new employee. It sounds like this would reduce his social security outlay too, unless your suggesting employers have to pay a base SS tax on $1k a month?
It's not that it makes 110 k jobs immediately available, it's that is gives you more leverage with negotiating pay as if you walk away you are not under threat of starving to death. As you would potentially be if you had no income between jobs.
I own a house. I don't think $12k is going to keep me from starving or more importantly, I'm no more likely to walk out on a job once I reach a certain income because it just isn't enough. It may work if your flipping burgers.
It doesn't have to necessarily be $1000 per month, it should be the minimum amount of money needed to have food, clothing, shelter etc. just enough to live off. For me £1000 per month is plenty for where I live.
It also isn't just about encouraging higher pay, knowing that workers are not longer worried about putting food on the table when they are voting to strike might influence management decisions on redundancys or workplace safety.
For people who earn 100k, and are living at their means (i.e, spending that amount of money on better food, housing, clothes and other luxurys) it would be a big jump but for the people who would most benifit from ubi it would be more manageable.
Also apologies for replying so late, I either closed the notification accidentally or just never got one.
Did you mean "... For people who earn 100k, and are living at their means, it WOULDN'T be a big jump...? "
How about not from government but rather a private consumers union. A Costco model. Every member pays the monthly dues and is entitled to housing, food, medicine, internet. This gets you around a lot of the government corruption and protectionism and enables you to turn faster. The organization has a great deal of bargaining power because of it's size.
You seem to be trying to solve a different problem. People who are working full time should be able to get all the necessities. It's definitely a problem that they don't. But if you believe that everyone should be able to feed/house/clothe themselves, including people who don't have stable incomes (e.g. are in between jobs, busy caring for disabled folks, are disabled themselves, or going all in on building a bootstrapped business), then we need a system that doesn't require you to have money in the first place to get the benefits.