Why we should all have a basic income

Let's assume that basic income will cause net income to go up for the poor (otherwise, what's the point?) But let's also assume that prices on certain goods will go up (a totally reasonable assumption).

Then let's measure wealth in terms of "Big Macs". As in, how many Big Macs can you buy in one year? If basic income causes this number to go up for you... then you've benefitted from basic income, regardless of how much the price of a Big Mac increased.

If your income goes from zero to non-zero... you definitely benefit. Because with zero income, you can buy zero Big Macs. But with non-zero income, you can buy non-zero Big Macs... no matter how much the price of a Big Mac goes up. And the number of Big Macs you can buy will be greater than one... Big Macs won't cost $12,000 in this scenario. That would be ridiculous.

So we can use this as a framework to analyze how basic income impacts society. Then it is obvious that basic income benefits the poorest in society. But you are right, it may harm some people. However, it requires a much more rigorous analysis than you are providing.

Ok here we go.

> If everyone gets $1000 every month guaranteed for "basic needs", the prices for those basic needs will increase accordingly. And independently. So you'll end up spending that $1k on either housing, bills or food.

They don't get $1000/month for "basic needs", they get $1000/month for whatever they want. It's completely unconditional.

Which means people wouldn't go out and buy twice as much food as they currently eat because they suddenly have a pile of money that can only be used for buying food. Unless they are currently starving, which hardly anyone in the US is, they would buy the same amount of food that they do now and there would be no inflation in the price of food.

And anything with the effect of increasing nominal housing prices without reducing the ability of people to buy housing is excellent because it allows you to increase the housing stock without reducing nominal housing prices and causing existing homeowners to go underwater on their mortgages. In other words you can build more housing to cancel out the effect without NIMBYs fighting you and thus allow more people to own homes.

> It's sort of like how the ACA raised the overall price of insurance.

The primary driver of increasing insurance premiums wasn't the subsidy, it was the requirement that insurance companies take people with preexisting conditions. Suddenly a million sick people are making insurance claims who previously had no insurance, what did you think was going to happen to premiums?

> Giving money/help selectively to those who need it right now (and can prove it, i.e. no job but looking for one) is still better than UBI.

Only if you want them to pretend to look for a job and never find one. And you want to create a poverty trap because actually taking a job doesn't actually increase the amount of money in their pocket because the government withdraws an equivalent amount of benefits.

"You are taking away my retirement I earned and giving it to everyone?"

"Don't touch my medicaid!"

"They are trying to kill the soup kitchens; look at these children we feed."

Or whatever. There is such aggressive fighting for scraps that no one wants to make a big-picture shift that might have unknown societal repercussions.