Free Cash to Fight Income Inequality? Stockton, CA Is First in US to Try • Hacker News Board

Re: Free Cash to Fight Income Inequality? Stockton, CA Is First in US to Try

#41

Post by CocaKoala » Wed, May 30, 2018, 6:53 PM UTC

pmiller2 wrote: post #32

goda90 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if it's not spare? It's their only $2000/month so they're not going to pay that much for rent, and someone else will offer lower prices to get that money. These same people aren't tied to a job, so they can more easily move somewhere cheaper too.

What landlord would continue to rent an apartment out for $X when it's easily possible to rent it out for $X+2000 or $X+1500 (not capturing the whole surplus, but a majority of it, say)?

> when it's easily possible to rent it out for $X+2000

Just because somebody has an extra 2000 dollars in their pocket every month doesn't mean they can earmark all of that money for rent; they surely have other bills that they need to pay as well. If the apartment was rentable at $X+2000, then why wasn't the landlord renting it at that price before everybody got the extra cash from UBI? Why do you think that somebody would say "Yes, now that I'm getting an extra two thousand dollars a month, my apartment is definitely worth an extra two thousand dollars a month" instead of saying "welp, rent is too high here, guess I'll move to some place else that's charging closer to what I used to pay"?

Re: Free Cash to Fight Income Inequality? Stockton, CA Is First in US to Try

#42

Post by ewams » Wed, May 30, 2018, 6:54 PM UTC

marme wrote: post #22

pmiller2 wrote: post #11

I still haven't seen a good explanation for how UBI on a truly universal scale isn't going to just raise housing prices to capture the surplus. I mean, if my landlord knew I (and anybody else who could theoretically live in my apartment) had a spare $2000/month, forever, I'm pretty sure he'd want it.

That is not how any market works. Just because your customers have more money does not change the supply or demand for your product. A luxury apartment fetches a high price because there is demand from tenants willing to pay the luxury price. No one is going to pay more for the same apartment unless there is more demand for apartments than there is supply like you have in NYC and SF. More income causes prices to rise…

This is exactly how the market works and will continue to as long as humans are involved.

First hand experience here that seems to escape the engineering brethren that have never glimpsed into sales: The same exact product is sold to every customer at a different price. Yes sometimes there is a higher demand which might push price a tad but most of the time there is not. I always enjoy when people on HN complain that so-and-so doesn't publish pricing on their website. Of course not, because then they would lower their revenue. It also removes leverage, sometimes it makes sense to sell something at a lower cost today to negotiate some terms, and then down the road either sell at volume or raise the price. Sometimes you just like someone and give them a discount. Oh its the government? Yea raise the price a LOT. etc etc.

Re: Free Cash to Fight Income Inequality? Stockton, CA Is First in US to Try

#43

Post by pingpongproduct » Wed, May 30, 2018, 6:54 PM UTC

bsder wrote: post #16

peterwwillis wrote: post #5

I think removing red tape and allowing people to pay for things they need right now is an excellent way to speed people's recovery from poverty, but it needs nudges, and those nudges need to be informed by data and empirical evidence. We need to know what people are spending the money on so we know how to target the biggest problems as well as the corner cases. If you know what the actual problems are and where the m…

[flagged]

> toxic racial politics

> white trash

People like you is why the right's popularity has surged and continues to climb.

Re: Free Cash to Fight Income Inequality? Stockton, CA Is First in US to Try

#44

Post by coryrc » Wed, May 30, 2018, 6:58 PM UTC

pmiller2 wrote: post #11

I still haven't seen a good explanation for how UBI on a truly universal scale isn't going to just raise housing prices to capture the surplus. I mean, if my landlord knew I (and anybody else who could theoretically live in my apartment) had a spare $2000/month, forever, I'm pretty sure he'd want it.

People can move to where housing is cheap, but there aren't jobs or ones quite as good, leaving less demand in the tight areas.

Re: Free Cash to Fight Income Inequality? Stockton, CA Is First in US to Try

#45

Post by pmiller2 » Wed, May 30, 2018, 7:03 PM UTC

modeless wrote: post #37

rarec wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's always been what I wondered as well. UBI solves everything, except for the part where an actor who knows explicitly that all of his tenants will be getting a flat amount per month, then why not raise prices to capture some of that as well? Why wouldn't everything just increase in price slightly, everyone can afford a little bit more now.

> everyone can afford a little bit more now. This is not true. UBI doesn't create money out of nowhere. It redistributes existing money. Poor people can afford more, and rich people can afford less, because taxes increase.

Rich people spend less relative to their wealth and income than poor people do. That means more people are going to be buying more things, increasing demand, which... raises prices.

Re: Free Cash to Fight Income Inequality? Stockton, CA Is First in US to Try

#46

Post by pmiller2 » Wed, May 30, 2018, 7:06 PM UTC

michaelchisari wrote: post #28

pmiller2 wrote: post #11

I still haven't seen a good explanation for how UBI on a truly universal scale isn't going to just raise housing prices to capture the surplus. I mean, if my landlord knew I (and anybody else who could theoretically live in my apartment) had a spare $2000/month, forever, I'm pretty sure he'd want it.

This is essentially the inflation argument and we have a lot of indicators that a UBI doesn't lead to significant inflation. But it brings up the point that a UBI will not solve all of our problems. An extra $2000 a month doesn't help you if you don't have medical insurance and get a $500k bill from a terminal disease, for instance. What a UBI does is removes a lot of bureaucracy around welfare for recurring costs (r…

I disagree that this is the same as a simple inflation argument. If no new money is injected to pay for the program, we have the same amount of money paying for the same stuff, so no overall increase in prices.

Housing is special in that everybody needs to live somewhere, and you can't take it with you anywhere. If I want to work in a certain geographical area, I simply have to live near there as well. The vast majority of the population does not have the option of remote work.

Since landlords know this, they know that if they're not already offering subsidized housing, that their tenants can afford more, so they do the rational thing and raise prices.

Re: Free Cash to Fight Income Inequality? Stockton, CA Is First in US to Try

#47

Post by white-flame » Wed, May 30, 2018, 7:13 PM UTC

marme wrote: post #22

pmiller2 wrote: post #11

I still haven't seen a good explanation for how UBI on a truly universal scale isn't going to just raise housing prices to capture the surplus. I mean, if my landlord knew I (and anybody else who could theoretically live in my apartment) had a spare $2000/month, forever, I'm pretty sure he'd want it.

That is not how any market works. Just because your customers have more money does not change the supply or demand for your product. A luxury apartment fetches a high price because there is demand from tenants willing to pay the luxury price. No one is going to pay more for the same apartment unless there is more demand for apartments than there is supply like you have in NYC and SF. More income causes prices to rise…

Surely this exact situation is how university prices skyrocketed in line with increased loans to students.

Re: Free Cash to Fight Income Inequality? Stockton, CA Is First in US to Try

#48

Post by pmiller2 » Wed, May 30, 2018, 7:15 PM UTC

ddingus wrote: post #39

stouset wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These are really excellent points I hadn’t considered. On the other hand, let’s run the experiment the other way. We currently have significant numbers of people working with no hope of financial stability in their future. Will taxing them to fill the coffers of the rich improve their situation? Given the current situation of increasing wealth inequality seemingly exacerbating existing problems, I can’t imagine that…

Public Works, using the post office as a model. We really do need to be building a lot of stuff, and or fixing stuff we have already done. That work is a direct stimulus, can pay pretty well, and benefits everyone public and private alike. Additionally, the returns from it can pay down all of the expensive bombs and non returned items that we currently spend or have spent on. An example is the interstate highway proj…

Are you saying that every $1 spent on UBI is expected to return $X > 1 and that $X > $Y (where $Y is the return on current social service programs)? If so, I would say [citation needed], but, if proven, that would be a great argument for UBI.

Re: Free Cash to Fight Income Inequality? Stockton, CA Is First in US to Try

#49

Post by peterwwillis » Wed, May 30, 2018, 7:16 PM UTC

bsder wrote: post #16

peterwwillis wrote: post #5

I think removing red tape and allowing people to pay for things they need right now is an excellent way to speed people's recovery from poverty, but it needs nudges, and those nudges need to be informed by data and empirical evidence. We need to know what people are spending the money on so we know how to target the biggest problems as well as the corner cases. If you know what the actual problems are and where the m…

[flagged]

Most of this has nothing to do with my comment and is unnecessarily emotional and partisan. UBI does need nudges, not because I'm objecting to how people spend the money, but because it is _inefficient_.

Do you want to raise people out of poverty? Great. How long would you like that to take? 100 years? 50? 20? 10? We don't have 100 trillion dollars just lying around, so we can't just give everyone a fortune _right now_. So it will take time for a UBI to have a lasting effect on society. If you don't want that to take 50 years, you have to try to be more efficient with that money, so that 50 years can maybe be shrunk down to 20 years, or even 10.

To reach better efficiency you need to be smarter about how you solve problems with the money. To do that you can look at how the money is spent, and help people to spend it in a wise way.

Some of those ways include financial literacy programs, help with getting into social programs, job training, hell even carpools. Sometimes it will be a more efficient health insurance plan, or tips on shopping or cooking. Maybe even investing some of the money in a savings program, or debt counseling. Some people may need more than the UBI, and some people may need less. This isn't a partisan judgmental thing, it's a simple fact that not everyone has the same financial problems. Maybe one person needs $2,000 a month, and maybe one person needs $50k right now. You don't know until you look at the bigger picture, and that requires data.

I'm not being partisan or lecturing people on what they need to spend and how. Everyone in the world could benefit from having their spending analyzed and having suggestions on how to be more efficient with their money. I'm saying that if you're doling out a fixed amount of cash, maybe you might want to do it as well as you can so it can have the greatest effect possible, rather than just throw cash at the wind and hope it sticks the right way (because a lot of the time it won't, because people have different needs, and inequality is not just economic)

Re: Free Cash to Fight Income Inequality? Stockton, CA Is First in US to Try

#50

Post by LinuxBender » Wed, May 30, 2018, 7:18 PM UTC

Another interesting theory was to create a resource based economy. One iteration of this idea was The Venus Project created by Jacque Fresco [0] whereby society would remove the need for a monetary system, as everything can be engineered in abundance.

Have any countries attempted such a big fundamental change?

[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacque_Fresco