191–200 of 278 posts
If you believe UBI can work, why do you think communism failed?
I'm UBI-curious, but surely inflation would be inevitable if everyone suddenly had $x more disposable income per year? Landlords and grocery stores and everyone else would raise prices because they know people can afford it. Obviously if you're living in poverty, anything is better than nothing, but would the average middle class person be better off? As far as I can tell no country has ever tested true UBI (uncondit…
Inflation is a common red herring that people arguing in bad faith throw at policies they don't like, because most people don't know enough to reject it. The monetary side of the economy deals with money volumes orders of magnitude larger than the real side, and reacts to change also orders of magnitude faster. Because of that, inflation is almost always completely determined by monetary policy. A real shock that can…
Saying that the total money supply is the cause of inflation is a very simplified view. There are currently trillions of dollars in M2 doing nothing except sitting in wealthy people's bank accounts and investments as generational wealth. That does not raise the prices of anything until it is being spent.
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You’ve described a set of bad places that then became undersupplied exactly in lock-step with them becoming desirable…?
I think you missed my point. The places were "bad" for some and "good" for others.
Artists don’t move into neighborhoods because they’re cool, they move in because they’re cheap. They’re cheap because, by definition, people don’t want to live there.
A think a more workable and politically palatable version of UBI would be some form of universal utility allowance. E.g. the first x kWh electric you use, or the first X litres of water, or the first x GB of data you use is entirely free, for everyone (where X is some reasonable number that someone could just conceivably survive on). Then as you use more and more the prices start to gradually increase across a series…
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So in this version of the future, everyone lives in government housing?
UBI is perfect tool to make citizens obey to state. You'll always vote for your breadwinners. Why, instead of centralised planned economy that failed ans killed millions people many times in history, not just lowering taxes and let people to decide how spend their capital individually? Game theory applied on UBI sounds really like an ugly idea.
As for tools that make citizens obey, the government already has the best one: a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence. Everything else is child’s play compared to that.
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In a normal market, they would. But housing is highly regulated with artificial shortages, so that pricing is very distorted.
Regulation is not what suppresses production, but the actual profit margins. It's extremely hard to make money building housing because the cost of land and labor are so high. These costs are high because we now live in an advanced economy where land can do much more valuable things than "be housing", and laborers can do much more productive things than "build housing."
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Land might be scarce in the technical sense, but not in the practical sense. Housing is only expensive because people want to live in superstar cities, which in turn is because that's where all the jobs are. If UBI eliminates the imperative to live in superstar cities, that makes scarcity a non-issue.
I can work from anywhere, but I like to live in a superstar city because I find it boring living in the suburbs. I want to be near my friends, near the live events, near the buzzing restaurants and art galleries and clothing stores where I can walk around and touch things. There will always be a concentration of people in cities for these reasons.
That's fine. Not everyone has to move. As long as the marginal city dweller would rather have cheaper housing than "buzzing restaurants and art galleries", there will be downward pressure on housing prices.
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Agreed. I tend to think a job guarantee would work better than UBI: have the government provide a job to anyone who can't find one somewhere else, something like what was done in the 1930's in the US. Come up with a list of things needed (can you think of anything that needs fixing?), and pay people a living wage and benefits to take care of those things. Call it 'Universal Basic Work.' Beyond spending government mon…
Not sure if that would work better: 1. The idea behind UBI is that it is near-zero effort, the cost to operate UBI should be minimal. UBW cannot be low overhead I suppose. 2. What motivation do I have to do the work if I can’t get fired?
It’s up to you if you take up the state’s offer or not.
The UBI removes the motivation to work and turns everything into volunteering. The result is a rise in the “reservation wage gap” - the amount the private sector has to pay to get people to work for them.
The reservation wage gap with a job guarantee is near zero - which is more economically efficient.
Additionally the job guarantee acts as a powerful spend side automatic stabiliser that is temporal and spatially efficient - which removes the need to manipulate the base interest rate allowing it to return to its natural rate of zero. This allows permanent cheaper mortgages and business loans.
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Agreed. I tend to think a job guarantee would work better than UBI: have the government provide a job to anyone who can't find one somewhere else, something like what was done in the 1930's in the US. Come up with a list of things needed (can you think of anything that needs fixing?), and pay people a living wage and benefits to take care of those things. Call it 'Universal Basic Work.' Beyond spending government mon…
The government already does this by subsidizing low income earners via the EITC. It just outsources the actual job provision to the private sector, which is an effective alternative to wasteful make-work.
The societal deal with the private sector is that it employs everybody at a rate that allows an individual to live in return for the chance to make a profit. A job guarantee ensures that the private sector overall cannot shirk that responsibility.
If the private sector does its job, nobody will be employed on a job guarantee.
I'm UBI-curious, but surely inflation would be inevitable if everyone suddenly had $x more disposable income per year? Landlords and grocery stores and everyone else would raise prices because they know people can afford it. Obviously if you're living in poverty, anything is better than nothing, but would the average middle class person be better off? As far as I can tell no country has ever tested true UBI (uncondit…
If UBI is so high that people can afford paying extra without working for it then maybe, but I don't think that is the idea behind UBI. There still needs to be an incentive for people to work, they should just be in a place where they actually have a choice instead of living in survival mode every day.