If you think of universal basic income as just "more money," you aren't understanding it and what makes it so different and effective.

@scottsantens No wonder the wealthy are against UBI. After all, they get most of their money via economic instability ("pump and dump", etc.).

@scottsantens @EndlessMason Well initially a lowish level UBI may not actually provide many families with a much larger income - the immediate aim as Scott says is to *stabilise* lower incomes. But anything eventually making poor folk richer needs measures against being predated: specific taxes that target wealth (LVT), controlling rents, regulating utilities etc can all play roles. UBI doesn't fix inflation or rent-seeking on its own, that's true, it's an important tool not a solo magic bullet.

@scottsantens everyone should be forced to be without a stable income for some period of their lives so they will understand this.

@alisynthesis @scottsantens For some *undetermined* period - if there's a known end in sight, they still won't have any idea what it's like.

@scottsantens Sadly, the main thing that universal basic income would be, is cancelling of the entire currency-tax system that creates markets. The governments release money, and demand from you to pay some of those money back, under threat of violence, thus forcing you to trade whatever goods or services you have to offer for the money. UBI would effectively cancel that, letting you pay the taxes and grow your own food and trade outside the official markets, effectively secesing from the state.

@jwcph exactly

@scottsantens

@EndlessMason competition, mostly. Housing is supply-constrained, and also heavily leveraged, which makes it a very unusual kind of commodity.

@EndlessMason
UBI can't just be free money. That would cause inflation as you suspect. UBI needs to be a big policy change include new income taxes. Roughly someone in the upper end of middle class and up would have the same take-home money before and after UBI. Someone in the middle would have more money but not a lot more. Everyone would have enough money to live.

This is a well studied problem. Just means UBI needs to be implemented carefully.

@scottsantens

@scottsantens @EndlessMason A flat payment would not have protections from those things, but would if the payments were scaled based on need and an economic inflation factor. A successful UBI system would need to track average costs and adjust accordingly, which would mean that the cost of the program would rise with population and inflation growth.

If you already own a home, it may not be that big of a help to you. But for folks that are living paycheck to paycheck, it would provide security. Even if UBI isn’t enough to live on, it could theoretically supplement the income from the lower-wage or part-time jobs.

@scottsantens also drive up inovation, because when you want to inovate, knowing that a failure will not make you homless is already good too.