Hello, I’m not that informed about UBI, but here is my arguement:
Everyone gets some sort of income, but wouldn’t companies just subside the income by raising their prices? Also, do you believe capatilism can co-exist with UBI?
Hello, I’m not that informed about UBI, but here is my arguement:
Everyone gets some sort of income, but wouldn’t companies just subside the income by raising their prices? Also, do you believe capatilism can co-exist with UBI?
I’ve soured on it recently, if you gave everyone $1000 a month then your landlord is just going to raise your rent by $1000.
If full socialism is out of the picture, and we could enact something like UBI I think we should expand disability and social security for those who can’t work and then do a universal guaranteed jobs program for those who can work because:
It’s way more politically viable. It’s going to be almost impossible to convince a majority of Americans to “pay people to sit around all day”. They’d be way more open to it if they’re doing a job.
We could use the labor on fields that the market doesn’t value, such as building green infrastructure or social work for low income individuals. This would go along with expanding the definition of a job to any work that is benefiting society. If you’re a parent spending all your time caring for a young or disabled child then that’s a job and you should get paid for it.
It you increase the wage for these guaranteed jobs that effectively raises the minimum wage since the private employers have to compete with the government. Why work at McDonald’s for $10 an hour when the government is paying $15. If you raise UBI that may decrease wages as employers will use it as an excuse to pay less.
Even for people making above minimum wage it gives the worker more bargaining power since your employer loses the threat of throwing you onto the streets. This is also true for UBI but only if it’s enough to fully cover a comfortable life which I don’t think will happen due to the inflation it may cause.
It increases production which can help to increase supply and cover for the increase in demand giving people that much money will cause so inflation is checked more.
People neeed a job, as in the expanded definition I gave above, it’s a big part of how people make meaning in there life. The best case for someone not working would be they just play video games all day, worst case they turn to drug use.
Then I’ll move and his income drops to zero. Market forces don’t disappear just because there’s UBI.
It won’t drop to zero since someone else will come in who will give them the extra $1000 because they need a place to live. Market forces don’t dissappear with UBI, that’s why when aggregate demand goes up and supply stays fixed, such as with housing, prices go up.
Say you pay $1500 for rent and there’s another guy who pays $1200 and wants to upgrade to your apt. They get the $1000 UBI and now they have enough to bid up to $2200 for your apt. Now either you pay $2300 or your landlord evicts you to get the higher paying tenant. This percolates up and down the housing ladder from the homeless person who gets $1000 only to see rents increase to $1500 to the millionaire who now has to pay an extra $1000 drop in the bucket for there high-rise in Manhattan.
In capitalism your standard of living is determined by your ability to outbid the person on the rung below you to maintain that lifestyle. If everyone moves up a rung then nothing changes.
Why would supply stay fixed? People can and do build new housing, especially when aggregate demand goes up.
Like I said, market forces don’t go away.
Demand goes up but not production. Adding UBI doesn’t increase the amount of wood harvested, or bricks produced or construction workers. In fact some construction workers may quit and go on UBI, lowering the production.
If demand goes up without production increasing, and thus supply, prices go up. This is part of the reason for the latest round of inflation, demand shot up after the pandemic but production was still at pandemic levels and yet to ramp back up.
Production in a lot of other places can ramp up relatively quickly to match demand if the infrastructure is built out already. In housing though production in general is slow and also slow to ramp up. It can take 2-3 years to build a house, and housing production takes years to increase. That’s part of the reason housing is still so high right now, housing production plummeted after 2008 and we haven’t gotten back to that even though prices and demand has skyrocketed.
All this is to say if UBI goes in it’ll take years for the supply to increase, I think they’re estimating housing production won’t get up to match the current new high prices now until 2030. Meanwhile your landlord is increasing your rent as soon as you renew, and rents don’t tend to ever go down after they’re set. This is if new housing can be built at all, a lot of places in America are zoned for single family housing and all the land is taken so no new housing can be built, housing production is limited by desirable and developable land and that just doesnt exist in a lot of places.
This is all if you don’t increase production, which the government can do, but they don’t right now and they definitely won’t if UBI comes in and replaces section 8 and all other welfare. If you do a universal jobs program though you can use those people to build affordable and public housing.
UBI empowers tenants and alternate living situations.
Sure people will want nicer places to live, but there’s more options than renting with UBI, and other power dynamics that permit tenants to escape due to other options.