Hacker News

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.

In places that consist of many people with subsidized incomes, like elderly housing complexes, why aren't local grocery stores and gas stations higher than elsewhere?

Also, aside from that question, prices will only rise if there's no competition. In a working market, if more people can afford a higher rent more apartments will be built.

It depends. On its own, UBI puts a downward pressure on the value of money. Some other things (e.g. setting low interest rates) also put a downward pressure on the value of money. However, some things (e.g. taxes) put an upward pressure on the value of money. So it comes down to how all of those factors balance out.

It would not be inflationary if it's paid for with a tax on real value or income. Maybe somewhat inefficient, and prone to political meddling, but it's not introducing new money into the economy.

If it's just printed money, it would be.

That’s one of the flawed arguments used against minimum wage. The answer is, no.

This is kind of like social security, medicare or the 5 day work week, 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.

> What if you want, say, a human hair stylist or therapist: who would do such a job if they don't have to?

I have no faith in Musk's vision of an abundance utopia for many reasons, but I suspect a lot of people would still want to do the job of being a human therapist or hair stylist even if they technically didn't need to for money.

They may want to work less than 40 hours a week, but most people do have an inate need to feel like their life has some sort of productive value beyond just base level existing.

> I'm UBI-curious, but surely inflation would be inevitable if everyone suddenly had $x more disposable income per year?

This does not have to be the case if higher taxes decrease purchasing power for some.

So there are two basic versions of UBI:

1. The right-wing UBI is a tool to dismantle the social safety net. The idea of the likes of Milton Friedman is to replace all social safety programs with UBI. This doesn't make sense because, for example, being disabled in today's society makes everything more expensive; and

2. Left-wing UBI would seek to have everyone share in the wealth they create by supplementing social safety programs with UBI. UBI becomes a form of super-progressive taxation because it can be viewed as negative taxation.

As for your inflation comment, you have a point, to which I'll say: UBI alone isn't sufficient. You need economic reform and planning on top of that.

A good example is the US military. If you live off-base you get a housing allowance (ie BAH). Now around military bases, in the US and overseas, all the landlords know this so you'll find that weirdly all the houses to rent cost pretty much what BAH is.

So a more equitable economic system, including UBI, needs social housing. That is, the government needs to be a significant supplier of quality, affordable housing so landlords (private and insitutional) can't artificially drive up prices, as is the case now. A prime example is Vienna [1]. Housing simply can't be a speculative asset in a healthy economy.

If you wnat to see what an equitable planned economy looks like, look at China.

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=41VJudBdYXY

When someone says something is "the only way", that's a sure sign they either have some vested interest in that only way, or have an idea fix.

It’s obviously not the only way. The more likely way is what is happening, a new medieval era with lords and serfs.

> UBI assumes and requires an elite ownership class and a powerful state to force them to share their profits.

It makes no assumption about an elite ownership class at all. It merely assumes profits, and rearranges how those profits are distributed (away from shareholders, towards labor). There is no need for community ownership of the means of production (though that might have some different benefits, along with some different disadvantages).

You need high marginal (or maybe not even marginal) corporate taxes and a committment to the concept of UBI. Who owns the companies, from the perspective of UBI, is immaterial.

Community ownership does not share the productivity in sector A with workers in sector B. UBI does.

> most of the arguments against it are moot points or simply falsehoods

What are the falsehoods in complaints against police unions?

> Unions the actual solution

No, they are not. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodge_v._Ford_Motor_Co.

Changing the table stakes is what needs to happen: see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondragon_Corporation for a counter example.

Unions just create an us vs them mentality. The fact that the NUMMI plant ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NUMMI ) was not reproducible is a pretty strong indicator of that.

If its an easy 100m do a startup and get funding

> most of the arguments against it are moot points or simply falsehoods.

Ah the “I am sure we can all agree … that I’m right” argument.

In actuality, there are plenty of very good arguments against unions. That you don’t like them changes nothing

> UBI is easily removed by inflation

Source? A $20k UBI wouldn’t likely secularly increase food costs on a per-calorie basis. Those folks are already eating. There will just be supply-chain friction as the system adjusts to their newly-expressable preferences.

Not necessarily. It's straightforward to make it revenue neutral.

You make it revenue neutral for the average tacpayer. If you want UBI to be $1000/month, you increase the average tax by $1000. The average taxpayer still benefit because even though they don't get more money, they have a safety net.

People making less than average get more UBI than the tax increase, and those making more pay more.

Most people get more money because the median income us a lot lower than the average.

If the only money is UBI money then things start to get weird. If UBI coexists with regular income in moderation then it doesn't change much. Consider that about 1/3 Americans receive some form of government assistance. There's already a kind of fallback UBI distributed across SNAP + Medicare + Medicaid + Unemployment + Social Security + etc, and no one on those programs is clamoring for them to be shut down so that lentils become cheaper. Giving money to everyone does increase inflation (though you can play with the tax rate to offset that), but the important effect is it transfers purchasing power to net recipients. Basically: the economy wide money supply would at worst go up by a modest factor, the income of the poorest goes up by an absolute amount (or a massive factor if you want to view it that way), which is a huge benefit to them.

"Solve the problem" probably not, but trigger inflation, probably not, since the amount is so low, it will have very little impact on the behavior of the richest, but it would have a massive impact on the behavior of the poorest, and their purchase habits generally don't impact inflation as much.

UBI is just a band-aid on not taxing the rich, though.

Not everything, only stuff that are suddenly in higher demand that can't increase supply. If you take food as an example i don't imagine demand would increase? And if it did we could probably just produce more? And also it's not like everyone will have unlimited money, so you'll still have to prioritize and luckily we don't all have the same priorities. I'm pretty sure the idea is to fund this by taxing production and not by printing money, so inflation shouldn't be a problem.

Yes, it does cause huge inflation, but that's not even the biggest problem with it. That would be: people do not really like to share fruits of their labor with strangers, so UBI would significantly undermine the motivation to do anything other than bare minimum.

UBI is not possible until robots and AI take over most jobs (but then we risk that one day the AI decides to just get rid of "those useless humans")

I'm not sure UBI would work. But what's that got to do with communism? Communism failed (IMO), because it was incompatible with human nature. People form social hierarchies and like to own property. Would UBI prevent that?

I think folks may not realize that communism was more popular in the early 20th century US just because of how desperate a lot of the population became without any safety nets at all provided by the government. Educated proponents genuinely wanted to improve the plight of other folks. But, where it was practiced it became just a worse kind of power and resource monopoly - concentrated in the government instead of among a minority of robber barren types. I think the learning is you have to never stop pushing for no entity to have too much power - not the government and not private sector monopolies.