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Comments

• mipadaitu@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  You’d increase taxes along with UBI, so most middle class people would end up neutral (or slightly positive). You can’t just dump tons of money into the economy without turning other dials to keep it stable.

  A wealth tax would essentially be redirecting money from the top 1% and guarantee a stable monetary floor for everyone.

  Probably there’s a dozen other changes, along with bankruptcy protections, interest rates, and anti scam protection would also need to be implemented.

  You identified an obvious problem, which has been considered by intelligent UBI advocates that have studied this for a long time.

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  • treadful@lemmy.zip ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I think this is kind of the big problem with the messaging. I know plenty of economists say it would work, but it’s non-intuitive to most of us.

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    • snooggums@midwest.social ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Do people understand that rent and other necessity prices are skyrocketing right now without income increasing? They are not intertwined in the way the myth of raising rent to match UBI is presented.

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    • Lmaydev@programming.dev ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      This seems like it’s the only way it would work.

      Everyone gets a certain amount a month.

      You get taxed a certain amount back depending how much you make above some threshold. The average wage could be good.

      So now the high earners are funding the system. But if they get sick and can’t work the tax goes away but they’re still getting that base payment automatically.

      Low earners get help and high earners get a safety net.

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    • dandroid@sh.itjust.works ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      I have found that economy experts say that things are counterintuitive more often that any other field. I think at this point I have just accepted that the economy is some black magic that I’ll never understand. So I’m gonna smile, nod, and let the experts do their thing.

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    • z00s@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Public messaging is difficult for economics because of its complex nature. Even when you simplify it, the interconnected nature of seemingly unrelated things and unforseen consequences often escape people. Then there’s the human element which sometimes produces baffling outcomes.

      But all that most people think is “Why do I have to pay so much for petrol? That’s bad.”

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  • xantoxis@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Don’t forget price controls, strong anti-collusion legislation and strong antitrust.

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  • Toes@ani.social ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I’d like to see any income above 2k / month get redistributed globally.

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    • SeeJayEmm@lemmy.procrastinati.org ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Where do you live that 24k/yr is a livable wage?

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    • kobra@lemm.ee ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Huh? Does that mean $2k/month is your cap for what anyone should ever need/want? It just seems incredibly low to me so I’m confused.

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    • lvxferre@mander.xyz ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      People are focusing too much on your number, and too little on your take.

      I think that a strong progressive tax works better than just two brackets (no taxation vs. full taxation). Specially when coupled with universal basic income - the idea is to eat the rich, not the slightly less poorer, on those you just nibble.

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    • TokenBoomer@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Radical. I like it. Maybe $4000/month to keep it above the poverty line (so it’s not a such a shock to the system). Lol

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  • BlindFrog@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Like taxes on luxury goods?

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  • ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    This doesn’t answer ops question at all, aside from “I’m sure ubi advocates have thought about this”.

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• rowinxavier@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  UBI will cycle in the bottom of the economy.

  When you give a rich person more money they buy assets and increase their wealth, it does not impact their spending activity and has no measurable impact on economic activity.

  When you give a middle income person more money they buy something new or pay down debts. Buying something new stimulates economic activity, but paying down debts is really just another wealth transfer to the banks which are owned by rich people.

  When you give money to low income people they spend it. They have unmet needs and always have something they can spend that money on. That money then generates economic activity.

  Increasing economic activity is what all of the interest rate and inflation talk is about. If you get people spending money that generates activity which increases wages, increases income, and decreases wealth inequality.

  A good example is during the GFC the Australian government gave low income people $750AUD, about $350USD. The prime minister asked people to spend this money rather than save it. People bought a bunch of things, in the people I knew it was mostly TVs and new clothes, things you can put off for ages but benefit from whenever you buy them. All of this purchasing stimulated the economy, leading to Australia being less impacted than almost any other G7 nation. We recovered very quickly and boomed from there.

  If you want a more long term example look at any welfare. If you have extremely poor people they just die. They are underfed, have weak immune systems, and they face imminent death. They can’t access housing so they end up on the street. They have tonnes of inteactions with police and end up in the criminal justice system. They end up having their lives ruined and being purely a drain economically. They suffer.

  If you give them enough money to have housing and food they are not going to be as costly to manage. They won’t require policing, they won’t get sick as often, and they will suffer less. Will this increase the competition for the lowest cost housing? Yes, but the answer to that is to build more housing. Even with the impact to housing cost this will not result in 100% of that payment going to landlords. People don’t pay their whole income for rent, they will buy food and other needs first, so if they are faced with too high a rent cost they will remain unhoused but at least tbey will eat.

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• fishos@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  It’s the same argument behind stimulus checks tbh. You give people money so that they can spend it on necessities and that money goes right back into the economy. Since our economy is based on growth and spending, more people spending money overall helps the economy, not hurts it. In addition, you’re spending less money on solving societal issues. Well fed sheltered people cause less problems.

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  • Chocrates@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    This is different though. If my rent is $2000 a month now, and I get $1000 a month from the government, the landlord can make my rent $3000 a month on renewal. Yes the money is going into the economy but it is enriching the upper class instead of helping the folks that need it.

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    • fishos@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      And you’re still gaining services you didn’t have before. People who couldn’t afford a dentist, for example, now can. You need a whole different set of laws to tackle wealth inequality. We can do both.

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  • betz24@lemmynsfw.com ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Stimulus checks caused one of the best stock booms of this decade then immediately we had inflation. I don’t think stimulus checks are a well understood phenomenon

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    • gamermanh@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      then immediately we had inflation

      Gee, I wonder if there was a massive, global event that could have had a big impact on the economy around the same time…

      Much bigger than 2 checks to some people… Can’t put my finger on it…

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    • wagoner@infosec.pub ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      The biggest driver of inflation was energy prices.

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  • rikudou@lemmings.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Not the same, IMO. Stimulus checks are not for everyone, there are rules, which means that they can’t raise prices universally, because not everyone is getting the money.

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    • Nachorella@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      I could be wrong but I thought this was also how UBI would be implemented? It would just be a safety net for those without employment?

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    • fishos@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

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  • Kinglink@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    more people spending money overall helps the economy

    The idea behind this only works IF more people are spending. If Rent jumps that money goes to the landlord, who may (but probably won’t) spend the extra money, and it doesn’t benefit everyone.

    I forget the term, but there’s an idea that talks about how many people/businesses touch money. So if you create a dollar into an economy (you can’t create money with out causing problems but let’s pretend it’s magic) if that money goes into a person’s bank it’s probably a bad thing. If that money goes through 10 people’s hands, you’re getting taxation on it in every place which is a good thing (for the government). Problem is landlords are usually well off (at least well enough to own more than one property). They might not be “mega rich” but they almost certainly will save that money, rather than spend it.

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    • fishos@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      If people aren’t living lay heck to paycheck, afraid of where the next meal comes from, they spend more. You forget that this money will first go to the most needing first. Yes their landlord will pocket some of that. But they will have a reliable place to sleep. They will go out and buy food. Their landlord will pay utilities and taxes… It’s not perfect, but it’s a hell of a lot better than denying those who need it the necessities because “well some people might profit down the line”. Then fix the rental laws. Fix labor laws. It’s not a complete solution, but at least it’s something in the right direction.

      And way to miss the point of the analogy by latching on to one trivial difference. “It’s a one time payment” doesn’t change what kind of payment it is and why it’s given. It’s still free money. If you’re gonna be that pedantic, I think your meant to be on Reddit still.

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• ninpnin@sopuli.xyz ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Landlords only have control over you, because you have to find a place where there are good income sources. If you have an UBI, you have a lot less pressure to move to a city with high-paying jobs.

  All of a sudden, you have a bunch of new options. You can move to a rural town. You can move to places with lower average incomes. Hell, you can just buy a lot of land in the middle of nowhere and build a house.

  With consumer goods, it’s a bit different, because their prices are less about artificial scarcity and more about production costs. However, as noted in some of the other comments, if you just don’t print money but finance it with taxes, it won’t be that much of an issue.

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  • LemmyKnowsBest@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    All of a sudden, you have a bunch of new options. You can move to a rural town. You can move to places with lower average incomes. Hell, you can just buy a lot of land in the middle of nowhere and build a house.

    sounds nice but I seriously doubt UBI would be more than $1,000 per month. Enough for groceries and a car payment. NOT enough money to move out of town and buy land and build a house.

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    • BananaTrifleViolin@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Long term, why would it be limited to $1000?

      This is honestly an issue about the long term prospects of our species. More and more production is becoming automated, resources owned, and complex work likely going to AIs. This causes a fundamental breakdown of our current system - people working is largely “redundant” in a world of automation; people are less and less of a “resource” and capitalism begins to make less and less sense.

      We’re playing with the idea of UBI now, but we’re going to need solutions to this problem. Whoever owns the robots, AIs, land/resources owns everything. Either we let this be concentrated in the hands of an arisocratic class of billionaires, or we rebuild the system and accept capitalism is over. If people can’t “sell” their time through work, then how are people going to live.

      I know it all sounds very science-fiction but this is the reality our world is sleep walking into. Instead of coming up with plans to dace this, our politicians are unsurprisingly pissing about focusing on nonsense and tinkering at the fringes of the problem at best.

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    • ninpnin@sopuli.xyz ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Land in the middle of nowhere really doesnt cost anything. But Yeah, you couldnt really build a house with all the modern nice things we have learned to expect. More of a small cabin

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  • Sekrayray@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    How are you going to buy a bunch of land with a small amount of UBI?

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    • ninpnin@sopuli.xyz ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      I found plots of land for 1-2k$ in the country I’m from. Cost of living is comparable to the US. It’s just literally in the middle of nowhere

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• chicken@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  No, because having money is power. The more money you have, the more leverage you have, in general. This argument comes up a lot and I think it’s mostly coming from a widespread attitude of learned helplessness about money. Especially a UBI that is funded by some form of redistribution would mean a lasting shift in wealth inequality that could not be undone just because some businesses would like it to be.

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  • nandeEbisu@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    In areas that have housing shortages you probably would see a rise in rent as the market of people looking to buy nicer places increases quickly but actually increasing the housing stock in desirable areas takes some time.

    I think in the long run it would be a net positive and also would need to be paired with some measure of regulation around arbitrary increases in rent for landlords.

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    • chicken@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      would see a rise in rent as the market of people looking to buy nicer places increases quickly

      I think it would rise some, but not enough to absorb the whole UBI, because not everyone is looking to throw all of their money at living in the most fancy place they can, most people I think would prefer to do something else with most of their money. To me at least ‘niceness’ doesn’t matter that much if the living space is functional.

      but actually increasing the housing stock in desirable areas takes some time

      Also takes political will to overcome protectionist policies preventing new construction and preventing denser housing. My ideal combination of policies would be UBI plus reforms and subsidies to increase the housing supply and intentionally crash the housing market by doing so. As for direct price controls, I don’t think the economy works in a way that it could ever be effective beyond the very short term and a majority of economists tend to agree.

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• postmateDumbass@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  In your hypothetical, the market just jumping in cost like that creates opportunity for competition in the market. Because everyone who could not establish a biz charging X can get into the game charging between X amd X+Y, undercutting the gougers and driving prices lower over time. Theoretically.

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  • Cryophilia@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Which is why capitalism only works if it’s paired with strong anti-monopoly regulations.

    In the current environment, damn near every good and service is cornered by a small number of companies, sometimes only one. So while all restaurant prices probably won’t go up, all vehicle prices will.

    Hell, with this whole “inflation” bullshit we’ve seen that the entire economy is happy to influence public opinion to allow for an orgy of price hiking. Not necessarily in a coordinated way, but not not in a coordinated way.

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    • bartolomeo@suppo.fi ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Egg prices would go up exactly $1000 / mo

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  • Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Except real estate is limited and a necessity. So you have people bidding on where they want to live. The person with the most money wins.

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• hperrin@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  That doesn’t seem to happen when you raise minimum wage, so probably not. Also, it hasn’t happened in the places that have tried UBI.

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  • MolochAlter@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Raising the floor doesn’t mean raising all wages.if when raising minimum wage every other wage were increased by the same amount you’d see a very different pattern.

    Also, nowhere tried UBI uniformly to every member of the country. The problem with UBI is that testing it with a subset of the population doesn’t have any predictive power because these people individually exist in a society that doesn’t have UBI.

    Think about it this way: the lowest amount of money a person needs to survive is your break even point. Ideally, your minimum wage should be a little higher than that so people can save some money for emergencies etc.

    For the sake of ease of use let’s make that our unit of value, call it 1L for Life.

    So, every person working (ideally) receives at least 1L, if you’re not working you either have savings worth 1L for the span of time you won’t work, or you’ll have to incur debt or other hardships.

    Now, if you took absolutely everyone, working or not, and gave them, say, 0.5L for free, this won’t raise the floor, it’ll mean everyone will.amke at least 1.5L if working, 0.5L if not.

    This leads to either lowering of wages back to a level where the total is closer to 1L, or the increase of the minimum cost of living to 1.5L, or more likely a mix of the two.

    The reason why money is valuable isn’t random, it’s because money is finite and scarce.

    The amount everyone has is the null amount whether that is 0 or 100L, because it’s the differential between your income and that null amount that gives it purchasing power.

    Look at the effects of the covid stimulus and bailouts on purchasing power, and you’ll see a much closer result to an actual UBI than looking at the european UBI trials which ended up being much closer to randomly giving welfare to people than actual UBI.

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• BigMacHole@lemm.ee ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  If my landlord raises my rent to match the UBI I’m getting then I’m going to move to the Apartment down the street that DIDN’T raise their rents because I FINALLY can afford to do that! Or are you saying that Landlords are ILLEGALLY colluding with one another to ensure Rent remains high? If that’s the case why are you bringing up UBI?

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  • SkybreakerEngineer@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Because they actually are illegally colluding. UBI is a proposal to address a lot of stuff, not just rent

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    • chicken@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      “In the absence of knowledge about competitors’ pricing strategies, property managers can only make their best educated guesses and set their prices at optimal positions, usually a bit lower than what offered by competitors—to attract renters in the market,” the lawsuit argues.

      The complaint quotes Yardi marketing materials that say landlords who use the service “beat the market by a minimum of 2%” and “gain on average more than 6% net rental income.”

      This is a problem, but the claim made in the lawsuit is pretty far from saying that the market might as well not exist and this company is able to arbitrarily choose prices, they’re talking about a slight edge gained by shared information.

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  • painfulasterisk1@lemmy.ml ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I compare landlords to gas stations, if one increases the cost of gasoline for 0.20 USD overnight, believe me that the one less than a block away will follow suit in less than 6 hours.

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    • throwwyacc@lemmynsfw.com ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Only if the price is actually increasing. Otherwise you’d just sell cheap petrol and put them out of business

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  • Kinglink@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Or are you saying that Landlords are ILLEGALLY colluding with one another to ensure Rent remains high?

    No… I’m saying that a Landlord can read a paper and know that people have an extra 1000 dollars, so they can raise their rent 330/660/ or real dickbags 1000 dollars since you now have extra money.

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    • Iamdanno@lemmynsfw.com ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      One thing nobody ever considers about landlords. . . It costs them a considerable amount of money for their property to be empty. Most of them will accept slightly lower rents to keep the property occupied constantly. This cost avoidance ensures that there are always landlords at below market value, thus keep the higher rents in check.

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• Gabadabs@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Any UBI system worth it’s salt wouldn’t be providing a flat amount, it should be based on regional cost of living. So if prices all went up, UBI would have to go up as well.

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  • adam_y@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I feel like that is neither universal or basic.

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    • Gabadabs@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Is it not universal or basic to provide enough to meet the same standard of living wherever you go? If that’s to be the case it cannot be the same everywhere.

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  • Windex007@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I don’t know how this answers the question, though.

    I’m a landlord in city 1, UBI there is 100/mo. I jack my rental prices by 50.

    I’m a landlord in city 2, UBI there is 200/mo. I jack my rental prices by 100.

    City 1 responds by raising UBI to 200. Landlords follow suit. City 2 to 300. Landlords to 250.

    OP is suggesting that capitalist class just says “uwu, for me?~~~ 👉😍👈”, regardless of the amount or location. OP is suggesting that in practice this is just another slice of pie to be extracted by the capital holders.

    I don’t have a fucking clue if it’s true, but I don’t think this response addresses the question asked.

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    • explore_broaden@midwest.social ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      That would be a state of rampant inflation, so the fed would hike interest rates to slow it down.

      That would discourage people from spending money (harder to borrow and the interest encourages people to leave their money in savings), which decreases demand and thus prices (loosely speaking).

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  • ninpnin@sopuli.xyz ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Quite the opposite. A UBI will flatten differences in cost of living across different regions.

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  • HakFoo@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Or deliver the UBI as a basket of subsidized services and goods.

    If, for example, we chose socialized medicine instead of a $5000/year UBI, a landlord can’t very well say “Your rent is going up 30 tablets of lisinopril this month.”

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  • Zippy@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Talk about inflation spiral. lol

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• Septimaeus@infosec.pub ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Formally, market efficiency makes this impossible without price fixing.

  Practically, UBI does result in mild inflation of consumer prices in most models, but it’s because the market changes shape slightly to meet new consumer demand, as opposed to a blanket price increase of everything.

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• Sekrayray@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I’ve been saying this for a while, and that’s why I think a complex problem like this needs a more complex solution than UBI.

  Essentially I think successful UBI would need to be something like UBS instead (Universal Basic Support). Instead of only being money it needs to consist of free services. That way it’s harder for third parties to leech it away.

  So instead of “Here’s $1000 a month, do whatever you want” it would need to be more like “You can get free healthcare here, free electricity through this company, free food rations from this grocery store.” Then if you want things above UBS you need to have some source of income.

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  • MeanEYE@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    But at that point economy gets lesser stimulation from disposable income, which UBI in part addresses.

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• TheObviousSolution@lemm.ee ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  No, because you could choose to spend it elsewhere, and you might not even feel obligated to live at or work at where it’s most expensive anymore. The real problem with UBI are the way speculative investors (meme stocks, crypto, penny stocks, casinos, any gambling addiction, etc) would prey on the vulnerable people, and there’s a lot of ways to handle that but only if there is a will.

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• TheRealCharlesEames@lemm.ee ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  My understanding is that UBI would benefit the impoverished the most, allowing them to get out of debt, put food on the table, or maybe even put a roof over their head, finally opening the door for them to live a prosperous life. This significant change and opportunity for them outweighs the inflation they may face. Food, water, shelter, and healthcare are a human right and UBI is one way to deliver that, so we should probably commit for that reason alone. Those of us that are better off can begrudgingly cope with the inflation potentially created (note: most likely a product of greed). Besides the potential price hikes, we all see a return on investment as a society when our weakest are made stronger.

  As for where the money should come from and how to support this change, we need to make the ultra wealthy finally pay their fair share, break up monopolies to create competition and options, and properly punish exploitation.

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• fidodo@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  This is a problem due to monopolies. Any industry that is a monopoly should be nationalized or very heavily regulated.

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  • Paragone@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I find it is a systems-question, not a political-question,

    and I think the correct answer is to have a publically-owned portion of any market, be public/not-for-profit, as a means of enforcing honesty/integrity into that market.

    IOW, you don’t nationalize every damn thing, because institutional-mentality is every bit as evil as corporatism-psychopathy-machiavellianism, only different in style…

    ( anyone who isn’t understanding that … hasn’t tried living & working among it, either in Washington DC or in Canada’s Ottawa, or in whatever England’s equiv, the EU’s equiv, etc. )

    you instead make certain that a portion of the oil industry is national, a portion of the (whatever) industry is national, etc, and if there is huge discrepancy between the nationalized-portion & the private-portion, then you go in with criminal-investigators, after the C-suites of the corporations used to gaming the country’s economy.

    Putting 3 barracuda in the fish-farm-pen, in order to make all the survivors in the pen be fit is a related concept: same principle, different domain.

    You put some not-for-profit operation into the functionally-cartel-domains, & you use those “barracuda” to force integrity into those specific domains.

    Do it strategically, not just reactively ( comms, transport, energy, food, journalism, etc )

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  • nifty@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I don’t know, food production and household goods production is owned by a few big names. It would make sense to regulate them, but not sure how you nationalize something like Proctor and Gamble.

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    • fidodo@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Sorry I misworded it. I meant to say any industry that must be a monopoly/trust, so things that are based on scarce or shared resources. Housing, telecom, energy, etc.

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• fsxylo@sh.itjust.works ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  When the first COVID stimulus check came in, Walmart sold tvs for, after tax, the exact amount the check was worth.

  Bottom line is you’d have to freeze price increases, or reduce them somehow. It’s a mess of a problem.

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  • OldWoodFrame@lemm.ee ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    But like, you and I didn’t buy those TVs. If people who needed TVs used the checks for that, great. Everyone else used it for car payments or food or whatever they needed.

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    • fsxylo@sh.itjust.works ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      My point is companies will absolutely try to take the money, which was the question.

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• howrar@lemmy.ca ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Plenty of arguments given here for why it’s unlikely to happen, but I’d like to provide a slightly different perspective of how I think UBI would ideally be implemented.

  I think UBI should come with abolishment of minimum wage and a uniform decrease in everyone’s income from work (e.g. if UBI is 1k per month, then reduce everyone’s income by approximately 1k/month), so there wouldn’t be an obvious overall increase in everyone’s income. Workers now have more leverage to negotiate wages because they don’t need to worry about dying if they lose their job, and that should push up their wages to wherever is appropriate for their line of work. So overall, it’ll probably lead to a bit of inflation, but through the the same mechanism that inflation has always occurred rather than telling your landlords that everyone has an extra 1k for you to take now.

  Does this make sense? Good or bad idea? Discuss.

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  • Professorozone@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Not sure I really understand that. So I’m working and making a decent wage, say $100k/yr. Now for some reason I can easily tell my employer to take a hike because $12k of it is guaranteed? How does this suddenly make $110k jobs available to switch to?

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    • Highstronaught@feddit.uk ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      It’s not that it makes 110 k jobs immediately available, it’s that is gives you more leverage with negotiating pay as if you walk away you are not under threat of starving to death. As you would potentially be if you had no income between jobs.

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    • howrar@lemmy.ca ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      How does this suddenly make $110k jobs available to switch to?

      I don’t think it does. Did I say something that implied this?

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  • HaywardT@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I how about not from government but rather a private consumers union. A Costco model. Every member pays the monthly dues and is entitled to housing, food, medicine, internet. This gets you around a lot of the government corruption and protectionism and enables you to turn faster.

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    • howrar@lemmy.ca ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      You seem to be trying to solve a different problem. People who are working full time should be able to get all the necessities. It’s definitely a problem that they don’t. But if you believe that everyone should be able to feed/house/clothe themselves, including people who don’t have stable incomes (e.g. are in between jobs, busy caring for disabled folks, are disabled themselves, or going all in on building a bootstrapped business), then we need a system that doesn’t require you to have money in the first place to get the benefits.

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• giacomo@lemm.ee ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I mean, if demand for restaurants goes up, wouldn’t there just be more restaurants opening up?

  I agree with the landlord thing though, cause landlords are generally dicks. Maybe if local governments imposed more rent caps.

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  • snooggums@midwest.social ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Are landlords holding off on increasing rent because people’s incomes are not going up?

    No?

    Maybe rent isn’t tied to average income!

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    • Scrof@sopuli.xyz ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Yeah at this point rent is just a made up number to keep a landlord happy.

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• Some_Dumb_Goat@pawb.social ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  With what leverage? If you have no-strings-attached income, you are not facing destitution at the loss of your job, and it becomes a lot less risky to walk away from a job and move somewhere else. If all the landlords in one area do that, employers in that area will probably have to pay more.

  But imo, some type ubi system should be paid for with a vat tax that just pulls it’s income directly out of economic activity, which would make it harder to avoid paying for. The result would be higher prices anyway which would probably offset the income, but new situation would be that workers have a lot more leverage in their employment and living situation.

  My other hot take is that with a ubi, minimum wage should be abolished. Basically, with ubi the need for it would be lessened and more people might be willing to work jobs that they might not have been able to live off of without a ubi. But again, these are basically my hot takes

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• HobbitFoot@thelemmy.club ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  There will be some changes in prices, but I don’t think it is going to even out to everyone ending up even.

  You’ll probably see some inelastic demand goods increase in cost, but I don’t see that taking up the whole paycheck.

  If anything, I think the largest impact will be the unskilled labor market, as the threat of starvation will no longer be as real.

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• HogsTooth@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I won’t spend my money at those asshole places. If they’re the type of place to pull this shit, I probably already don’t shop there.

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• peg@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Social housing is the solution. Why invest in ubi without investing in social housing. Break the renter class.

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• John_McMurray@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  It’s still a free market, rent doesn’t really seem linked to income at all, but to demand and competition. Same with restaurants, it’s complex, but income of the patrons is the least of the concerns.

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• DieguiTux8623@feddit.it ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  In my country we don’t even have minimum wages so I don’t have to worry about this! 🤣🤣🤣 tsk… first world problems…

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• PP_BOY_@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Maybe. I think by the time we progressed enough for UBI, we’d have already put safeguards in place to prevent these from happening though.

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• PoliticalAgitator@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Yes. Inflation is when billionaires think you’ve got a few dollars they haven’t fucked you out of. You have to sneak welfare past them already, so full UBI would be sniffed out by their snouts immediately.

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• pearable@lemmy.ml ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  One of the easiest ways to resolve this problem is artificially increasing supply. The government can subsidize the production of food, housing, medical care, and education. It doesn’t matter if people have more money if the supply of a good is always high. Having the government be a provider of these goods in monopolistic of inelastic markets would also be a good idea.

  I don’t think UBI should be implemented tomorrow. Subsidizing things today would be a much better first step. Several years of increasing supply and then starting UBI is a better bet.

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• SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I mean… kinda?

  I think you’re putting too much evil intent behind the motivations though. Supply and demand isn’t some made up excuse. If the prices were to stay the same and everyone had more money, then there would be shortages. It’s not as if a factory can instantly increase production and the supply chain can instantly get the products on the shelves over night. There are real world factors involved in increasing production.

  So what happens is prices increase for many products and this results in inflation. Nobody wants inflation, not even the wealthy. So the central bank will want to tamp down that inflation and the lever they use for that is increasing interest rates. So you wanted to put that UBI towards a mortgage or a car payment? Well a lot of it will be going towards the increased interest on the money you’re borrowing.

  And the thing about inflation is that it doesn’t really get reversed. So the inflation from the initial shock to the economy would take a bite out of UBI (and also the income besides UBI). Your employer may be less likely to give you a raise to offset that inflation because you have UBI. and the fix for the inflation will mean paying more interest on a mortgage.

  So yeah, UBI wouldn’t gain people much. It’s mostly just a poison pill promoted to kids by wealthy people like Andrew Yang so you don’t push for an increase in minimum wage. An increase in minimum wage would be a direct transfer of wealth from businesses to employees. They don’t want this so they promote UBI which isn’t actually feasible to distract from minimum wage increases (which almost everyone supports) and make taxing the wealthy less likely (which is also supported by most, but not when it’s to pay for UBI).

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• PanArab@lemm.ee ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  This is why you also need government/public housing. When rents went up here the government had more houses built.

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• Ziggurat@sh.itjust.works ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Many countries aren’t that far from UBI. When you add all the welfare programs, People alrcadx get money When not working or When notgettimg a fair wage (yeah wage are so low that in today’s economy minimal wages workers alrcadx need some welfare benefits tolive)

  UBI is about generalizing it and making it a livable amont. This would be a taxable income, it would allow working class to work less (letting works for others) whiletaxes won’t let the rich get tricher zithouthaving to work

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• Fandangalo@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I believe in UBI, but the Captain Laserhawk show made me aware of how much it could get twisted in fucked up ways. “Don’t watch this show? -$100 from your stipend this month.” I used to think things like that were fear mongering, but the world is all kinds of weird today.

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