I feel that half the problem is pushy people and the other half is those same people getting FOMO.
A normal person isn’t going to care, but people that see legitimately everything as ‘their prerogative to anything they want’ are the types that are going to have anger, coursing in their veins, the second they get a whiff of something ‘exclusive’ that they are not privy to.
I do think it’s possible at the state level to have the government step in to have a more hands on role for real estate among other things. Federally I think that’s a long shot, unless other states see how successful the progressive programs are in Blue states.
I don’t disagree that UBI is in many ways a band-aid. I see it as not too complex for your average person to understand though. The rent problem to me is one that needs to be tackled at the same time that UBI gets implemented.
People still get their freedom of spending their UBI as they desire, although some of their existing expenses could be deducted before they receive UBI payment (e.g., child care payments). From a policy selling perspective UBI looks very attractive, especially when you start receiving payments of it for a while. So much so that people would not stand it going away.
So if you’re working and get a UBI on top of your pay, then you have more money to invest in better versions of the things you have. If you’re living on the street, suddenly you have a government that cares about helping you to get off the ground and help put food on your table.
I don’t think specific help programs should go away mind you; I hear that sometimes but I disagree with that perspective. Maybe some of the UBI could be in a currency that’s only spendable on food (like food stamps), so in those rare cases the money potentially still goes to buying food.
I disagree that inflation hits billionaires harder, they invest their money in the stock market which outpaces the rate of inflation Year over Year. Meanwhile, your total buying power drops tremendously because of inflation’s increase each year. If most of your money isn’t in the stock market then the worth of your money continues to be less. If you don’t get a wage increase at your job, then you’re making less money each year rather than the same amount as well.
I do agree that UBI is good for workers though, mainly because it also puts power back in the hands of workers since they become not dependent on their employers to survive. Workers instead would be coming into work because they want to thrive.
Those people should be taxed more really. Personally, I believe every dollar over $1 billion should be taxed at 90+%. I would set the threshold for scaling those tax brackets much lower than that though.
Billionaires should be banned from using their stocks as collateral for loans as well.
The government really needs to either implement rent controls or buy up many of the private apartments to turn into public housing. It really doesn’t make a ton of sense for the product being leased for profit to be … property? In what world does it make sense for where you live to be a for-profit venture for someone else? Nah, the government could own it and rent out units at more reasonable rates/subsidizing the costs.
UBI is still great imo, but it’s not the end step like you said. We should have Universal Healthcare and public transit as well. I feel that UBI could pay for groceries, but grocery stores/food producers should have more regulations on the fillers and junk they put into these ‘food’ items they sell. I believe education K thru College should be free. It just makes sense for society to subsidize the education costs for the people that will help create value to our economy through their higher education.
UBI can be done at the state level too, but states may have to go into debt to get it going. Blue States should raise the taxes on bigger corporations to help fund the program, possibly even creating corporate tax brackets.
I think states should try to implement UBI at the state level, since it could be many years now before we have the votes to pass it federally. In the meantime, residents in Blue states could have a huge bump in their quality-of-life and it might even sell Purple and Red states to implement some of these progressive programs.
I could see something like what you are saying working Federally for funding such a program. We could implement Federal tax brackets on businesses as well to help fund the programs year after year if we really needed that.
How though? There’s no mechanism in UBI to increase production to match the increased demand. If anything its could decrease production / supply as less people work and choose to just live off UBI.
UBI gives a lot of leverage to workers to have over their employers.
Some people will do as you have said, where they will opt to not work and live off UBI. We see that currently though with some of these people living on the streets. People work for many reasons ultimately. For some, it’s to have their basic needs met, but many people work to have a higher quality of life and to have their wants met as well.
With a UBI you ideally could have a small apartment, amenities, pay for public transportation, and not have to worry about putting food on your table each day. Let me just say you have Universal Healthcare too since if we managed to get UBI implemented, then there likely are other progressive programs we could implement at the same time.
Increasing the amount of cash in the market doesn’t increase productivity/ supply, otherwise printing money would work.
The thing about UBI is that money is backed by the US government, they’re not printing new dollars, so they’re not devaluing the money in the marketplace.
Actually printing money in bulk is bad, because those printed dollars are not backed by assets, thus devaluing that currency as a whole. The US does print more money occasionally, but we devalue our dollar a little each time that we do.
Increasing aggregate demand / money without increasing aggregate supply / productivity just leads to inflation. This is what I mean by its myopic focus on consumption, production also needs to be considered. Everyone wants to focus on the “to each according to their needs” part and not the “from each according to their ability”
I agree that if our demand outpaced our production it would lead to higher inflation. Currently though, we produce much, much more than is demanded. So much so that we have billions in waste each year, that’s billions in weight too! So, realistically, people would be able to afford more food, but people only need/want so much food so spending habits on food should not change so much as to leave shelves consistently empty.
The same thing applies to clothing as well, where we toss tons, upon tons of new clothes each year.
Yeah certain industries can scale up relatively cheaply to match this increased demand but things like housing which have a limited supply that expands relatively slowly will just see price increases. You said this could cause increased competition for landlords but it will also cause increased competition for housing.
Housing is purposefully kept at low supply. If houses and apartments were allowed to be scaled up to meet demand, then housing prices would go down. The thing is, that all the Not In My Backyard (NIMBYs) people will not stand for having the price of their house going down, especially if the price could ever drop to be lower than they are paying for their mortgage. Development is slowed down for similar reasons since if there is an abundance of available housing then housing prices could drop.
If there are 4 houses and 5 households and before UBI 4 households made enough to afford $1,000 in rent and they got the 4 houses, after UBI of $1,000 the landlord can use the threat of renting to the homeless person to raise the rent until that homeless person is priced out again. If you increase the amount of money people have without increasing supply then the people will use that money to bid up prices until you’re back to the old distribution of resources.
The government could step in to buy up many private apartments up to turn into public housing or they could implement rent controls to prevent rampant greed from landlords. I don’t think UBI would be enough for most people currently living on the streets to afford to live downtown, but it could help them keep a small apartment in one of the less busy cities or in the lower cost neighborhoods.
The alternative to UBI that the left has been pushing forever, especially the African American left, has been a universal jobs guarantee. Anyone can go into a government office and they’ll give you a job with decent pay. Since you’re putting people to work you can actually increase productivity and supply to match the new demand. You still get all the guarantees of income and the benefits that entails of getting out of bad situations but you also are able to pressure employers for better labor standards. If the government is offering a living wage for 3 days a week then other employers will have to match that. It’s also more politically viable, trying to convince middle America that “free money” is a good thing will be a lot harder then convincing them that a jobs guarantee is good.
Personally, I’m in favor of more government jobs that pay a living wage. I don’t think it has to be mutually exclusive, mind you, we could have UBI and more government jobs. UBI gives more flexibility to a lot of people out there, for instance single parents can more easily work part-time and still put food on the table or university students could focus more on their education rather than needing to balance a part-time job and their schoolwork.
I agree that convincing ‘everyone’ of a UBI would be hard, but if Blue states implemented it and it saw success, then I’m sure people living in Purple/Red states could be convinced as well. I think you’re spot on though that we should still try to sell Universal Job Guarantee at the federal level as it could be sold right now with no further elaboration.
I think it’s still worth implementing UBI, most of the fears are something that can be tackled independently.
For instance, the why not have the government buy up most of the private apartments and turn them into public housing? Or at the least set rate increase limits on rent.
I don’t believe most things would face much noticeable inflation if a UBI were to be implemented, aside from luxury/high quality goods. A little inflation is baked into our economy anyway, as a little inflation is a good thing to prevent deflation.
I agree with you, people fear mongering about UBI being used to control people, when bosses could do that currently with a paycheck. UBI usually means no strings attached, although I’m sure there could be other incentive programs out there on top of UBI to reward people.
If we really want UBI to be less likely to be taken over by bad actors, I feel it makes sense to have each state implementing their own UBI programs. It would be great if this was a federal program that helped everyone, but even getting it passed federally is looking like an uphill climb. It makes way more sense to pass UBI in progressive states, and try to sell purple and red states on the idea as well.
I mean, Alaska has a Basic Income at the least, so in theory we already see one state mildly seeing the benefit of a Universal Basic Income.
I’m personally in the boat of seeing kids as adding to one’s life rather than draining it and making dreams rather than taking them away. But having kids is something my partner and I want. My only other dream is to ever own the roof over my head, but that’s not totally likely.
I feel that having kids would not seem as daunting for more people if we had real safety nets to support people that would even consider being parents. Such as free daycare, a basic income, universal healthcare, and stipends specifically to pay for costs associated with kids like for diapers, bottles, books, ever changing clothes sizes, etc.