No Stupid Questions

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.

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.

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.

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

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

That only works if literally every landlord is conspiring together. If they're not, then people will flock to the landlords that don't increase the price, or only increase a little. Meanwhile, you think car salesmen will see an extra $1000/mo and not try to take advantage? Why do you think landlords will successfully take all $1000 and nobody else will get a penny?

Everyone will try to get that $1000/mo, but they will have to compete with each other and the people with the money are rational actors who will pick the best use for their funds.

Meanwhile, the question of whether it's inflationary will depend on where the money comes from. If it's matched by a tax that pulls money out of the system at the same time the UBI puts money in, then it won't be inflationary it will just redistribute wealth from the taxed (in every plan I've seen, the wealthy) to everyone else.

The fact that the landlord is also getting an extra 1000 a month means they'll be less incentivised to put up the price. Also market forces, it'd just take a couple of landlords to have some morals, or prioritise having their properties filled to keep prices down.

With the restaurant example market forces again. If the shitty big chain restaurant put up their prices and the nice local restaurant didn't then suddenly they'll see more people going to them. It would also make it really easy for shitty chain B to undercut shitty chain A.

Then you also have the backup of government regulations and using tax systems to make it not viable to price gouge that way.

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.

But the real reason UBI won't happen is because getting people to die is much cheaper than paying them to live so they have to pay even more for future generations. UBI can't happen without proper future planning for entire societies. It works great in the short term and in test cases, as a lot of charitable ideas do until the predators come in.

One thing that shouldn't be ignored is most UBI proposals remove the current means-based welfare in the USA. So, as many people go on the UBI list, many others would disappear off the welfare lists, which means there probably wouldn't be as much disruption as you are expecting. If the UBI is implemented as a negative income tax, some people's net may change even less.

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?

If rent everywhere suddenly jumps then the DOJ has a slam dunk case of price collusion.