[will_brown]

Its a really difficult analysis.

Take a food stuff. In theory the current price is the cross section of supply and demand (price equilibrium), your idea is that with BI we have just increased demand while supply remains unchanged naturally price equilibrium changes resulting in a price increase. However, with a growth in demand, the market should respond and supply should increase to meet the increased demand, thus readjusting price equalibrium. Obviously this is for a food stuff not something more finite like housing.

Still food stuffs or housing, we don't really live in a free capitalist market as much as we would like to believe. There are many government subsidies artificially impacting current supply/demand/price. One example, farm subsidies where farmers are paid to not grow crops/farm their land (~$1.3B/year). I think its ridiculous, but economists more knowledgeable than me (even if on the farmer's dime) argue its necessary to keep supply artificially low to keep prices artificially high otherwise the entire industry would fail and we would all be starving.

Assuming BI did have such an overall impact on the prices of everything or even just the basics (food stuffs, housing, gas, etc...) there are all types of mechanisms the government currently employees to artificially raise and lower prices and special interests won't be going away with BI.

[leepowers]

The Murray UBI plan is paid for in part by eliminating agricultural subsidies. So any stabilizing effect of these subsidies would go away. Would food producers keep their prices high, since each consumer has an extra 10k to spend? Or would prices collapse as growers, with no incentive to leave fields fallow, flood the market with cheaper food?