[PKop]

What about price inflation amongst these necessities resulting from immediate increase in money supply within poor population? I can't understand how this wouldn't be an issue... Would housing prices not rise accordingly, for example?

[zanny]

Housing prices today are going out of control because the supply of what people want housing for - jobs - is diminishing. As the job market shrinks and more and more people are dropped out of the economy due to automation, there is more and more demand to live where jobs are, which drives housing prices out of control in many places like NY or SF but almost every major metro area experiences it.

It is confounded by the growing wealth inequality, where the rich find it a valuable asset to buy up these valuable residential buildings that are in demand as a store of value, further diminishing the supply and further exacerbating the problem.

Under a UBI, the market for residential is restored to what it was decades ago when the towns now abandoned in the post-industrial US were populated. There are many times more houses than homeless in the US, but because those homes are located nowhere near a stable income nobody can live in them.

The same applies to food and electricity. We are not at any supply side bounding here, and a UBI makes these makes so incredibly stable and predictable it lets the margins of businesses operating in them get as close to break even as possible because of the certainty metrics now associated with them.

[hx87]

It's even better if UBI is funded by a nationwide land value tax, which would discourage both NIMBYism in low density, high value communities and using real estate as a store of wealth (instead of as a productive investment).

[nylsaar]

Yes. If a modest amount of 9k would work, then giving everyone a million each would work as well. The Keynesian economist in Washington and Tokyo have already filled up the bathtub to no avail. This is the difference between money and currency.

[hx87]

You're thinking of monetary expansion, which in modern economies often doesn't work because the banks get the money first and do nothing but park it.

[flukus]

Competition. Most necessities of life have a lot of competition in the market.