[js8]

> they will not succumb to spending the basic income on non-productive things

Actually, they can, there is no problem. Somebody still has to produce these things, and they have to pay them. So naturally, cost of these things is bounded from below by their supply.

As someone noted, you can look at rich people who don't have to work, they mostly don't do that.

Also, from ecological perspective it would better for people to spend most of the money on alcohol rather than say travel, because the ecological impact of drinking is much smaller. It's in fact interesting, because we tend to see unproductive things as bad, but they often have smaller ecological impact.

> It's also hard to see how that money would /not/ be extracted in the form of higher prices across the board.

Yes, the price of the labor would be higher, but that is the whole point. Although the best I think would be to tie the UBI to %HDP or income taxation, so that even if more is given to the productive people, the same portion is again returned to everybody at some point.

People get this intuitively wrong, because they don't understand that in basic money equation, there is also velocity of money. The UBI in fact artificially increases the velocity, by redistribution of money at many points in economy to everybody, forcing another redistribution from everybody to production.

> what happens to all the now-unskilled labour?

Why don't you ask this today in the context of disabled people, or retired people? It's really nothing to freak about.

[CryptoPunk]

>>The UBI in fact artificially increases the velocity, by redistribution of money at many points in economy to everybody, forcing another redistribution from everybody to production.

Increasing the velocity of money without increasing production just leads to devaluation:

    MV = PY

Where M is money supply, V is velocity of money, P is nominal prices, and Y is the real value of production

So P = MV/Y. Increasing M or V increases P.

You don't get more stuff just by moving money around faster. And production will decrease with higher welfare spending, so you'll have less per capita GDP/consumption/quality-of-life.

Producers receive less per hour worked because now a portion of their production has to be given to other parties who are not contributing production in exchange. Imagine if all the non producers got zero dollars. Now the money the producers earn could be traded for goods other producers are producing, letting the producers consume more goods.

Production is not an unlimited resource that can just be increased by increasing some party's consumption level. Increasing one group's consumption through income redistribution comes at the expense of lower consumption for another group.

[js8]

The primary motivation of UBI is not to increase production, but to change its structure so that people who are poorer are better of. After all, according to the theory, the production should already be at the peak.

My point is though, if you naively ignore V in the equation (and yes, usually it's considered to be a constant), then you might think that increasing price of labor can lead to decrease of production, because the term PY must be constant. But it's not constant if you increase V correspondingly, and so the decrease in production won't happen in UBI, even with inflation.

In practice, the production is often not at a peak, and there are savings too (not everything gets invested or consumed). Redistribution in UBI has then potential to reduce savings (because savings really make rational sense only if you're powerful enough) and through that increase the economic production in the slump.

[CryptoPunk]

>>My point is though, if you naively ignore V in the equation (and yes, usually it's considered to be a constant), then you might think that increasing price of labor can lead to decrease of production, because the term PY must be constant.

The P represents the nominal price of goods/services, which is not the same thing as the 'real' price. When V is increased, P is increased correspondingly, which means the price of everything goes up, and the faster circulating money buys the same amount as before. So Y doesn't increase if you increase P. The PY side of the equation can increase without any logical inconsistency, since it represents the nominal price of all economic output, and not the 'real value' of that output.

When PY increases without an increase Y, you're simply getting inflation, where everyone earns $2 increase of 1, but everything costs 2X as much.

Anyway, the point is that increasing V has no effect on total consumption, so there's no benefit from deliberately boosting V. If that weren't the case, you could grow the economy simply by mandating that everyone spend more, which obviously would be magical economics.

>>Redistribution in UBI has then potential to reduce savings (because savings really make rational sense only if you're powerful enough) and through that increase the economic production in the slump.

Most savings are in the form of investment. Reducing the savings rate and savings not only will make the economy more fragile to shocks, but will also reduce the investment needed for economic expansion. The ultimate source of all economic growth is investment. A policy that reduces investment is harmful to efforts to grow the economy.

[js8]

Yes, but the point of UBI is not boosting V, it's just a side-effect. The point of UBI is change in structure of production.

Also, regarding savings, according to standard theory, savings are indeed equal to investment. But I think it is wrong, because in the real world, there is a difference in reversible and irreversible actions. So I consider investment/consumption to be only irreversible actions on the world (for example, building a factory), while savings are reversible actions (buying a gold brick from someone). In the real world, it makes sense to postpone irreversible actions if possible (you can always react to others), and so investments and savings are not the same thing!

In fact, this happens in deflationary crisis, people hold money (that is, postpone irreversible decisions, and by above definition, save) in expectation that the money will gain more value. And they are effectively deadlocked, waiting for each other to make move and make irreversible decision. This is bad for economy, because economic production requires people to make irreversible decisions (to invest and consume), and so giving everybody some amount of money (especially to people who have no option than to spend, in the form of UBI) can break these deadlocks.