[ChrisLomont]

I'd be pro UBI, but I've never seen the math where it works without violating one of: 1) insane tax rates that traditionally kill economies, 2) lower benefits for those most in need, or 3) simply wanting richer to hand money to poorer so they can not work much.

As such, I'm much more in favor of targeted assistance to make the most use out of limited resources.

And every one I've looked into will suffer from terrible inflation, probably defeating any gains. For example, if a person is willing to work a crap job to pay rent, this will not change no matter the money scaling. Give enough free money, then rents will simply rise (along with all other things for the same reason), to absorb the excess, and the same people will still end having to do the same work to keep their standard of living.

Free money is almost always inflated away by markets.

[lovich]

I don't know that our economy and technology is actually advanced enough to handle full UBI but there are places we could start. A food allowance for everyone would be good for instance and possible. Just no checks, here's x amount of money which will buy you enough food whether or not you use it on food.

Housing is another example. We don't have more empty house than homeless people in America. We don't necessarily have more house in downtown SF or NY but if we could set up a system where you could accept a house, with no real control over where, it would relieve some pressure off of people as a number of the population would accept that offer

I agree on the free markets inflating away free money. University costs are a perfect example where demand was artificially inflated with federal student loans, but the supply was not equally increased so the price just went up. If we started providing basics I'd believe they'd have to be controlled more like a utility. We try not to let market forces control water because weve decided that basic for everyone. So we give a company some garunteed profits in exchange for them not being able to wrong every last dollar out of the economic niche. We lose some efficiency, but gain stability

Targeted assistance might help better, but it's extremely difficult for the government as a single entity to try and provide help on the demand side without constraining the actions on the supply side. The increase in beuracratic costs also eats up much of the benefit

[ChrisLomont]

>A food allowance for everyone would be good for instance and possible.

This would likely just be absorbed into inflation. It's hard to simply give people free money without prices increasing to make the time/work tradeoff for the good simply remain constant.

> you could accept a house,

If you've ever been a landlord, you'd realize people would likely destroy the properties. Many homeless are not homeless because they don't have a dwelling; they're homeless because that have fundamental other issues that make them owning and maintaining any property impossible.

>If we started providing basics I'd believe they'd have to be controlled more like a utility

Any country in history that tried to centrally plan such a large chunk of their economy failed. It's a sure way to get massive shortages and corruption and cronyism.

[lovich]

The houses wouldn't just be for homeless who do have a high incidence of mental illness, it would be for everyone. As for the food money being destroyed by inflation, it might but giving general funds are a lot more likely to stimulate consumption than a targeted stimulus like college loans.

>Any country in history that tried to centrally plan such a large chunk of their economy failed.

There's problems and it wont go perfectly but we should still try to improve everyone's lives. I also disagree that anyone who tried to centrally plan such a large chunk of the economy has failed. Look at water and electricity, those are massive industries that are centrally planned. Central planning is not as efficient as a market based economy and is not the way to grow an industry or develop new technologies. It does work better than a market based economy when it comes to uninterrupted coverage which is why it's used in the utility model

[ChrisLomont]

> it might but giving general funds are a lot more likely to stimulate consumption than a targeted stimulus like college loans.

And vastly lower on total return. Investing in education will likely increase output overall. Investing in food and alcohol and TV will not.

And consumption will not even be increased if inflation eats the money, which it likely (and historically) will. It will simply rescale the dollar to make no one better off.

>There's problems and it wont go perfectly

Ignoring that it has spectacularly failed and destroyed lives and countries is not simply "problems." Repeating things that have been demonstrated to be terrible ideas is again a terrible idea.

>but we should still try to improve everyone's lives

Then let's use targeted use of scarce resources instead of wishful thinking and ignoring history. Otherwise we repeat ideas that sound good but fail such as rent control. The things you present are not new ideas. They have been tried and failed. Ham-handed allocation of scarce resources is almost always worse than targeted allocation. This is simple economics.

>I also disagree that anyone who tried to centrally plan such a large chunk of the economy has failed.

List a country that has succeeded at planning as large a piece as you're suggesting.

>Look at water and electricity, those are massive industries that are centrally planned.

No, they are not. They are locally planned, compete with each other, trade resources, and have plenty of free-market features to trade futures, trade stocks, and compete. They are absolutely not centrally planned.

Venezuela is an example of what happened when the central government takes over such markets.

[lovich]

How often do utilities compete? I don't have a choice on water hookup and electricity has only been a choice in generators recently. Also no one has actually done UBI long term and on a large scale. At this point I feel like you are being disenguous.

If you don't like the idea of UBI and think market only solutions are better, that's fine, but this is different than the government telling everyone they're making A widgets this year instead of B widgets

[ChrisLomont]

>How often do utilities compete?

They don't often compete directly for you; the government gives them local monopoly. They compete to sell excess product on the open markets, which is why energy trading is a massive industry. By competing on that market, they indirectly compete for you, since your utilities can often buy capability from other markets. In short your pipes are limited, but the product you get from them is created in open markets, with your utility company being the last middleman in the chain to deliver goods locally. It's also why you can sell capability back into electrical grids in many places. There's a market for it.

So in that sense, probably every one of them competes.

This trading directly happens because there is no central planning. Central planning, as usual, is inferior to letting pricing determine how goods move. Your claim was this industry was an example of central planning, but it is not. Capability is not centrally planned - markets react to move goods where they are best prices by local merchants, like any other free market good. If you've never seen how this works here's an intro[1]

>Also no one has actually done UBI long term and on a large scale

If there is evidence that it fails on short term and small scale do we really need to make it bigger and longer to hurt more people before we address the reasons it fails? There have been several places that have tried portions of it, and they have matched what economic theory said would happen. At some point it needs a new idea or method before more people are subjected to historically damaging ideas.

UBI is simply welfare for more people. Those paying for it necessarily get less than with no UBI, and those getting it will receive more welfare. No UBI proposal I have seen is anything more than this - tax some people more to give others more.

There is ample evidence among countries that more welfare correlates with more people working less, and less overall productivity. Even the Canadian UBI experiments found this to be true.

When people work less, less is produced, and as a result society has less.

>At this point I feel like you are being disenguous.

About utilities? You think they're centrally planned and don't compete in markets. Both are wrong. So I don't think I'm being disingenuous - you're simply uninformed how things work. It's disingenuous to claim you understand something that you have not simply googled to see where your understanding fails, then not admitting it.

[1] https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/042115/under...