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by nostrademons 2713 days ago
I'm also worried about inflation. If you give everyone $X/month to spend on essentials but the supply of those essentials doesn't change, then a very likely outcome is that the price of essentials, in aggregate, will go up by $X/month.

We already see some of this with student loans. The government decided that education is important, so it created federally-backed student loans that anyone can apply for, and effectively increased the amount of money available for education by a large amount. Some of this did go into increasing the number of kids that could go to college, but much of it just went into increasing the price of education. Plus, the supply of good jobs didn't really go up by much, so all those extra kids who went to college are now fighting over the same jobs they would've gotten in the first place, just with crushing debt burdens.
4 comments
fulltrottle 2711 days ago
+1 on this also. I'm not sure how this would play out. The prices might just normalize for the middle class, as if they ended up getting no UBI at all. But if rent and food prices go up across the board then it'll be as if it has no effect at all.

The upside is that the UBI will still support people that end up with financial shocks -- something unexpected happening in their lives. That little bit could help a lot

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wmf 2713 days ago
People keep saying that UBI will replace wages at the low end so those people won't have more money to spend. But for the middle class there will be inflation.
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TeMPOraL 2713 days ago
I'm still worried about this, and I can't get anyone to sketch a model showing this would not be the case (but see below, maybe it's way too easy to sketch a model showing anything you want).

Closest I got to seeing a counterargument is me vs. JoeAltmaier a couple of weeks ago:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18569493

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aklemm 2711 days ago
Yes, this is my main concern as well, and I haven't seen a satisfying answer to it. I'm bullish on UBI anyway because it answers a lot of questions of how to handle poverty and what to do with our societal wealth, but this one unanswered and fundamental question remains.
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