| The inflation question is the most common > https://medium.com/basic-income/wouldnt-unconditional-basic-... > basic income is not the idea of printing $3 trillion new dollars every year and dropping it on everyone from helicopters. > The money for a basic income guarantee would be already existing money circulated through the economic system. It would not be new money, just money shifted from one location to another. This means that the value of each dollar has not changed. The dollar itself has only changed hands. > Rising rent is a particularly worrisome fear for many when first introduced to the idea of basic income. However, two very important things in particular need to be understood when it comes to housing. > There are five times more vacant homes than homeless people in the United States today. This represents a large unused supply that need only be made available. The reason many people are not living in these homes is because they were at one time but couldn’t afford to keep them. Basic income rectifies this and puts people back in homes. > Technology represents a major factor in future housing prices, especially a future where everyone has a basic income. Everyone will receive a monthly check to afford rent, and will want to spend as little of it as possible on rent. Meanwhile, owners will want to compete for this money with other owners. |
This sort of disingenuous statistic makes it very difficult to take the rest seriously. Just like there is frictional and non-frictional unemployment, there is frictional and non-frictional home vacancy.
Suppose I sell my house and move out the week before the buyer moves in. The house is vacant, right? But it is not vacant in a way that is useful for housing the unhoused. The house will be occupied again in a week, and an it needs to be cleaned before the new owners take possession.
The same thing happens for apartments: Old tenant moves out, landlord cleans up the place and puts it back on the market. It's technically vacant for a period of time while the apartment is cleaned and repaired, but (again) not in a way that is useful for providing shelter to people who are without homes.
> This represents a large unused supply that need only be made available.
This "frictional" vacancy actually makes up the vast majority of vacant homes. It can't be usefully repurposed as a permanent or semi-permanent place for people to live. The other problem is that the geographic distribution of "actually-vacant" homes may not match the geographic distribution of people who need homes, and asking people to move is a live wire in an discussion about homelessness.
Circling back to the broader point about inflation: You haven't addressed it in any credible way. In particular, even if it were true that there is a vast, untapped supply of housing, I see no reason that landlords won't increase rent by approximately the monthly amount of UBI. After all, they're happy with whatever the real vacancy rate is today, and everyone would have the means to pay an additional $UBI_MONTHLY per month.
Why would landlords suddenly change their tune and leave money on the table?