[scarmig]

> What's stopping prices from rising accordingly?

Prices for different basic necessities will rise, but not enough to counteract the value of the UBI itself. The exact amount depends on the particular price elasticities of the good in question. Everyday food is likely to be relatively minimally impacted, while low-income housing would be much moreso. In broad strokes, you'd see prices rise (to different extents) on goods low-income people disproportionately purchase, but not enough to consume the majority of the UBI grant. This isn't a particularly difficult thing to predict.

> How will the ~$3T yearly UBI bill be paid for?

This is the much more significant issue. I'm not sure why you discount shuffling the current budget around: because of e.g. Social Security, you already have a funding stream for most seniors' UBI. Beyond that, you'd need an broad array of steep taxes (compared to today) to pay for it. 24% of current US GDP goes toward taxation. Bump it by ~15% which brings us to the level of hellholes like Germany, Belgium, and Denmark and you get >2 trillion dollars.

The exact basket of taxes used matters, but would undoubtedly be the result of a complicated political negotiation. It's fair to reserve judgment until you get the actual set of revenue streams, but obviously whatever I tell you here is meaningless until you get to the sausage making of real-life federal legislation.

[jjeaff]

Except social security is already not solvent and will require additional money / taxes to prop it up. So I don't think we can just meet that out.