[iammisc]

Hey... I'm not tricking anyone. I used a term that was related to work I was currently doing. It's not the best term, you're right. But my meaning was quite clear.

If you base UBI on cost of living, and cost of living depends on UBI, then you find yourself in a feedback loop. My use of turing complete was not really accurate, but it was the context my mind was in when writing this comment.

I make mistakes and sometimes speak unclearly. No need to be pedantic.

[the_benno]

Your meaning was indeed clear but I find your reasoning flawed and the cargo-cult intellectualism... silly and pretentious.

The main flaw, to me, is the 1:1 correspondence you draw between the magnitude of UBI-style benefits and cost of living. That may be true (at least under some simplified/idealized econ101 assumptions) if UBI was the sole source of money in the economy, but that's obviously not the case. The crux of the "UBI doesn't cause spiraling inflation" argument is that UBI accounts for a sufficiently small fraction of total incomes that its benefit (greater spending power for lower incomes, and the downstream economic benefits of that spending) outweighs its nonzero but noncrippling inflationary effect.

That is, though the $10 cash benefit you describe may of course increase COL, it does so by some amount between $0 and $10 that is influenced by all sorts of factors you're glossing over.

[iammisc]

I dunno what cargo-cult intellectualism is. Contrary to what it may seem, I rarely read economics blogs / political philosophy, etc.

It just seems obvious to me that if you increase everyone's income by $10, price of goods will go up by $10.

> The crux of the "UBI doesn't cause spiraling inflation" argument is that UBI accounts for a sufficiently small fraction of total incomes that its benefit (greater spending power for lower incomes, and the downstream economic benefits of that spending) outweighs its nonzero but noncrippling inflationary effect.

How could you have greater spending power if we agree that UBI's inflationary effect is proportional to its amount. The moment you give the money out, the spending power goes down.

In my view, this will just lead to the rich getting richer, because companies end up providing the services people will pay money for, and these profits go into the pockets of the rich, who don't really need the money for life necessities, so instead use it as capital.

The poor are no better off and are incentivized to spend the money because of inflationary effects (saving the money results in it having less spending power when they want to sell it), while the rich have no incentive to spend the money since they're already wealthy.

> That is, though the $10 cash benefit you describe may of course increase COL, it does so by some amount between $0 and $10 that is influenced by all sorts of factors you're glossing over.

Can you identify, name, and explain those factors. You accuse me of 'glossing over' some factors in my 'simple' explanation, while you yourself do not identify any of the factors that supposedly would not cause COL to increase.

[the_benno]

Sure: literally everything past the first chapter of any microeconomics textbook. Come on, your position is "it just seems obvious", so I'll just say that it _is_ obvious that economics -- a social science full of interconnected and confounding factors -- is not so simple as "if everyone has 10 more dollars then everyone's cost of living goes up by exactly 10 dollars."

[iammisc]

Again, why don't you share your wisdom?

[the_benno]

My "wisdom" is that microeconomics is complicated... Hardly a controversial statement. I was being serious about a microecon text, but wikipedia would work just fine too.

I'm not on here to argue with people and it seems you have some sort of ideological bone to pick, so this is going to be my last reply. All the best