| 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. |