[dog_boxer72]

My point is that when you give the same money to everyone, you’re not making anyone more or less wealthy, you’re just fudging the numbers. Homeless people on basic income will still be homeless. Struggling families will still be struggling.

[yunwal]

As a percentage, the poor will have more money. It's pretty obvious that if there are 2 people, 1 with no money and the other with $5000, taxing everyone 20% of their wealth and redistributing it evenly makes the first person better off.

[s1artibartfast]

If there is one house, one person will still be homeless.

Ubi doesn't expand supply. You still have the same number of people fight for the house, you just bid up the price.

[yunwal]

If there are 2 houses, the second guy no longer buys his vacation home for 500. This is actually what the situation is in the US. There are more houses than people, they’re just too expensive.

[s1artibartfast]

Or guy 1 and guy 2 both have 1000 more, so guy 1 still buys the second house, and the second guy uses Ubi to pay rent.

[PaulRobinson]

That's not what the data from all the studies out there suggest. The whole of the /r/BasicIncome FAQ is worth reading, but I'll draw your attention specifically to https://pay.reddit.com/r/BasicIncome/wiki/index?v=b4ba38f6-e...

[TulliusCicero]

Well no, giving the same money to everyone should essentially compress the income spectrum, if the money is largely funded by progressive income taxes (as is usually assumed).

Richer people would end up worse off since the UBI would be less than the extra they'd pay in income taxes, but poorer people would end up better off.

Though I agree with someone elsewhere pointing out the issue with housing demand. As long as supply is rather severely constrained, a lot of the money may simply flow to landlords.

[mandmandam]

That's not remotely true, and case studies have shown this over and over again.

Poverty doesn't have to exist in the US and Canada. It's a choice to leave people trapped in these cycles, much as it's a choice to spend trillions on needless war.

[neolefty]

Presumably UBI would come from taxes. So it's wealth redistribution. It would reduce the difference between richest and poorest.

[notaustinpowers]

That's why for this to work, some level of price and rent control must be implemented nationwide. Otherwise companies/investors/builders/etc just view it as inflation and raise their prices. As we've already seen happening in America.

[snek_case]

The problem is, if you implement price controls, you're likely to end up with supply shortages. Canada grows food, but can it supply all the food needs of its entire population?

If not, then you have a situation like, suppose I'm a Mexican farmer and I can sell bananas to the US for $1.99 a pound, or to Canada for $1.25 a pound because there are price controls in Canada and they're not allowed to pay more than that. Why would I bother selling bananas to Canadians?

It's hard to control the economy like that because markets are self-regulating systems. Even if Canada controlled its entire supply of food, there are things Canada can't control, such as the price of fertilizer and farm equipment. If you put price controls on food and it's no longer economical to buy farming equipment and supplies anymore, you also end up with food shortages.

[notaustinpowers]

1) Canada accounts for 0.5% of world population, but 1.6% of food production, consuming 0.6% of food worldwide. They are self-sufficient.

A hundred years of global commercialization has proven the "self-regulating systems" idea complete garbage. We've seen food prices increase across the US and Canada far outpacing inflation under the guise of "supply chain constraints", while those same global industries are cutting workers and seeing record profit.

[TulliusCicero]

Price controls tend to backfire spectacularly. Rent control like Germany does it would probably be okay, but that's a much more moderate form than is typical in America (for places that do have rent control).

There is one fairly straightforward solution for housing, at least: lots of public housing. Ideally, modeled on successful public housing policies from places like Singapore or Vienna.

Getting lots of public housing would probably involve a lot of things that YIMBY's push for private housing too; you'd still want upzoning, you'd still want to get rid of processes that let neighbors stop developments for anything they want (eg. "it's not okay that this tall building will cast shadows"), you'd still need to get planning commission to process permits on the order of days or weeks rather than months and years, etc.