[PaulDavisThe1st]

I am a progessive state government.

I am considering legislation for the next fiscal year.

I have come to learn that 100% of private landlords have increased their rents by the full amount of the UBI we introduced last year.

I ban private rentals and/or private ownership of homes and/or introduce strict rent control policies (depending on precisely how progressive we're feeling this year).

Congrats, mission accomplished.

[estearum]

Yes! Excellent work. Now there is no incentive for anyone to build housing for our growing population!

[EGG_CREAM]

I am a progressive government. The free market has failed to provide a necessary service. So now I pass a law that creates a not for profit contractor that builds houses. It’s not that complicated. We do it with fire departments, police, and many other services already. Free market might have been more efficient theoretically, but when it fails in practice we find another solution.

[bequanna]

So in this version of the future, everyone lives in government housing?

[lejalv]

You might be interested to check out the Viennese model - Approximately 220,000 municipal flats and 200,000 subsidized dwellings form the backbone of Vienna's housing system, housing about 50% of the population.

Prices in Vienna are so much more affordable than in comparable European cities - Munich, Hamburg, Berlin to speak of Germany, not to say Madrid, Paris, Barcelone, Milano.

[pizza]

In Singapore it seems 80% of people live in public housing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_housing_in_Singapore though I can't speak as to what the effect is on its housing market

[clarkmoody]

Own nothing, be happy

[t0bia_s]

UBI is perfect tool to make citizens obey to state. You'll always vote for your breadwinners.

Why, instead of centralised planned economy that failed ans killed millions people many times in history, not just lowering taxes and let people to decide how spend their capital individually? Game theory applied on UBI sounds really like an ugly idea.

[EGG_CREAM]

UBI is the opposite of centralized planning. Instead of the state deciding what resources people need, and who “deserves” help, it leaves it up to individuals to decide how best to divvy up resources, and everybody gets it.

As for tools that make citizens obey, the government already has the best one: a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence. Everything else is child’s play compared to that.

[t0bia_s]

So why UBI from involuntary collected money of taxpayers, instead of lowering taxes? Whats the benefit of it and for whom?

[estearum]

Yes, so un-complicated that we're now talking about state-built housing just to make UBI do anything other than enrich landlords.

UBI is a bad idea.

State-built housing is not necessarily a bad idea.

You can just do the latter and skip the former.

[EGG_CREAM]

I kind of lost the UBI plot, to be fair. I don’t really understand what UBI actually had to do with this exercise fundamentally, the exact same thing happens with or without it, it’s just that the floor of what “affordable housing” is gets risen. Unless you think that an unfettered, UBI-less economy doesn’t produce expensive housing? Which, I think we have many real world case studies in almost every major city in rich countries to disprove that assertion.

I do see what you mean, I think, now that I’m rereading and contemplating. A monthly stipend probably does more to raise prices than anything useful, unless you also pair it with regulation to stop the wealthy and powerful from taking it all for themselves. And at that point you could have just done those regulations without UBI. Hmm.

Do you think a few lump sum payments over a citizens lifetime would have the same effect? Maybe some large sum paid when you reach age of majority and then again at retirement?

[estearum]

> A monthly stipend probably does more to raise prices than anything useful, unless you also pair it with regulation to stop the wealthy and powerful from taking it all for themselves. And at that point you could have just done those regulations without UBI.

Yes largely correct, but more specifically than "wealthy and powerful," I am referring directly to the landed class, wealthy or not. This type of infusion will ultimately be baked into the cost of land, which will propagate up to rent, then up to wages, then up to goods. The gains will accrue almost entirely to the landed class in the form of higher land rents with no symmetrical increase in costs because land itself does not incur costs.

> Do you think a few lump sum payments over a citizens lifetime would have the same effect? Maybe some large sum paid when you reach age of majority and then again at retirement?

It wouldn't have the same effect but it'd have an analogous effect in the localized markets in which those subsidies are applied. For example, you'd expect the price of land (and so rent → wages → goods) to increase where retiring people congregate. But it'd be less harmful to the exact degree that the subsidy itself is less broadly "helpful."

[Izkata]

> And at that point you could have just done those regulations without UBI. Hmm.

Rent control is already a thing, and typically good short term but bad long term: renters don't move out because they can't get such low rent elsewhere, and landlords can't afford repairs so things are left broken. It's a great way to create slums over a few generations.

[rickydroll]

https://www.kuntarahoitus.fi/en/news/affordable-social-housi...

[PaulDavisThe1st]

Por que no los dos?

[rybosworld]

Are you implying that landlords are naturally incentivized to build homes? Because in most circumstances, the exact opposite is true. In the U.S., the government has a number of programs that offer landlords vouchers in order to encourage them to build out more homes.

[estearum]

Landlords are different things from developers.

Sometimes (more rarely than people think) a single entity plays both roles, but it's impossible to reason about this space if you conflate the two

Yes, developers build homes to make money. This is how approximately 100% of the housing supply in the US was created.

[rybosworld]

I was not conflating the two - I literally meant that there are incentives in place to encourage landlords to develop new homes. I am not referring to groups whose primary interest is to develop and sell - but to develop and own.

I know a lot of landlords think they are a persecuted class that is providing a necessary service - but that largely isn't true.

Broadly you can imagine two scenarios for simplicity sake.

1) Housing supply is abundant. Landlords have to compete on service superior maintenance, better units, better locations, etc.). Renting a home behaves like any other service industry that we come to know and love.

2) Housing supply is constrained. The situation plaguing much of the modern world. Land is limited. Landlords earn a higher IRR from jacking rents than they do from buying additional units. The landlords profit from control of the access to a scare resource rather than from providing anything of value.

Plainly: rent-seeking is evil.

[PaulDavisThe1st]

Indeed, a critical problem. But wait ... what's that? You say there are places where the state builds housing? How could it be?

[estearum]

Sure but now you're not just talking about UBI, are you?

You're now talking about UBI, plus rent controls, plus state-built housing.

All to make UBI actually do anything at all other than enrich existing landlords.

Why don't we just skip the UBI and the rent controls and instead just have the state build housing?

[PaulDavisThe1st]

Because UBI is largely orthogonal to those things. It's a way of taking productivity gains and ensuring that the entire population benefits from them.

[estearum]

But... without those other changes... UBI doesn't benefit the entire population, as we've just established.

It benefits landlords.

[PaulDavisThe1st]

The broader claim that you're making is that any increase in after-tax income benefits only the rent-seeking classes (since the same argument you've made for landlords would apply to all other rent seekers, including netflix, airlines and more).

I don't know enough about economics these days to know if anyone who knows a lot about thus stuff thinks this is true, but it seems on the face of it to be absurd, since it would mean that pay raises are substantially diminished by rents paid for anything where demand is not elastic. I mean, I'm not insisting that cannot possibly be true, but it seems unlikely ...

[UncleMeat]

Of course there is an incentive to build housing. Developers build homes and then sell them to people who live in those homes.

[estearum]

Did you miss the part where GP was proposing price controls?

[PaulDavisThe1st]

In response to what is deemed to be unreasonable and/or undesirable landlord behavior ... such controls would not stop landlords from continuing to earn from their properties.

[estearum]

"Unreasonable behavior" is just "setting market prices."

Correct it wouldn't stop landlords from continuing to earn from their properties but it would destroy the incentive to produce additional housing, so nobody wins.

[UncleMeat]

Not everybody who buys a home is a landlord.

[LightBug1]

Did you just imply that landlords are incentivised to build housing for a growing population?! * scream laughs *

[estearum]

Landlords != developers

You should take some time to understand this extremely basic distinction before forming such strong conclusions.

[LightBug1]

Maybe, but I had a good laugh at the implication, and now how you've stretched your reasoning, so I'm ok with it. Thanks.