[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?

[PaulDavisThe1st]

Because lower income levels in the USA are so low that a substantial number of people do not even pay federal income tax at all. Consequently, "lowering taxes" does not deliver any money to those people. A tax credit would, but this is more or less semantically equivalent to an actual payment such as UBI.

[t0bia_s]

There is much more than just income tax.

[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?