[emehex]

I don't understand UBI.

Let's say a burger costs $10. Then UBI is implemented. But not just like $1K/month UBI... $1M/year UBI... for everyone! There's no way that the burger is still $10 now. Right?

Won't the economy just soak up all the extra UBI money? So a burger will cost $1000 in world where everyone gets $1M/year? And like $20 when everyone gets $1K/month? Isn't it all just a wash?

[xboxnolifes]

UBI in a world where everyone makes roughly the same amount of money per year would be a wash. You'd just be redistributing money to people in roughly the same percent that is was taxed from them. But we do not live in that world.

And even if it does end up as a complete wash, that still seems like it would lead to a better economic outcome. You'd end up with trickle-up economics. The kind that has incentives for companies to appeal to consumers, and consumers that have money to spend on goods and services.

[svieira]

> The kind that has incentives for companies to appeal to consumers, and consumers that have money to spend on goods and services.

Note that this presumes a functioning market (free or otherwise). The company store knows it is the only game in town, so it doesn't have to appeal to anyone.

[maxerickson]

Markets have a bid and an ask.

If you have robust supply and real competition, the ask should trend towards cost plus some profit, not whatever maximum price people will pay out of desperation.

[sethammons]

what does robust supply and real competition look like when everyone gets a million a year? If everyone makes a million a year, you need a lot more than what we pay today to convince people to come into work. If you want to sell a burger, you have to sell it at a profit. Ergo, you must pay more for a burger if everyone makes a million a year. You have to convince the whole supply chain to keep working. The only way we know how to do that at scale, outside of force, is money.

Now the burger cost goes up, and working people have even more money than "normie" millionaires. I imagine people are going to be more free with their money, so they pay more for the burger. And this will settle, per the law of supply and demand.

That part is obvious.

What is not clear to me is how the new price would work out. Maybe it would work out to pretty much the same relative cost it is today, but in inflated dollars. And the rest of the market is doing the same thing. And landlords know you have the money. The squeeze comes back. Cue Econ 101/102.

[maxerickson]

This discussion sort of involves magic AI doing a lot of the work. That should be cheap.

Tight control of scarce resources is certainly something that would still be an issue. Hopefully we find ways to solve it with politics instead of violence.

[ropetin]

I think you're right, and when we talk about UBI it should be expressed in what it can provide not some arbitrary number. Can it provide all required needs (housing, food, transport, entertainment, etc) or not?

[BobaFloutist]

I think of it as closer to $500/month, with supply-side government subsidies of food and housing, and then increasing taxes such that the mean person nets 0$.

[pllbnk]

Not necessarily. The government controls prices, the government assigns _everyone_ some work no matter how meaningless it is; so instead of one street sweeper we would get 10. Everybody is paid just enough to live and have work assigned to not slack (I don't believe in utopia where money is paid for doing nothing because this utopia sounds extremely dystopian). I know just a place where people lived like that for 40-something years - Soviet Union! It wasn't terrible for majority, it wasn't great either. Also, it didn't last that long because it was unsustainable.

Our AI overlords think that they will be able to just prompt their LLMs to optimize this regime and make it last but their stupid LLMs can't yet figure out whether to take a car to the carwash or to go by foot, so they are not even close to that.

What's bad for us is that they are now wealthy enough to keep dragging us into this dystopia for a while until something changes.

[DonsDiscountGas]

Only if the government funds it by printing money. If it's funded with taxes on the rich there's no reason for any inflation.