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• Dran_Arcana@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  They probably would. As the value of a dollar drops disproportionate to the value of goods/services, the cost in dollars for the same good/service goes up.

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• OldWoodFrame@lemm.ee ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  That only works if literally every landlord is conspiring together. If they’re not, then people will flock to the landlords that don’t increase the price, or only increase a little. Meanwhile, you think car salesmen will see an extra $1000/mo and not try to take advantage? Why do you think landlords will successfully take all $1000 and nobody else will get a penny?

  Everyone will try to get that $1000/mo, but they will have to compete with each other and the people with the money are rational actors who will pick the best use for their funds.

  Meanwhile, the question of whether it’s inflationary will depend on where the money comes from. If it’s matched by a tax that pulls money out of the system at the same time the UBI puts money in, then it won’t be inflationary it will just redistribute wealth from the taxed (in every plan I’ve seen, the wealthy) to everyone else.

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  • LodeMike@lemmy.today ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Weren’t we just told that they were literally conspiring together via that software “tool”?

    But you’re right it won’t immediately go to landlords. It’ll raise prices all around which is fine.

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• SanndyTheManndy@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I think everyone already had a taste of UBI from the covid stimulus checks that raised the costs of everything.

  The correct answer is to guarantee food, medicine, shelter, and education. This provides a bottomline for all other sellers and keeps prices down as well.

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  • AgentRocket@feddit.de ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    That’s not what happened. During Covid, stuff got scarce, because supply chains got interrupted (e.g. by lockdowns in China). People still wanted/needed that stuff though and the ones that could afford it paid more money for it. the companies just “forgot” to lower the prices again after covid, since everyone got kind of used to the higher prices.

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• PhlubbaDubba@lemm.ee ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Some would but then immediately lose the competitive edge to those that don’t, and there’s enough of them that some will break ranks even if they tried to form a trust over it

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• then_three_more@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  The fact that the landlord is also getting an extra 1000 a month means they’ll be less incentivised to put up the price. Also market forces, it’d just take a couple of landlords to have some morals, or prioritise having their properties filled to keep prices down.

  With the restaurant example market forces again. If the shitty big chain restaurant put up their prices and the nice local restaurant didn’t then suddenly they’ll see more people going to them. It would also make it really easy for shitty chain B to undercut shitty chain A.

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  • muddybulldog@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    “it’d just take a couple of landlords to have some morals”

    So much for that idea.

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    • then_three_more@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      As I said ‘or prioritise keeping their properties filled’

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• scroll_responsibly@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Yes. That is correct.

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• BeautifulMind@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  This is where windfall taxes come back into basic utility. Also it becomes the basis for antitrust action on price collusion if all the sellers coordinate

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• Zippy@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  A better question is, would more houses get built and if so, who would build those houses? If not, and there are more people needing houses than houses available, do you not think that the extra money would mean people would be willing to pay more?

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• wjrii@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Yes, but the idea is that UBI money still spends, and there’s still overall much more money than that in the economy, so there should be a floor for the housing and food that a UBI will buy you, even if housing and food use up most or all of it.

  Kind of like how increasing a rocket’s size increases its fuel need increases its size some more, anyone implementing UBI needs to make logical guesses about the amount of inflation and knock-on effects and try to accommodate them, but the idea is to make sure no one is flat broke and starving even if it doesn’t really lift people out of poverty directly. SOMEBODY will fill the market niche for people seeking housing and food on UBI, and it will be up to the government to ensure they meet minimum health standards and to incentivize/mandate enough of it. Also, any UBI system probably also needs to have a very graceful downward curve (if you have one at all) as other income increases, so that people will be willing to work to supplement it rather than fearing that they have to choose between UBI and backbreaking labor in exchange for “UBI plus a dollar.”

  UBI is not a magic bullet, but it is a sort of quick and dirty social safety net that inserts the government’s money into the system without the political and administrative overhead of running housing etc. programs itself. Theoretically that might mean things happen more efficiently, and if it’s more than the literal bare minimum to live then it also affords a certain amount of agency to the people on it to use their remaining resources how they see fit, but it could go really wrong too. You still need regulation and the power to adjust amounts to ensure that the UBI people receive is adequate for the intended purpose, and a bad UBI program could be run in a way where a government uses it as an excuse to simply abdicate any further responsibility for its people’s well being.

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  • snooggums@midwest.social ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Why don’t we need to do the same level of overthinking for tax breaks?

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    • wjrii@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      To a certain extent we do, and frankly if UBI ever comes to the US it will probably be in the form of a Tax Credit. While most of us on Lemmy would probably agree the end result is grossly inadequate, the weird soup of taxes, credits, and deductions is the result of generations of politicians working the most accessible levers to manipulate economic policy, occasionally even with decent intentions.

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• punkwalrus@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I can see that being very possible. You see this when taxes are levied to “improve something” and then that money doesn’t go to that something in a directly helpful way. And then the budget that is the main staple of survivability of that something is kept static because of the “new influx.”

  For example, say that you have a toll road increase to help the infrastructure of your roads. Say your Annual Budget for Transportation is $50mil for 2021. In 2022, you requested $60mil. You decide to implement tolls in new ways and increase tolls in other ways (like fines, mileage taxes, and so on) to make up that shortfall. This brings in an additional $10mil, let’s say, in 2022. The revenue is forwarded to 2023. But in 2023, you actually need $80mil because of the two years of shortfalls where it stayed at $50mil, yet costs continued to increase. That $10mil from 2022 now puts you $10 mil behind in 2023. The fact that the previous budget needed steady increases were ignored because “well, we’ll just make things more expensive to make up 2022’s shortfalls of the $60mil request.”

  That’s IF that $10mil isn’t siphoned for other things. Fresh money brings fresh ways to spend it. Grifters via backroom contracts to “fix roads” that go over budget with nothing to show for it. So these new fees and increases actually made things worse due to no oversight.

  So yeah, I could totally see UBI being siphoned off by similar things.

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• vikinghoarder@infosec.pub ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Wouldn’t ubi make more sense if it were more like stamps for necessary things to live: food, clothing, materials, etc?

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  • FaceDeer@fedia.io ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    One of the big benefits of UBI is its simplicity, that would remove that.

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  • snooggums@midwest.social ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    We have those, and the administration and oversight to nitpick every penny sucks a ton of money out of the funding pool to make sure it goes to the ‘right people’ for the ‘right things’. UBI reduces the overhead to just making sure everyone gets it until they die.

    People will spend money on necessary things because they are necessary. We can easily assume that their UBI is being spent appropriately, because doing so is necessary before taking into account any other income they might have.

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  • themeatbridge@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Every single study that compared the benefits of directed support vs cash has found that cash is far more effective at helping people escape poverty, even when you account for fraud and substance abuse. Most poor people are poor because of circumstances, not bad decisions.

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• spankinspinach@sh.itjust.works ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  [deleted]

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  • DontTreadOnBigfoot@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    The US already has that, in the form of various welfare programs (section 8 housing, SNAP food assistance, Medicaid, etc), although the earnings cap on those tend to be well below 60k.

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  • ninpnin@sopuli.xyz ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    If you give everybody money, demand will not increase across the board. Demand of necessary products will go up while demand for luxury goods will go down, as those in more need will be doing a higher proportion of the spending than before. This will allocate more resources to necessary services instead of luxury goods. This won’t increase pricing indiscriminately across the board–it probably won’t even increase prices at all if the financing comes from taxes or some other “real” source.

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• Blackmist@feddit.uk ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  No because the entire tax system would be rebalanced so the average person is no better off.

  The point of UBI is to raise the income of the very bottom of the ladder and take it from those at the top, while simultaneously dismantling all the other benefits systems.

  But build more houses anyway because that’s the root of all issues.

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• yarr@feddit.nl ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  One thing that shouldn’t be ignored is most UBI proposals remove the current means-based welfare in the USA. So, as many people go on the UBI list, many others would disappear off the welfare lists, which means there probably wouldn’t be as much disruption as you are expecting. If the UBI is implemented as a negative income tax, some people’s net may change even less.

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• Pika@sh.itjust.works ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Yes they would, that is why I am for UBI however not without harsh restrictions on rental or mortgage costs in regards to the UBI. I’m not concerned for normal prices but, I know rental and housing costs will rise in comparison. Needs restrictions before implementation

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• MrEff@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Hot take here and I would love discussion- but this is a small reason why I am against a full UBI in cash, but want UBI in voucher form with only a small portion in cash. Vouchers limit potential inflation spill over from sectors and you can now control how much people are getting depending on factors to better and more fairly suit their situations. This is also why I am a huge fan of “food stamps” or food welfare programs. This is essentialy what they are doing already, just make it universal. Then we look at things like housing vouchers, another great program that we can now just scale up and make universal as well. Then you only need to give a smaller cash handout for incidental spending. You know people are going to have to spend money on housing and food, so make those the priorities for funding vouchers and you can put rules in place to minimize inflation within those industries. Then if you have people who are well of enough to not need the full voucher, let them convert the voucher over to cash at a penalty rate, say 2 to 1 for cash, or some progressive scale for remaining money. They don’t need the money as much, but you also don’t want them to be completely left out unfairly and have them resentful of the system. This could even expand into other industries or normal costs. Transportation, cable/internet, cell service, even some insurance (like car, rental, umbrella- assuming that if you are at a level of providing UBI, you are already providing universal health care). Now for each voucher you can make it needs and situation based and evaluate a fair amount for each person through an automated system depending on some quick metrics of their life. Each voucher system is also industry specific with its own oversight and regulations and inflation reductions built into it. I think it would be a better system and am open to others thoughts.

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  • fireweed@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Holy crap that’s complex. And for what? We know that the more complicated a system is the more prone it is to loopholes and abuse. If you’re a single parent working three jobs, or a foster kid who just aged out of the system and are newly on your own, or mentally disabled, or undereducated, or simply trying to keep your shit together while trying to deal with something like addiction or mental illness or recent homelessness or what have you, you’re undoubtedly going to be leaving a shitload of money on the table by not having the time/energy/wherewithal to fully take advantage of this convoluted system, even though you’re part of the exact population that needs the most assistance. UBI experiments (and similar examples from the charity world) have been pretty clear: just give people the fucking cash, no strings, no fine print, no hoops, and that will have the best result for the recipients, and the least overhead for the givers.

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    • MrEff@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Thanks for the reply, I was hoping to generate more discussion. It looks like you were the only one…

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• realcaseyrollins ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Yes. This is why prices rise when a currency's circulated volume increases.

  I understand the heart behind a UBI, but it wouldn't work long-term.