Also, I suspect the formula you intend is X + max(UBI - X, 0)—or, more simply max(UBI, X). Consider what your formula does for pension < UBI.
A UBI that pays a portion of a living wage might be a very good idea, but it's not going to allow the majority of Americans to lay on their butts all day watching TV and eating cheesy poofs.
Some you can get rid of, others you shouldn't. Even if you have UBI, some medical procedure might cost an individual more than they are getting in 10 years. So a proper healthcare system is still important.
I'm a Canadian and basically think you all need to fix your healthcare system anyways, but for simplicities sake I'll just declare that to not be part of what I meant by the rest.
If Americans want UBI, they'll either get it with the repeal of the minimum wage, medicare, medicaid, federal student loans and the complete privatization of healthcare - basically the dismantling of the entire social safety net with the exception of programs to aid the military and agriculture - or else opponents will sabotage what futile efforts are made the way they did the ACA, and then work to repeal it as soon as possible.
As long as UBI is payed for via taxes and not deficit spending than the money supply isn't changing. And as economists say, inflation is a monetary phenomenon.
Supply & demand aren't radically changing either. America's poor eat too much, not too little. And while there are homeless people in America, most sleep in shelters.
If anything, you might expect the price of the cheapest staples and crappiest housing to go down as UBI enables the poor to upgrade their food and housing.
You'd be surprised.
https://www.npr.org/2012/12/06/166666265/why-some-homeless-c...
If everyone has another x+12,000 dollars, the amount of money available for low income housing has strictly increased. Landlords are then in a position to raise prices proportionally.
The "America's poor eat too much" line is also not strong. You might argue that they eat the wrong things; this is the food desert/education argument that's commonly made. Regardless there is already artificial price fixing of many staple foods like milk and bread, which is a much better argument.
Not really.
First, if landlords go to charge more they are increasing the attractiveness of using housing more efficiently. If everyone is getting an extra $1k/mo and landlords are charging an extra $1k/mo, then I'm saving an extra $500/mo when a friend and I decide to room together. For some people this will make the difference in their decision making, and this will increase the number of available units and put downward pressure on prices. From this dynamic alone, we should still expect prices to rise, but less (and likely much less) than the full amount.
Second, we're not really constrained on "supply of housing" at a national scale. We're constrained on supply of "housing where someone wants to live". "Where someone wants to live" comprises a lot of factors, many differing by the individual, but "sufficiently close to ability to make sufficient income" is usually a big part of it. A UBI directly increases our supply of "housing sufficiently close to ability to make sufficient income" which would now be competing against existing stock.
You're contradicting yourself through sloppy thinking. If everyone has another x+12,000 dollars, the money supply has increased. That's the definition of money supply.
It's also a total strawman and not what UBI proposes to do. For example, my wife and I make about $150,000 combined. UBI would basically do nothing for us because of the taxes we'd pay to support it. If anything we'd have less money, not $12,000 more.
The only people who'd have $12,000 more are the totally unemployed and homeless.
The point of UBI isn't that everyone gets more money, it's that everyone is guaranteed to have the means not to starve or be homeless at a minimum.
People who support UBI (including myself) do so not because they would have more money (as stated, I personally would almost certainly lose money), but because they would have less RISK. That's what UBI really does. It lowers the risk of life choices and gives people the freedom to make choices that otherwise they could not have made.
If I'm one of the lucky (which so far, I have been), UBI does nothing for me. But if tomorrow I'm crippled in a car accident and can no longer work, UBI guarantees a certain minimum standard of living.
UBI is a transfer of money from the wealthy, who would have used it to buy filet mignon or something, to the poor, who would likely use it to buy food and shelter. One should expect the prices of food and shelter to rise, relative to other products.
I already live a better, more comfortable life than any Roman emperor ever did. We have the means to ensure that no one in our society suffers in destitution, by a vast margin, and that margin increases continuously as automation of menial work proceeds over time.
Not doing so because it might not be "optimally efficient" according to some arbitrary metric is inhuman.
then you have a money supply issue.
You do realize that is self-contradictory, right? More people buying X means the price of X goes up, not down. (Modulo a bunch of factors that probably don't apply to housing and staples.)
Not unless you are providing means-tested relocation assistance (which is against the spirit of UBI), and ignoring that UBI and the associated taxes to fund it will:
(1) reduce CoL in high CoL areas and,
(2) raise CoL in low CoL areas.
And assisted relocation actually magnifies this effect.
The rest of the money people spend is to bring their existing wealth with them, something that society doesn't need to assist with.
I suppose they would have an account number within the organization that is distributing the money, but that's not quite the same thing, and surely has less overhead.
Keep in mind that when you are counting per person that means you are allocating that much for people not in the workforce like children too. A 4 person household is getting $50,000/year with the above number.
Expecting people who are just living on a UBI to move somewhere with a low cost of living also seems reasonable to me, I suspect you could substantially slash even the $12,000/person/year number and still have it be sufficient.
I also think that a partial UBI (e.g. $3000/year) would likely be nearly as beneficial as a full one, but it does increase overhead costs because then you can't get rid of the rest of the social services.
(Other people have addressed the fact that a comparison to GDP isn't valid because of taxes).
> not counting in any overhead / administrative costs to give out the handouts.
These costs are negative, in the sense that it allows us to remove the other low income services with much greater overhead.