Re:Universal Basic Income is 'best way to distribute equity ...
by basch on Thursday June 20, 2019 @05:35PM
(#20237618)
Why would the value of those plummet? Wouldnt the opposite happen? Did insurance prices fall, did insurance stock prices fall, when the government mandated insurance purchases? Do college prices fall when easy access to loans become more available? I dont follow how a free subsidy would lead to less of a crop? Do corn subsidies lead to less corn? The government would be paying rice producers for all the rice people choose to consume. The loser in that scenario is the tax payer who pays a lot and doesnt eat rice.
If anything, the argument against it would be picking and choosing industry winners: pistachio, avocado, cheese, meat markets would find it unfair.
The next inclination would naturally be to say "Well, you just force the growing of rice, beans, potatoes, and broccoli." You have now landed on a planned economy, which doesn't work very well.
So healthy staples can't actually be "free for all". I do think that providing the food directly for people who need it would be a better idea, but you get associated issues of government price-fixing and dumping of lower quality food-stuffs.
Federalism is all about experimentation. One of the features is to permit the autonomy for local governments to attempt local solutions to the specifics of the problem as it is faced locally. There may be something to be said for a central (federal) facilitation of local programs, but this almost always takes the form of funding.