Re:Sam Altman and Andrew Yang talk UBI
by AnthonyMouse on Wednesday January 01, 2020 @11:51AM
(#21928884)
No need for melodrama. People often sell a big house and buy a small house when they retire and then use the difference to live on, but reducing housing scarcity makes both costs go down. Which means the reduction in the difference (surplus) is less than the total reduction in the price of the housing, and is a net benefit to the country overall. Meanwhile housing costs have knock on effects for all other costs, so they go down too. Having lower costs is a major benefit for people on a fixed income.
Reducing housing costs helps the indigent elderly at least as much as it does the average person. Who it hurts is the affluent elderly who own a big mansion and would get whacked harder than usual by a reduction in its value, but I'm not sure why I'm supposed to have a lot of sympathy for rich people trying to profit from artificial scarcity.
To me it feels both politically impossible, morally unjustifiable, and socially bullshit. "Get too many people very angry for no benefit at all".