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Re:People kept working, became healthier while on basic inco... by whatshisface on Thursday March 05, 2020 @10:44AM (#22494468)
>The problem with this argument is that it proves too much. It's true of anything that causes the poor to have more money.

Lower unemployment would be associated with a greater availability of goods and services, so that would get it out of the trap. Higher wages would also be associated with a supply increase if they came with increased productivity, but if you raised the minimum wage then prices of low-end products might actually go up. Of course, the typical supply and demand picture predicts both an increase in price and an increase in volume if the demand curve gets "richer," so you are not entirely off the mark, although your argument is not valid.

Re:People kept working, became healthier while on basic inco... by AnthonyMouse on Thursday March 05, 2020 @10:59AM (#22494666)
> Lower unemployment would be associated with a greater availability of goods and services, so that would get it out of the trap.

That's assuming the goods and services are locally consumed, which in a global economy they're commonly not.

A jet engine factory that moves in and hires a bunch of people reduces local unemployment, but that doesn't mean any of the local workers are in the market for jet engines.

> Higher wages would also be associated with a supply increase if they came with increased productivity, but if you raised the minimum wage then prices of low-end products might actually go up.

Same problem again. If a jet engine factory opens up in a place with already-low unemployment and pays better wages, people quit their lower paying jobs to take the higher paying ones, but that doesn't mean any of the productivity increase is relevant to local housing markets. The workers still aren't in the market for jet engines, but they'll bid up the local housing stock if zoning constrains any more from being built.

The premise that a UBI would increase housing costs is also basically assuming that the money comes from nowhere. If the money was printed that would be the case -- but that's an instance of "printing money causes inflation" rather than "UBI causes inflation." If it comes from collecting taxes then the people who receive it have more money, but the people who pay the tax have less, which more or less cancels out. (Especially when, as with the people in the middle, they're actually the same people and the UBI and the tax directly cancel out.)

Re:People kept working, became healthier while on basic inco... by whatshisface on Thursday March 05, 2020 @11:02AM (#22494692)
>That's assuming the goods and services are locally consumed, which in a global economy they're commonly not.

But in a global economy that's irrelevant: the greater availability of jet engines where they are used will cascade eventually into a greater availability of bowling balls in the town where they make jet engines.

Re:People kept working, became healthier while on basic inco... by AnthonyMouse on Thursday March 05, 2020 @11:34AM (#22495049)
But in this case "bowling balls" is really "whatever the workers buy with their money" -- if local housing is supply constrained so they have to spend it bidding up housing prices, they don't get so many bowling balls.

This is still a "constraining the housing supply is bad" problem, not a "higher wages are bad" problem.

Re:People kept working, became healthier while on basic inco... by nybble41 on Friday March 06, 2020 @05:35PM (#22507989)
> If [UBI] comes from collecting taxes then the people who receive it have more money, but the people who pay the tax have less, which more or less cancels out.

It doesn't cancel out because the people receiving the UBI tend to buy different goods than the people paying the tax. Fewer people bidding up prices on yachts and capital, more people bidding up basic goods and services.

Re:People kept working, became healthier while on basic inco... by SolaceQuantum on Thursday March 05, 2020 @10:53AM (#22494591)
Employment cannot solve poverty problems for the disabled, the sick, the people taking care of their children/parents/siblings/etc, or the people who are better served spending the time in getting a degree.
Re:People kept working, became healthier while on basic inco... by xyzzyz on Thursday March 05, 2020 @02:34PM (#22497214)
Employment cannot solve poverty problems for the disabled

Of course it can. Why, in the US, almost a million of disabled people stopped being disabled and entered employment in recent few years, because of good economy:

https://twitter.com/ernietedeschi/status/1230489362883678210

The truth is that millions of people on disability in the US aren't actually so disabled that they cannot work: as the above shows, they will work if they consider the employment conditions good enough. Yes, there are plenty of disabled people who really cannot work, but majority of disability in the US is created, not alleviated by Social Security. One needs to remember that by creating programs to help poor and disabled, along with helping poor and disabled, one also creates more poor and disabled.

Re:People kept working, became healthier while on basic inco... by spsful on Thursday March 05, 2020 @10:57AM (#22494635)
The only thing I would want to add is a minimum wage increase would cause employment to decrease holding all else equal, so an increase in supply would not be observed unless something else were at play.
Re:People kept working, became healthier while on basic inco... by whatshisface on Thursday March 05, 2020 @10:59AM (#22494660)
Oh, of course, I was talking about the two separate cases of wage increases due to productivity increases (the guy maintaining the widget machine makes more than the guy who used to hand-stamp widgets) and wage increases due to minimum wage increases (all factories must now pay workers $15/hour for making one $8 widget every two hours).