Re:Pandemic speeds largest test yet of universal basic income
by derefr on Friday July 10, 2020 @05:34PM
(#23796768)
The real exploitation wouldn't come from individuals, but rather real-estate developers, who would see an opportunity to build communities with absurdly-high costs of living (due to e.g. being built in the middle of nowhere with everything needing to be imported, like Dubai), where the government would basically pay people to live there, by increasing their UBI commensurate to the increased costs of being there vs. somewhere else. Unlike now, there'd be no disincentive to moving somewhere "more expensive" — you'd be given exactly as much money as you need to balance those expenses!
You'd also get the same sort of wealth-transfer effect that you get when people move from poor countries to rich countries to gain access to rich clients who pay more for the same service; or, for that matter, when people move from the rest of the US to SV (but with the government, in this case, taking the place of FAANG.) Namely, that most of the goods that people want aren't inelastic-demand goods priced in "percentage of income relative to the norm for this market" terms; but rather are priced in absolute, static dollars.
This means that in a low cost-of-living area, saving 10% of your UBI could buy you crappy clothes and a crappy car. While, in a high cost-of-living area, saving 10% of your UBI could buy you nice clothes and a nice car, and maybe a boat and a new phone every year, too. Who, then, wouldn't want to live in a high cost-of-living area? You don't have to do any more work, or have any more skills; you just have to choose to live in a "basic" big-city apartment instead of a "basic" small-town detached house.
Which, of course, means that everybody would move to these places, and their housing markets would halt and catch fire from the overburden of all these people trying to cram into them. It'd change an equilibrium of regional housing prices into a rich-get-richer one-directional reaction. And probably cause hyperinflation besides, as the government would have to print money to pay everyone's rent, as the rents in high-cost-of-living cities would rise exponentially as infinite demand meets finite capacity.
You'd also get the same sort of wealth-transfer effect that you get when people move from poor countries to rich countries to gain access to rich clients who pay more for the same service; or, for that matter, when people move from the rest of the US to SV (but with the government, in this case, taking the place of FAANG.) Namely, that most of the goods that people want aren't inelastic-demand goods priced in "percentage of income relative to the norm for this market" terms; but rather are priced in absolute, static dollars.
This means that in a low cost-of-living area, saving 10% of your UBI could buy you crappy clothes and a crappy car. While, in a high cost-of-living area, saving 10% of your UBI could buy you nice clothes and a nice car, and maybe a boat and a new phone every year, too. Who, then, wouldn't want to live in a high cost-of-living area? You don't have to do any more work, or have any more skills; you just have to choose to live in a "basic" big-city apartment instead of a "basic" small-town detached house.
Which, of course, means that everybody would move to these places, and their housing markets would halt and catch fire from the overburden of all these people trying to cram into them. It'd change an equilibrium of regional housing prices into a rich-get-richer one-directional reaction. And probably cause hyperinflation besides, as the government would have to print money to pay everyone's rent, as the rents in high-cost-of-living cities would rise exponentially as infinite demand meets finite capacity.