Yeah, that is a fair point. Nonetheless, at this point we are not providing them a general income and instead society will just be subsidizing rent.

I don’t like this solution because it is a pretend-solution. What are the causes of poverty? Prevent them. What are the barriers to mobility in the job market? Alleviate them.

UBI helps but in my opinion it is just sweeping the problem under the rug.

That is a fair concern to have which is why UBI isn't a cure all. There certainly can be a lot more effort put into ending poverty.

> What are the causes of poverty?

Value capture by capitalists. Perverse incentives of means-tested welfare programs. Making choices that are suboptimal from an expected value perspective because they are better from a risk perspective when you can't afford to take risks.

> Prevent them.

UBI prevents or reduces all of those causes.

> What are the barriers to mobility in the job market?

People not having the resources to take time off their current job to retrain, either via formal training program or taking temporary lower-paid work in a different field, among others.

> Alleviate them.

UBI does.

Why wouldn't the landlord raise rent to $3000 if it's clear that most of their tenants could manage to find a job on the side to cover the difference? That's what they already have to do now, right?

Because like any other price gouging circumstances, attorneys general can get involved, city councils, county, state... if landlords in particular want to start charging more than the market can bear that can be stopped.

I don't get why this one fear "omg rents will skyrocket!" gets trotted out as The Reason UBI will fail.

The issue is that the market can bear it.

Because that would require all landlords in every place anyone would want to live to coordinate with each other, and to also coordinate with builders to not build more housing in places people want to live to not build new housing. $1,000 per month, at a 3% interest rate, would support around a $400,000 mortgage. That's getting into the territory where you can custom-build a house, and is several times the cost of a pre-fab house. Two people on $1,000 / month each could cover cost of living somewhere cheap, and if rents get high enough in places where jobs exist, some people will just entirely opt out of working and go buy a house where stuff is cheap, which reduces demand in impacted areas.

Prices will go up by some percentage of the basic income amount, but that percentage will be less than 100% of the difference. The landlord might raise rent from $1000 to $1600, but not to $3,000.

I understand that, in reality, the rent increase will probably not be 100% of the maximum possible theoretical increase that the current tenants could handle. In reality, it will be some fraction of that.

But what I am saying is that theoretical value for the new rent amount in that pricing model is $3000, not $2000 like the other poster was saying. Thus their arguments don't work.