Re:Universal Basic Income is Capitalism 2.0
by ethanbond on Thursday July 30, 2020 @07:37AM
(#23996945)
Straightforward answer: It would make the value prop worse because the prices would go up.
Companies can go ahead and pay more to keep them. You know what happens then? Prices go up more.
Where is all this capital flowing to? Landlords. Who didn’t pay for UBI, didn’t build the infrastructure, didn’t employ those people.
Re:Universal Basic Income is Capitalism 2.0
by ubercow13 on Thursday July 30, 2020 @07:44AM
(#23996987)
I can't imagine rent prices in SF are determined by service worker wages at all at the moment.
Re:Universal Basic Income is Capitalism 2.0
by ethanbond on Friday July 31, 2020 @10:03AM
(#24008662)
Prices would go up for everyone, making the value prop worse for everyone.
Re:Universal Basic Income is Capitalism 2.0
by ubercow13 on Friday July 31, 2020 @03:09PM
(#24012616)
Rents are high in SF because there is extremely high demand for those apartments at high prices, because they allow access to high incomes. The value of living in SF for a random serivce worker is not increased by them getting a $2k UBI cheque, it is decreased. For the tech workers driving the demand, $2k a month is not going to do much to change the value they assign to housing in SF either way. So I do not see how the UBI cheques would increase demand, and therefore rent, for housing in SF.
The value proposition for service workers in high-COL cities like SF is probably already bad. How would UBI make it worse? At least it'd be easier to move away from those areas. Maybe cities would have to pay serivce workers more to make sure they stay.