The point is the relative effect is has between people to counteract inequality. If Alice has a job, and Bob is unemployed and broke, Alice has infinity times the purchasing power of Bob. Bob may only need a tiny bit of purchasing power to start his economic engine and get ahead, but his battery is at 0% and he's screwed. The point is to get enough juice in the battery to start the engine. And yes, the cost might be some inflation, but predictions of inflation have lately failed: https://www.npr.org/2021/02/23/970595276/bond-voyage

The issue really is wages have been flat for nearly 50 years.

https://www.epi.org/publication/charting-wage-stagnation/

We need to fix wages, not provide handouts. I'm for helping people that need but UBI isn't the way to do that.

True, wages haven't kept up with inflation that resulted from foolhardy monetary policy. Mandating increased wages is a bandaid on a gushing wound. We cannot continue debasing our currency and hope it makes a robust economy. A thriving economy requires a stable currency. Fiat by its nature is unstable.

Gold was even less stable.

That is false. Over the long term the value of a full reserve gold backed currency is stable. When politicians print more money than they have in gold is when things start to go wonky.

I'm referring to the wild historical fluctuations in gold price that happened every time there was a gold rush, war, and / or run on gold.

How do you fix wages without gov't intervention?

Because if what you're saying is true..with any unnatural gov't interference ...there will be inflation.

(which is inaccurate by the way)

I think we are going to have inflation. But it doesn't need to be Venezuela-style.

Doesn't really answer my question.

Thankfully there are more than two people on earth and this edge case won't happen. Because many people are nearly at zero there are a number of also-poor merchants selling low-end goods, and Bob is able to trade a small amount of labour for the goods he needs, and can work his way up.

> yes, the cost might be some inflation, but predictions of inflation have lately failed

For a time, anything may remain out of sync. But you can't get more money from less workers. You can't redistribute to provide UBI, you have to print it, and that devalues the currency.

Even sillier, most UBI proposals are tied to a consumer index, such that when the currency was devalued you would print and distribute more, but with zero concern for the actual workers whose salaries are not also being inflated to match. Eventually the premium for working will be small enough that you'd be a fool for having a job.

And of course "predictions of inflation have lately failed". Because nobody is giving out UBI on a large enough scale. It's suicide. Even tax-and-spend bread-and-circus providing pols still want to be in power next year, so there's a limit to what they can print, and how widely they can distribute it.

Great, so give Bob a scholarship, or a grant, or welfare, or just a gift. Something that gives him that hand-up but without turning into a permanent right.

If UBI becomes a right, and you raise a generation who doesn't need to work, what do you do when there's a recession? Cut UBI and watch the riots start? Or drive off the cliff at speed because the non-working class can't be denied?

During a recession, we eat the rich.

But Carl, the rich are where UBI comes from!

relevant username

Where does the UBI money come from? How do we pay for UBI?

In year 1, Bob has extra money. By year 3 Bob's rent goes up. Did Bob's UBI go up proportionally to his rent? After a few years, Bob ends up in the same place - unless we keep injecting more money over time, which creates inflation.

Actually, inflation is not as simple as you have described it. There is a great NPR's Planet Money episode touching the waters of why the inflation does not behave as we think it is [1].

[1] https://www.npr.org/2021/01/20/958854717/modern-monetary-the...

The newer episode, which I linked to in the grandparent of your comment, is also fascinating.

The money, as always, is made by a combination of the machines which actually do all of the required production, and the treasury, which prints little game tickets you can use to make other people dance for you.

Like most social-engineering plans the solution is more social-engineering - price controls, standardized rent, etc.

In theory, the cool thing about UBI is that you can dismantle all that other stuff and just have the one safety net that covers everybody, replacing the piecemeal safety nets that are supposed to catch people in certain situations.

Yeah, it lessens the risk of falling through those nets and is probably cheaper, per dollar dispensed, to administrate.

You avoided the questions.

well those are simple questions to answer. MORE TAXES!

Turtles all the way down?

The people you're talking to literally believe you can print value.

> The money, [...] the treasury, which prints little game tickets you can use to make other people dance for you.

They think there's a printer somewhere, and some jerk sitting next to it who just won't print enough money. If only he'd print more, we'd all be billionaires!

inb4 gov tract housing without landlords to increase rent? Now that would mess up the real estate market

Yeah but that money will come FROM the landlords and big business to pay the UBI.

IT's not inflationary. Its redistribution.

Its universal and the landlord gets UBI too, right? That isn't redistribution, just distribution.

There's way more poor people than rich people. So in aggregate it's redistribution.

Also, the option for some sort of scaled UBI would be great too imo.

Take from the few to give to the vast hordes. No chance that'll go wrong.

Quick question, why do I want to keep producing when I just get taxed to pay for those who refuse to work? So next year you've got one more mouth to feed and a lot less resources to do so.

But it's okay, print more money to give to the last guy working, quadrillions of dollars, and tax him at 99.999999% and redistribute (totally not print, not at all) those inflated dollars to everyone. We'll all be rich!

Why do rich people keep producing now?

Why did the they keep producing in the 50s and 60s with a 90% tax rate?

Because they know that if they don't.. someone else will.. no matter what the tax rate.

Sure, even at 90% you're still only doing the work of nine others, but at seven nines there'll only be a handful of productives in an entire country, each doing the work of millions and collecting only a single share. When collecting UBI pays as well as working to pay into UBI, why would anyone work it?

See the Wikipedia article for basic income experiments.

I'm not going to explain to you why people would work instead of settle for 12k a year.

And your first statement isnt clear how it's correlated to taxes.

That's the theory, but once UBI is a right it'll be easier to demand more than to supplement with a job. The experiments show nothing about the lasting effects of mass UBI. The two main problems that make the experiments meaningless are that they don't impact the whole city, which would clearly drive prices up either making the UBI less useful, or require tying it to a housing-price index which means it'd just go up endlessly, and that the experiments also don't last long enough for these systemic changes.

Further, the UBI experiments don't produce any benefit beyond one-time grants, as seen in other experiments, perhaps even less because the trickle payment doesn't give you the capital to move to find better work or anything.

Lifetime welfare has proven harmful, how will super-welfare be better? If anything has destroyed American cities its welfare ghettos and the malaise and crime that comes with it.