The reality is that any modern economy based on fiat-money have unlimited cash and tend to benefit enough from weakening the bargaining power of the entrenched elites though inflation funded welfare, that you can set the bar for how poor the poor are allowed to become without necessarily impacting the real world industrial/agricultural output, but because of dogmatic policies designed to facility wealth hording we pretend that we cannot really end poverty.
Another problem is that we measure societal success based on how well the 20% richest lives rather then on how well the 20% poorest live. which again support wealth hording policies that will eventually clash with the ideal that democracy, freedom and equally, should be available to everyone not just an small elite as was the case in ancient Rome or Greece(and to some extend The American south until ca 1970).
Why would this happen?
The rich and powerful do not have tons of cash. They have tons of assets, like houses, land, buildings, companies, boats, cars, etc. Inflation simply makes all of those things more valuable, so their wealth is not affected. Meanwhile all the extra free money that everybody else has is still not enough to buy those actual assets. Aren’t you pretending that supply and demand doesn’t exist?
The problem for the wannabe feudalists is the same that killed off the landed gentry, when workers got rights and privileges in the 18th century, is that land not worked is not really worth anything so they will have to spend more and more of their profit maintaining the productivity as people gain more economic power to live elsewhere or differently.
And cheap land is around especially if you break free of the large cities.
We haven't tied the value of money to the value of land. Land has value. If you want it, you have to pay for it. (Unless you are advocating for the government to seize all property.)
If the value of money goes down (which is what you said to let happen), then the cost of land goes up. On what basis do you claim that hard assets will decrease in value as cash decreases in value? Can you name some examples where this has happened?
Edit: I don't think you can, because the definition of inflation means that the costs of things are going up.
Stopping money printing is an interesting idea though.
If I'm reading it right, that's the opposite of what the person you replied to was suggesting:
> The reality is that any modern economy based on fiat-money have unlimited cash and tend to benefit enough from weakening the bargaining power of the entrenched elites though inflation funded welfare, that you can set the bar for how poor the poor are allowed to become
If OP wanted to claim the opposite, I don't see how it makes sense.
Remember that 50% is an majority and would be entitled to basically run the economy as they saw fit, and yet we have never had a case(outside of apartheid/slave states) where an majority did that.
What UBI represent is more of an re-balancing on the employer/employee power balance as it grant's the employee the power to say NO without facing complete ruin.
For UBI to work the presumption that people wont just retire to cheap housing in the countryside living on bread, beer and love, but for the most part seek some kind of meaningful occupation, which real data based economical models seems to suggest they will.
The problem here is of cause that everything about UBI invalidates any economic theory compatible with an moral philosophy derived from Luther and Calvin's (protestant) Punitive Christianity, which unfortunately is the base for a lot of modern economic theory.
When people think about UBI, they think about living on UBI and still using products and services of a modern economy. Not living off the grid in a shack bumfucknowhere and doing substance farming (and brewing beer, of course) on the side.
If people flat-out dropped out of the economy, that'd create another interesting problem. Who would use produce of those people who keep participating? Would participating people produce&consume enough to put together UBI for the folks who got out?
Going further... Off-grid folk would make bread & beer and those wouldn't be taxed. UBI-producer would make bread & beer and those would be taxed through the roof. What if off-grid folks kickstart black market and trade non-taxed stuff between themselves? While still receiving UBI from UBI-producers. Then it'd make sense for an UBI-producer to go shopping in said black market too :) Buying less products from other UBI-producers.
You could always import more, UBI exempt, workers if that becomes a problem. Of course that might bring some of its own problems.
On the other hand, workforce may be coming from another UBI territory with same taxation. What would happen in their former country? Would they still pay UBI taxes to it?
Because even with the "super high taxes" you'll probably still earn more than you would in your home country of Honduras or Mozambique or wherever labor will be imported from. People are crossing the border today for a chance to illegally pick produce or work low level construction. Making that easier will only make it more popular. Plus adding a clear path to Citizenship (say after working 7-10 years on a non-UBI visa) will only make it easier to attract people.
As to who gets UBI what happens when you leave a country with UBI, that is an interesting question. My initial reaction would be that you can only get UBI if you are a citizen or permanent resident AND live in the country (say a minimum of 4-6 month out of the year). If you emigrate you lose UBI, but that is a separate discussion.
In most theories I saw, UBI would supplement low wages and become negative only for well off people. So you'd have to pay a nice sum of money for someone to have same take-home pay as UBI jobless. This means UBI countries would need high import tariffs to compete with cheap import from non-UBI.
Now what would be nice is to work illegally in an UBI country.
Path to ubi sounds like a massive Ponzi scheme TBH. Come work for 10 years for an easy retirement. Especially if you can move back to your homecountry and keep earning UBI.
For higher wage, higher quality jobs it might be slightly harder to attract foreign talent, but even with a 20-30% real wage decrease from todays levels the US will still pay more than just about any other country for high end jobs, so it shouldn't be too much of a problem.
Come work for 10 years for an easy retirement. Especially if you can move back to your homecountry and keep earning UBI.
That is why I think it's important to tie UBI to residency rather than just citizenship. If you leave the US you lose UBI.
An absolute sum of money is meaningless in such discussions. In my whereabouts $40-50k would be easily top-10% of not top-5% earnings. Median is a better measure. But how do we calculate median in UBI society? Do we calculate every resident? Only UBI citizens? Only working UBI citizens? Or do we take median pay of today, look what professions it is and then look at what those professions make after UBI?
Personally I'm very skeptical of UBI. IMO it's not possible till all low paying jobs are automated away. Otherwise your solution would create a very unhealthy two-ways society. Sort of like Arab oil states today. Where locals live off oil money and lots of 2nd-tier residents from poor countries are in sort a sort of modern slavery. I don't see how a healthy democratic society could in such a way. There're too many different groups with different incentives.
However setting the levels of UBI is probably not hard part, agreeing how to raise it every year to adjust for inflation and other cost of living increases is where all the problems will come from. I fear the UBI will also require a more dynamic tax code (to control inflation, as postulated by MMM) that will be very tricky to implement politically.
As to the two level society, I think that is inevitable with UBI. Hopefully it won't be as bad as what we're seeing in some oil states, but it will be similar.
Personally I don't think UBI is good idea, but do think it's doable. It will however permanently change the country, possibly for the worse.
Existing salary laws already create a lot of opportunities for arbitraging. E.g. truckers and handymen working in expensive, living out of cars or cheapest houses they can find and then spending their time off (as well as paying taxes) in cheap countries. Country-adjusted UBI could make this even worse. While EU-wide UBI median would create it's own share of issues.
Any idea is doable if you throw enough propaganda and/or gunpower behind it :)