One thing that's been made clear in the last two years is that even a very very measly increase to unemployment can have huge impact. And unemployment runs out after a while, and the increases have been tiny. And unemployment makes you jump through hoops, is very stressful, and wastes a lot of your time.

I expect that UBI could start off very small and still have huge impact. A quick search shows that median income can range from ~40k-80k state to state. I'd bet you could radically change this country for way less than that.

If people are getting paid $80k a year to do nothing Im quitting my job and living in the woods. 1 less software engineer.

The point was to pay less than median income. So you're looking at closer to 30k at the high end.

So those in high cost of living areas are still just screwed? $30k/yr isn’t even enough to pay rent.

Do you want me to write a full, detailed policy? Or can you just use some common sense?

> If you're paying large numbers to do nothing, the value of that money plummets and people will starve

Absolutely not. Having a large fraction of population being unemployed is not good but this is not the point of UBI. Also, this is completely disconnected from inflation/deflation.

Furthermore, deflation and "people will starve" are very much disconnected. Many countries devalued their money on purpose to be more competitive on international markets.

I don't think deflation is an actual risk in this scenario ("value of that money plummets" = high inflation).

There are many stages between "people will starve" and having access to high quality food (and high QOL in general). For example if UBI is sufficiently high to allow most people currently employed in the food and service industries to not work (or to invest their time into gaining new skills etc.) I think a massive increase in food prices is unavoidable, at least in the short term until automation catches up. While basic foodstuffs would still remain affordable to all/most (the government would be forced to subsidize them if not), eating out and high quality, labor intensive products would likely become unaffordable to most people.

Currency exchange rates are bidirectional. You are arguing for people to produce less, so export plummets, which will bring down the value of the $, which means it is harder to import stuff you need.

> You are arguing for people to produce less

No I'm not.

> so export plummets, which will bring down the value of the $

No, if anything, it's the very opposite.

> No, if anything, it's the very opposite.

How?

UBI has to be under the average, not the median. If wealth disparity increases too much, the average wealth will be much higher than the median wealth, but unfortunately that wouldn’t apply as much to income.

> Money doesnt just have some "value" you can share like a pie.

The trillions of dollars printed by the Federal Reserve in the past two years beg to differ.

Honestly, if the country is going into deficit, you might as well give it directly to people instead of injecting it via financial institutes.

Society in general may greatly benefit from having people not HAVING to work.

Prices inflate like they have recently and will continue until prices absorbs any increases and the lack of production will put a greater strain.

Yet that did not deter us from creating trillions of dollars and giving them to financial institutes.

What if we printed the same amount and gave it directly to people? the $6T/year could yield ~$40K to each of the ~150M working-age Americans.

The biggest impact is to give employees more power in the negotiation with employers: currently, employees are far more pressed to find work than the employer needs to fill in a position (if the employee fails to pay rent, they are evicted; if an employer fails to meet a deadline, nothing happens immediately), and have the inherent disadvantage of having orders of magnitude more employees than employers.

UBI will help the public by reducing the pressure on employees to find job, thus improving the negotiation power and conditions for all other employees. Even the slight help during COVID created the best conditions for working people in decades. Seems to be worth the inflation IMO.

> creating trillions of dollars and giving them to financial institutes.

those trillions were swapped, not given, to the financial institutes, in return for the bonds and treasuries they held.

It isn't the same sort of printing that you hear about in Zimbabwe or Venezuela.

If the gov't really printed trillions and gave them to people like you described, you'd get major inflation. Oh wait, that's already happening...and it's only a couple thousand for some people, and it's not printed, it's borrowed. Imagine the effects, if it was truly printed like you described!

> The trillions of dollars printed by the Federal Reserve in the past two years beg to differ.

The inflation we’re experiencing now wants to have a word with you.

From another comment: > Seems to be worth the inflation IMO.

Some things will become expensive. Some might be balanced. Construction cost will increase, but land value may decrease (since there is no necessity to crowd in job hubs).

Taxis and Uber will probably increase as people are not forced to work at all costs, but people might find this trade-off favorable: unemployment is far more painful than having to take the bus.

And everyone could still work to afford expensive things, if they chose so. They will also have much better working conditions, since they will have much more negotiation power.

I’m glad we can predict that far in the future. IMO, it won’t be, as inflation will continue as we spiral downward. Venezuela will be super jealous of our inflation.

>If you're paying large numbers to do nothing, the value of that money plummets and people will starve.

We already pay large numbers of people to do nothing, retirees.

Ostensibly, we are paying them back the Social Security taxes + interest that were withheld from their pay when they were working, supplemented by any pensions or savings they may have.

Whatever way you look at it they are doing nothing and people aren't "starving".