If UBI enables people to not have to work, I would rather have nine people playing video games, and one passionate creative person starting a society-benefitting business, than make all ten do make-work. Many would hate the video-game freeloaders, but I'm fine with them if I get new great services and technology from the unleashed passionate people.
Lyrl
joined 6 months ago
If you have five people who want houses in place X, and there are four houses in place X, something has to give. The government could choose which of the five gets kicked out of place X (rent control does this, basically), the government could force the four houses be demolished and replaced with more, smaller houses (the character of place X would change, which probably no one wants), rents could rise until one person decides going to live somewhere else is their best option or two people decide being roommates is their best option. In none of these situations do the five people who want one of the four existing houses all get what they want.
If a popular, growing community has a plan for housing densification, but it's going to take five years to build out, rent control is a reasonable bridge policy to keep the community together while the construction happens. But this idea that rent control can somehow by itself solve the underlying problem of not enough housing units in the places people want to live is a pipe dream.
Inflation happens when demand increases faster than supply can keep up. The pandemic supply chain disruptions are a large recent example: none of the supply bottlenecks would have been difficult to solve, but the solutions would take two to five years to spin up. Absent some kind of regulatory rationing or allotment system, increasing prices let customers self-select on who really wanted the stuff that year and who did without.
As long as UBI was rolled out incrementally over years, supply would have the time it needed to expand, thereby preventing inflation. As a real example, the Alaska Permanent Fund has been going for decades, and I've never seen an argument it has increased inflation.
Some of the stories do ask. Every one I have seen or heard, they still support Trump. They are unhappy about the specific issue affecting them, but they still believe the rest of his policies are the best ones on offer.
I do not believe turning voters is viable. But discouraged, less enthused Trump voters are more likely to stay home next election, so I see examples like this as potential hopeful signs for our country's future.
No, prices don't come down. That's not how economies work. People get raises. In a healthy economy, wage gains outpace inflation. Purchasing power goes up even though prices haven't dropped.
Our current US economy is not healthy - it's "K-shaped" with the higher-earning consumers (top 10-ish percent) doing so well they overwhelm the average across the entire economy to make the overall numbers "good" even though people in the bottom half or so are struggling. So most people aren't seeing the purchase power increases that they should. But if things were healthy, it would be wages increasing faster, not prices coming down.