The one thing I don't get about the Basic Income push is . . . what will be done about inflation? With more and more money chasing the same amount of resources, goods, and services, basic income would push up the overall price-level and undo itself by pricing out those who live at the basic income level
This is my question as well. If the UBI is $1000/month, doesn't that become the new $0? But, this is what I figure, not being an economist, and just being someone who really wants UBI to be a thing:
With an influx of cash, people will be able to buy more, which creates incentives for actors in the market to create more products to eat up the new cash. More products = competition, which keeps prices low. Plus, people already have in mind how much they want to spend for a certain item. Take, for example, peanut butter. Rather than raising the price, the makers do things like decrease the amount of the product in the jar through redesigned packaging.
Just my pet theory. What I wonder is for things with terrible competition (rent, for example) what prevents those markets from just gobbling up the gains.
Is it perhaps possible that your hypothesis might not account particularly well for inflation? One cannot pump cash arbitrarily into an economy with a limited amount of value. Past a certain point, the scarcity of money changes.
If the UBI was $1,000,000/mo, I expect rents everywhere might soar and bread might cost $10k a loaf. There's more money, but the scarcity of goods doesn't change, so what happens is everything sprouts a couple of extra zeros. This is what runaway inflation can look like.
Basically, more and more money only chases the same amount of goods if the UBI does not exist as a transfer of existing money from top to bottom and middle as described in this piece, and instead exists as continual expansion of the monetary supply through newly created money.
Additionally, UBI does not eliminate forces of market competition. In fact, I argue it will even increase competition through increased entrepreneurship. It would be really stupid to raise your prices in a competitive market where your competitor does not raise prices, or even lowers them.
As a quick example, every year when Alaskans get their dividend checks, there are a lot of sales as businesses compete for that money. It would be a really stupid business in Alaska that increases its prices every time the dividend is distributed, in the knowledge people have more money to spend.
Your argument that rent won't rise to absorb most of any additional income relies on low-income people moving out of high demand areas to super-affordable "Google Homes" in remote ex-burbs and formerly rural towns. I think you're fighting history, culture and even human nature on this one.
If the Great Basic Income Migration doesn't occur, and if basic income is indexed to inflation, or worse, to a local 'cost of living', then you are deliberately engineering a hyper-inflationary spiral that will make Venezuela's seem tame by comparison.
Landlords will just raise the rent to compensate for the tax. It guarantees the post-UBI rent increase, because landlords will feel justified. If the tax is somehow indexed to rent, once again you are engineering an inflationary spiral.
What's the reasoning that a land value tax could be helpful?
Edit: after some reading, the apparent intent of the land value tax is to encourage landlords to build denser housing to share the burden of the new tax among more renters. But this is like proposing a Slow Driver Tax while ignoring that the speed limit has been set at 15 mph everywhere in the city. Landlords already want to build multiple housing units, but they are prevented by zoning laws. Attempts to change zoning laws are some of the most vicious political battles in existence. Everyone knows that more density/supply is needed to make housing more affordable, but it just hasn't happened (at least in the US).
Well, first, there are a few different versions of land value taxes, and a few different rationales for them. I'm not an expert on this but do find it interesting and important.
In the version that I was thinking of, a land value tax would pay for the basic income. If the land value tax provided all of the funds for the basic income, then there would presumably be no excess for landlords to siphon off, except maybe as one region gained in popularity at the expense of another, etc.
The eventual goal would be to have all or almost all income from rents within a country be distributed to the citizenry. Land owners would also receive the income.
The reason why a Basic Income paid out from a LVT is a good idea, is because it reduces costs by leveling the field for all participants in the immovable property market. So that market can then allocate resources at optimal efficiency.
A UBI paid out of taxes on produced factors (income,capital) distorts resource allocation, so we all end up poorer.
Rents would go up, but then so would the LVT and then the UBI until an equilibrium point is reached.
In the US, without any other changes to your tax/welfare system the LVT/UBI would result in every man,woman and child getting around $4000 each. That would rise as rents went up.
That would go up even further if other taxes and benefits were reduced.
As I'm sure you've been thinking, it seems important because of the looming threat of human labor becoming an obsolete means for the satisfactory distribution of wealth and necessities throughout society.
Do you have any other thoughts about how to address this problem?
I don't think humans adding value with their time, and selling it on the market will ever stop. This has been a misplaced fear for thousands of years, yet we work just as hard as ever. Technology just makes us more productive. So will robots.
The argument for the LVT/BI is that it is not a benefit or a welfare payment, but should be view as a basic human property right. Without which, we are not free.
The LVT really only means we would all be equal share landlords of the value derived from scarce resources supplied for free by nature/god. Basic Income/Public spending is that equal share.
Without that, humans cannot share this Earth as equals, thus will not have taken the final step from being savages to truly civilized beings.
No. Landlords will not just raise their rents. They are already charging the maximum the market will bear. However the result of LVT would increase the disposable incomes of those that rent, from which they will apportion some of on purchasing more/better location, the rest of more goods and services.
Rents will rise for this reason, and so will the amount an LVT can collect. But this isn't an infinite spiral. There will reach an equilibrium, as there is now, where renters apportion are certain % of their income on valuable locations. Which is collected by the landlord and taxed away by the LVT.
The LVT would not make landlords build denser housing, they have exactly the same incentive anyway. It would how ever reduced vacancy and under occupation among owner occupiers, and would increase the average size of dwellings, even if that meant they were more densely clustered by building upwards.
> No. Landlords will not just raise their rents. They are already charging the maximum the market will bear. However the result of LVT would increase the disposable incomes of those that rent, from which they will apportion some of on purchasing more/better location, the rest of more goods and services.
The day after the BI-increase, the housing supply and demand will be exactly the same, but renters will have a greater capacity to pay. The maximum amount that the market will bear will have risen exactly by the extent of the increase. It is hopelessly optimistic to think that landlords won't increase rents to claim almost all of it.
Until zoning laws permit greater density/supply (building upwards is great but often prohibited by local laws), the situation won't change, and a tax linked to rent will just cause an inflationary spiral.
I won't even go into the difficulties of separating land value from building value, since it's clear that objective land value isn't intended to be a factor in setting the tax level.
No, a tax on the rental value of land would move the demand curve over to the left. This would reduce both rental incomes and selling prices. ie a reduction in demand. So the rise in rents would be cancelled out by the fall in selling prices. ie No inflation.
Landlords do not currently claim most of peoples disposable incomes. That ratio hasn't, nor would it change because renters get more income via the BI.
Landlords would in fact be keeping a lot less of peoples income once equilibrium has been reached.
There are no difficulties in separating the value of location from that of the buildings. Easy to do. Besides as far as LVT is concerned, its the structure rather than value taxed that is important. But I'd need to write more than I've got time for here to explain why that is.
Net rental income will remain steady, since landlords will raise the rent to pass along the tax. They may even list it on the lease: "Rent $1000 + UBI tax $400." Everyone will have more money and be able to pay the higher total. The only way the rents can be prevented from rising is instituting price controls.
The percentage of income claimed by landlords will increase slightly ...
before the BI-increase: say $12k rent of $36k income = 33%
after the BI-increase: $17k rent of $41k income = 41%
The only way rents drop is that zoning laws change to allow massive increase in rental space supply, or demand for rental space drops because people are enticed by low rents elsewhere and move. Since zoning laws will change only glacially, if at all, rents less than $(pre-BI rent + new disposal income) will require the Great Universal Basic Income Migration (GUBIM) from urban to exurban and rural areas. The GUBIM is possible, I just think it is vanishingly unlikely.
Let me suggest you read the history of the Irish Potato Famine.
In a nutshell: During the initial part of the crisis, landlords let people live for free in units when they couldn't pay their rent. Then the government decided to tax the landlord on occupied units, even if they weren't getting any rent. The landlords could not afford this, so they began throwing families out into the street wholesale.
Most people did not actually starve to death during the Potato Famine. Most died of disease due to eating raw food in desperation and already being weakened from malnourishment. The families that took it the hardest were those with less than X amount of land who also had many children because you can nearly live on potatoes alone, so such families exclusively grew potatoes and nothing else. They were wiped out by the potato blight and had nothing to eat. Families with fewer kids and/or larger plots of land had other crops too, not just potatoes. They were hurt, but muddled through.
Farms under a certain size essentially disappeared due to the Potato Famine.
Famine was widespread during that time. Most countries were hoarding food and trying to buy it. Ireland was on a short list of countries selling food to make a buck during the crisis. This is part of why Ireland was hit so very hard.
Magicking up money does not solve the problems of the lower classes. They need access to affordable housing that genuinely works for them. They need rights. They need access to paid work that fits their crappy lives.
The UBI provides none of that. It is a disaster waiting to happen.
That's very interesting indeed. Hopefully a basic income entirely paid for by a land value tax (which would presumably be extremely low in cheaper farming areas) would have helped the guests/squatters.
It is not that simple. Often increased demand can lower prices. Economies of scale and all that. For example if you cut total airline passengers to 10% of current numbers, over time prices would stabilize at a much higher level for an individual ticket.
I would imagine that the 'bottom' of the market would grow significantly. As businesses targetted UBI recipients. UBI communities established in cheaplandville, midwesternstate.
Not to say that there wouldn't be unproductive market distortions. Primarily people leaving the workforce to live on basic. Who chooses to work pest control when the alternative is basic?
It would also further stratify the rich/poor divide.
Isn't the question "Why should we pay a basic income" instead of "Why should we receive"? No amount of "should receive" can balance zero amount of "should pay". The ones that pay are the ones that need convincing.
Unless both amounts are zero: zero reasons to pay and zero reasons to receive is a fine solution.
The version of basic income advocated by some conservatives abolishes all other welfare programs to fund basic income, the idea being to eliminate expenditure on means testing overhead.
yes. which is why the UBI has been called an unholy alliance or trojan horse.
The Job Guarantee at a living wage is a better solution, it's also counter-cyclical and not inflationary (assuming useful work is done, and we have a lot that needs doing).
But I'm a wooly liberal and I agree with that, if you keep the BI high enough to truly replace the need for it. I would rather everyone had a basic, flat rate that had basically 0 bureaucratic expense to dole out. Maybe you could have a pension-like program where if you are over retirement age or can't work you get extra pay, but any more complexity than that is probably not worth the wastage that comes with it.
The first is that the means testing ensures that a small minority of the population receives welfare. If you dissolve the entire apparatus, and distribute the proceeds to all working adults then, in the US, it only comes out to something like $5-6k per year per person. Certainly below the 'living wage' $15/hr = $30k/yr + 'cost of living' adjustments that some are calling for (although this would require almost triple current tax revenues).
The second is that each and every welfare program is the end result of a hard fought political battle, and not a single program will go quietly into the good night. The optics of people suffering due to a particular lost welfare program will receive orders of magnitude more attention than the provision of basic income, no matter how generous. Basic income will become status quo, but sharp recriminations will go on, until at last each and every program will be reestablished. This is more likely the closer the level of basic income is to the $5k "cost saver."
As far as inflation goes: think of money as a signalling mechanism, not as a reserve of wealth. This is true for the wealthy, and as the marginal cost of producing goods drops, it becomes true for more and more of the population. When factories can more flexibly adjust production, you'll find increased demand for, say, iPhones, and decreased demand for, say, TVs, will shift production and damp the price inflation.
Secondly, consider that an economy without a UBI yet with mass unemployment will suffer a liquidity trap. This is a more efficient way to fight that than QE (which I'm not criticizing as it was the best tool available for the times)
Everyone who writes these articles assumes that people are inherently good and would make better decisions if freed from the evils of needing to earn a paycheck. History tells us otherwise.
We have tried some version of this before. It works fine at the "testing" stage where some small-ish group of committed, idealistic people come together and decide to share and share alike. The minute it is opened up to the general public and ALL people, no matter how badly they behave, are ENTITLED to their share, it falls apart.
Yuval Harari makes a good point: when it's said that "we" should "all" have a "universal" basic income, aren't people actually talking about a national basic income? Is the US or Norway going to provide a basic income to people in Bangladesh? Or Iraq?
Anyone who defends "basic income" needs basic understanding in economics, which I think is much more valuable thing to have than basic income.
You can't eat money. Money is just a facilitator for complicated bartering. If everyone in the world was given a millon dollars in cash by some aliens, since the things we actually want to barter would not change in any way, that would serve no purpose. Prices would adjust up and everything would stay the same. Noone would be able to afford more than they already did.
UBI does not directly address drug use, mental health, indebtedness, or homelessness. The idea that you can solve poverty by giving "free" money to individuals who can not spend wisely while at the same time eliminating nutritional and mental health programs can only have bad results.
You're focusing on just one group - those who don't have jobs. Consider that a UBI would directly address bad employers, such as mine. Let me explain the situation, a very common one where I am:
My employer feels that, because he pays me minimum wage for some hours a week, I owe him my complete allegiance. I should work very hard for him during my work hours, and then we have a post-work meeting that assesses our productivity for the day, and our mistakes - which also includes hardware failures. The IT department just notes "Operator error" when a piece of equipment fails. This meeting is mandatory and unpaid, an illegal combination. If I refused to attend, even though it's illegal for the boss to do so, I would be fired. Most catch-up work (when their antique equipment fails) is unpaid, too. I'm owed several thousand dollars in back pay, including public holidays (which they are legally obligated to pay me for), which I will never see.
According to my employer, the role includes training everyone who comes through the door, supervising them in every aspect of what they do, and if they screw up the finger gets pointed at me. (If you looked at my actual contract, you would see that this is not a job requirement.) If computer equipment fails, and we have a 21 year old box running some crucial software which is built by the corporation (so updating it to support a modern machine is no problem), I'm expected to diagnose it and offer solutions just because I have a CS degree. Again, this is not in my contract. I don't even have the superuser passwords, but it's still my job in their eyes. I have a raft of further responsibilities, including ensuring that some high-end equipment works correctly even though I'm not allowed to touch it.
I did once ask for a pay increase, but I was told that there aren't many jobs around here so if I don't like it, I can quit and good luck getting another job with the reference they were threatening to give me.
A UBI would mean I could quit ("Take this job and shovel it") and look for an actual job where the staff are valued, perhaps even save enough to leave the city and look everywhere around the country. The lack of a UBI (as well as the governmental and social requirement to accept any "reasonable" job) means that I have to suck it up and keep working.
That would be the most powerful reason to implement a UBI, to my mind: the ability to tell bad employers that you don't need them to live.
I don't see how UBI is a solution for that problem. That problem may be perpetuated by your unwillingness no quit, which may be tied to your income level, but UBI doesn't affect your unwillingness to search for alternatives or even prepare to quit.
Bad employers are enabled by tolerant employees. Establishing a side-income scheme does nothing to address how employees are willing to be mistreated.
"Tolerant" employees often don't have a choice if there is more demand than supply for jobs in a market. UBI removes some of the coercive power the employer has, since employees aren't forced to choose between their job and food/a place to live/etc.
I really wish the notion that wealth equals income would die. I too believed that the distribution of income is what our problem is in our economy. But after learning how real economics works it doesn't matter how much money goes where. What matters is production. Remember currency has no actual value unless something is being produced. If money is redistributed in one area you are not producing anything. What you are doing is reallocating production from one business sector to another. Recall the barter system, which worked for thousands of years. You are exchanging your product/service for something else. Currency is a means to divide out production.
I think you've got the premise of Basic Income back to front. No one is suggesting that handing out money creates wealth. Rather, the premise is that the system is imbalanced, that as things stand the money distribution is not an accurate representation of value provided.
Take Warren Buffet. Did he really contribute 76 billion dollars worth of value to society? I don't think so, and I don't think even Buffet himself does (he has said that to spend his vast accumulated fortune on himself would divert resources from important things). But once you make beyond a certain amount it's almost hard not to make more, without doing anything at all! Here's[1] an interesting personal account of this on our very own HN.
Conversely, someone at the bottom of the ladder can work 60-80 hour weeks in multiple jobs and barely make ends meet, let alone save.
I would even argue that an unemployed person actively seeking work is probably contributing various forms of value merely by existing - most obviously in the form of liquidity to the employment market, but also in all the other ways a living person is valuable - they listen and talk, make friends, form opinions, vote, and otherwise reinforce the fabric of society (hence why it is still a tragedy if such a person gets hit by a train, and a crime if they are murdered).
Moving further down still, when push comes to shove, most people would agree that even the most miserable, useless wretch does not deserve to die, if the resources for their survival are readily available. There is value, moral value, in compassion. A society that takes this view is spiritually wealthier.
So you have a scenario where, monetarily, the people at the top are systemically overvalued, and the people at the bottom systemically undervalued. This seems to be a deep property of the system that can't be fixed by fiddling taxes within the existing framework - money trickles up, where it accumulates. Closing the loop with a basic income, even a nominal one, is a direct and practical solution that doesn't have to hurt anyone.
41 comments
[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 93.7 ms ] thread. . . am I missing something?
With an influx of cash, people will be able to buy more, which creates incentives for actors in the market to create more products to eat up the new cash. More products = competition, which keeps prices low. Plus, people already have in mind how much they want to spend for a certain item. Take, for example, peanut butter. Rather than raising the price, the makers do things like decrease the amount of the product in the jar through redesigned packaging.
Just my pet theory. What I wonder is for things with terrible competition (rent, for example) what prevents those markets from just gobbling up the gains.
I don't think so... Because $10,000 will not be the same as ten times zero. (Or, will it?)
If the UBI was $1,000,000/mo, I expect rents everywhere might soar and bread might cost $10k a loaf. There's more money, but the scarcity of goods doesn't change, so what happens is everything sprouts a couple of extra zeros. This is what runaway inflation can look like.
Link: https://medium.com/basic-income/wouldnt-unconditional-basic-...
Basically, more and more money only chases the same amount of goods if the UBI does not exist as a transfer of existing money from top to bottom and middle as described in this piece, and instead exists as continual expansion of the monetary supply through newly created money.
Additionally, UBI does not eliminate forces of market competition. In fact, I argue it will even increase competition through increased entrepreneurship. It would be really stupid to raise your prices in a competitive market where your competitor does not raise prices, or even lowers them.
As a quick example, every year when Alaskans get their dividend checks, there are a lot of sales as businesses compete for that money. It would be a really stupid business in Alaska that increases its prices every time the dividend is distributed, in the knowledge people have more money to spend.
You may also find this argument interesting as well in regards to concerns of technological deflation: https://medium.com/emergent-culture/an-exciting-new-idea-in-...
If the Great Basic Income Migration doesn't occur, and if basic income is indexed to inflation, or worse, to a local 'cost of living', then you are deliberately engineering a hyper-inflationary spiral that will make Venezuela's seem tame by comparison.
What's the reasoning that a land value tax could be helpful?
Edit: after some reading, the apparent intent of the land value tax is to encourage landlords to build denser housing to share the burden of the new tax among more renters. But this is like proposing a Slow Driver Tax while ignoring that the speed limit has been set at 15 mph everywhere in the city. Landlords already want to build multiple housing units, but they are prevented by zoning laws. Attempts to change zoning laws are some of the most vicious political battles in existence. Everyone knows that more density/supply is needed to make housing more affordable, but it just hasn't happened (at least in the US).
In the version that I was thinking of, a land value tax would pay for the basic income. If the land value tax provided all of the funds for the basic income, then there would presumably be no excess for landlords to siphon off, except maybe as one region gained in popularity at the expense of another, etc.
The eventual goal would be to have all or almost all income from rents within a country be distributed to the citizenry. Land owners would also receive the income.
A UBI paid out of taxes on produced factors (income,capital) distorts resource allocation, so we all end up poorer.
Rents would go up, but then so would the LVT and then the UBI until an equilibrium point is reached.
In the US, without any other changes to your tax/welfare system the LVT/UBI would result in every man,woman and child getting around $4000 each. That would rise as rents went up.
That would go up even further if other taxes and benefits were reduced.
As I'm sure you've been thinking, it seems important because of the looming threat of human labor becoming an obsolete means for the satisfactory distribution of wealth and necessities throughout society.
Do you have any other thoughts about how to address this problem?
The argument for the LVT/BI is that it is not a benefit or a welfare payment, but should be view as a basic human property right. Without which, we are not free.
The LVT really only means we would all be equal share landlords of the value derived from scarce resources supplied for free by nature/god. Basic Income/Public spending is that equal share.
Without that, humans cannot share this Earth as equals, thus will not have taken the final step from being savages to truly civilized beings.
Yes, it really is that big a deal;)
Rents will rise for this reason, and so will the amount an LVT can collect. But this isn't an infinite spiral. There will reach an equilibrium, as there is now, where renters apportion are certain % of their income on valuable locations. Which is collected by the landlord and taxed away by the LVT.
The LVT would not make landlords build denser housing, they have exactly the same incentive anyway. It would how ever reduced vacancy and under occupation among owner occupiers, and would increase the average size of dwellings, even if that meant they were more densely clustered by building upwards.
The day after the BI-increase, the housing supply and demand will be exactly the same, but renters will have a greater capacity to pay. The maximum amount that the market will bear will have risen exactly by the extent of the increase. It is hopelessly optimistic to think that landlords won't increase rents to claim almost all of it.
Until zoning laws permit greater density/supply (building upwards is great but often prohibited by local laws), the situation won't change, and a tax linked to rent will just cause an inflationary spiral.
I won't even go into the difficulties of separating land value from building value, since it's clear that objective land value isn't intended to be a factor in setting the tax level.
Landlords do not currently claim most of peoples disposable incomes. That ratio hasn't, nor would it change because renters get more income via the BI.
Landlords would in fact be keeping a lot less of peoples income once equilibrium has been reached.
There are no difficulties in separating the value of location from that of the buildings. Easy to do. Besides as far as LVT is concerned, its the structure rather than value taxed that is important. But I'd need to write more than I've got time for here to explain why that is.
The percentage of income claimed by landlords will increase slightly ...
before the BI-increase: say $12k rent of $36k income = 33%
after the BI-increase: $17k rent of $41k income = 41%
The only way rents drop is that zoning laws change to allow massive increase in rental space supply, or demand for rental space drops because people are enticed by low rents elsewhere and move. Since zoning laws will change only glacially, if at all, rents less than $(pre-BI rent + new disposal income) will require the Great Universal Basic Income Migration (GUBIM) from urban to exurban and rural areas. The GUBIM is possible, I just think it is vanishingly unlikely.
In a nutshell: During the initial part of the crisis, landlords let people live for free in units when they couldn't pay their rent. Then the government decided to tax the landlord on occupied units, even if they weren't getting any rent. The landlords could not afford this, so they began throwing families out into the street wholesale.
Most people did not actually starve to death during the Potato Famine. Most died of disease due to eating raw food in desperation and already being weakened from malnourishment. The families that took it the hardest were those with less than X amount of land who also had many children because you can nearly live on potatoes alone, so such families exclusively grew potatoes and nothing else. They were wiped out by the potato blight and had nothing to eat. Families with fewer kids and/or larger plots of land had other crops too, not just potatoes. They were hurt, but muddled through.
Farms under a certain size essentially disappeared due to the Potato Famine.
Famine was widespread during that time. Most countries were hoarding food and trying to buy it. Ireland was on a short list of countries selling food to make a buck during the crisis. This is part of why Ireland was hit so very hard.
Magicking up money does not solve the problems of the lower classes. They need access to affordable housing that genuinely works for them. They need rights. They need access to paid work that fits their crappy lives.
The UBI provides none of that. It is a disaster waiting to happen.
also Pavlina Tcherneva on the debate: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_-CRquE_bU&feature=youtu.be...
I would imagine that the 'bottom' of the market would grow significantly. As businesses targetted UBI recipients. UBI communities established in cheaplandville, midwesternstate.
Not to say that there wouldn't be unproductive market distortions. Primarily people leaving the workforce to live on basic. Who chooses to work pest control when the alternative is basic?
It would also further stratify the rich/poor divide.
Unless both amounts are zero: zero reasons to pay and zero reasons to receive is a fine solution.
The Job Guarantee at a living wage is a better solution, it's also counter-cyclical and not inflationary (assuming useful work is done, and we have a lot that needs doing).
If I'm missing something here, please tell me.
The first is that the means testing ensures that a small minority of the population receives welfare. If you dissolve the entire apparatus, and distribute the proceeds to all working adults then, in the US, it only comes out to something like $5-6k per year per person. Certainly below the 'living wage' $15/hr = $30k/yr + 'cost of living' adjustments that some are calling for (although this would require almost triple current tax revenues).
The second is that each and every welfare program is the end result of a hard fought political battle, and not a single program will go quietly into the good night. The optics of people suffering due to a particular lost welfare program will receive orders of magnitude more attention than the provision of basic income, no matter how generous. Basic income will become status quo, but sharp recriminations will go on, until at last each and every program will be reestablished. This is more likely the closer the level of basic income is to the $5k "cost saver."
Secondly, consider that an economy without a UBI yet with mass unemployment will suffer a liquidity trap. This is a more efficient way to fight that than QE (which I'm not criticizing as it was the best tool available for the times)
1) Inflation.
The minute that $1000 hits your bank account, it will be worth less than you think. Every social services program struggles with this fact.
http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2015/09/it-was-obsol...
2. Human Nature.
Everyone who writes these articles assumes that people are inherently good and would make better decisions if freed from the evils of needing to earn a paycheck. History tells us otherwise.
http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2016/10/ancient-wisd...
3. History tells us this does not work.
We have tried some version of this before. It works fine at the "testing" stage where some small-ish group of committed, idealistic people come together and decide to share and share alike. The minute it is opened up to the general public and ALL people, no matter how badly they behave, are ENTITLED to their share, it falls apart.
http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2016/01/ubi-we-tried...
I could go on. And I have:
http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2017/01/industrial-r...
http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/p/ir2.html
Harari discusses this in his book "Homo Deus". You can also see him discuss it here: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=szt7f5NmE9E
You can't eat money. Money is just a facilitator for complicated bartering. If everyone in the world was given a millon dollars in cash by some aliens, since the things we actually want to barter would not change in any way, that would serve no purpose. Prices would adjust up and everything would stay the same. Noone would be able to afford more than they already did.
My employer feels that, because he pays me minimum wage for some hours a week, I owe him my complete allegiance. I should work very hard for him during my work hours, and then we have a post-work meeting that assesses our productivity for the day, and our mistakes - which also includes hardware failures. The IT department just notes "Operator error" when a piece of equipment fails. This meeting is mandatory and unpaid, an illegal combination. If I refused to attend, even though it's illegal for the boss to do so, I would be fired. Most catch-up work (when their antique equipment fails) is unpaid, too. I'm owed several thousand dollars in back pay, including public holidays (which they are legally obligated to pay me for), which I will never see.
According to my employer, the role includes training everyone who comes through the door, supervising them in every aspect of what they do, and if they screw up the finger gets pointed at me. (If you looked at my actual contract, you would see that this is not a job requirement.) If computer equipment fails, and we have a 21 year old box running some crucial software which is built by the corporation (so updating it to support a modern machine is no problem), I'm expected to diagnose it and offer solutions just because I have a CS degree. Again, this is not in my contract. I don't even have the superuser passwords, but it's still my job in their eyes. I have a raft of further responsibilities, including ensuring that some high-end equipment works correctly even though I'm not allowed to touch it.
I did once ask for a pay increase, but I was told that there aren't many jobs around here so if I don't like it, I can quit and good luck getting another job with the reference they were threatening to give me.
A UBI would mean I could quit ("Take this job and shovel it") and look for an actual job where the staff are valued, perhaps even save enough to leave the city and look everywhere around the country. The lack of a UBI (as well as the governmental and social requirement to accept any "reasonable" job) means that I have to suck it up and keep working.
That would be the most powerful reason to implement a UBI, to my mind: the ability to tell bad employers that you don't need them to live.
Bad employers are enabled by tolerant employees. Establishing a side-income scheme does nothing to address how employees are willing to be mistreated.
The negative income tax model achieves the same basic income with less negative motivation for people who want to pursue work at the low-end.
It also avoids wastefully paying it to people who don't need it.
This is my inspiration : https://youtu.be/xtpgkX588nM
Take Warren Buffet. Did he really contribute 76 billion dollars worth of value to society? I don't think so, and I don't think even Buffet himself does (he has said that to spend his vast accumulated fortune on himself would divert resources from important things). But once you make beyond a certain amount it's almost hard not to make more, without doing anything at all! Here's[1] an interesting personal account of this on our very own HN.
Conversely, someone at the bottom of the ladder can work 60-80 hour weeks in multiple jobs and barely make ends meet, let alone save.
I would even argue that an unemployed person actively seeking work is probably contributing various forms of value merely by existing - most obviously in the form of liquidity to the employment market, but also in all the other ways a living person is valuable - they listen and talk, make friends, form opinions, vote, and otherwise reinforce the fabric of society (hence why it is still a tragedy if such a person gets hit by a train, and a crime if they are murdered).
Moving further down still, when push comes to shove, most people would agree that even the most miserable, useless wretch does not deserve to die, if the resources for their survival are readily available. There is value, moral value, in compassion. A society that takes this view is spiritually wealthier.
So you have a scenario where, monetarily, the people at the top are systemically overvalued, and the people at the bottom systemically undervalued. This seems to be a deep property of the system that can't be fixed by fiddling taxes within the existing framework - money trickles up, where it accumulates. Closing the loop with a basic income, even a nominal one, is a direct and practical solution that doesn't have to hurt anyone.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13698121