The problem that UBI will never get over is the fact that it just smells like something suspicious. It smells like something capitalists can exploit.
Landlords and other oligopolistic goods-sellers with a lot of leverage and cartel-like dynamics can now count on a base income for everyone. I don’t see how low income housing doesn’t instantly becomes more expensive across the board, with profits funneled to established landlords.
At least with SNAP/EBT, your landlord can’t take that money.
UBI is sold as a cheap program to run because it eliminates the application and verification processes involved with existing benefits programs. But those same concepts could be applied to existing programs.
Other pro-worker reforms could also replace the whole UBI idea, where UBI just feels like a band-aid for a society with worsening income inequality and increasing corporate control. It has a “fix the symptom” vibe.
I would say it’s meant to be exploited in the way you are describing and really just a progressive tax mechanism, but instead of hitting zero tax at zero income, you hit zero higher and can start to pay “negative tax”.
One way is to attempt to take some of the profit motive out of housing. You can still have a private housing market while guaranteeing some base level of permanent housing for the entire population who wants it. Doesn't have to be flashy, but should be a baseline that private housing should improve on if it wants people to spend their hard earned money to upgrade.
> At least with SNAP/EBT, your landlord can’t take that money.
You think people don't pay their rent with SNAP/EBT?
I've got news for you - they do, by selling their benefits to someone with cash at a horrible rate. To pay rent, put gas in their cars, buy alcohol... all the things money is necessary for.
This is why the best form of UBI is a Citizen's Dividend funded through a Land Value Tax. Any increase in rents through the CD just make their way back into higher taxes that then raise the CD.
Landlords can do that to you because you have to live where the jobs are. UBI lets you move to a cheap part of the country, of which there are still many.
As opposed to all the regular kinds of shitty behaviour landlords inflict on their tenants already? I feel like "because the money people will continue to misbehave" is absolutely not a reason to avoid doing something.
UBI is unique. When I get a raise at work, my landlord doesn’t know. If you implement UBI, every landlord knows that every tenant in the whole country has $xxxx more per month to pay.
Literally 100% of them will raise the rent and there won’t be anything anyone can do about it.
I don't think it is this simple. Even with UBI, there will be varying quality of rentals, with nicer ones being more expensive. If every landlord jacked up the price, demand would shift to cheaper, lower quality rentals. More people will get roommates etc, reducing demand entirely.
In addition, every seller of a good/service could do the same. They can't all increase prices to extract the full $xxxx a month. There are much more complex dynamics at play then just "landlords will raise rent enough to extract the full UBI benefit."
This is only true in places where there are more people trying to rent than places.
In theory, having more capital available in the face of a landlord raising rent an obnoxious amount will incentivize people who aren't making much to move somewhere with a lower CoL that they might not have been able to make work otherwise because of uncertainty in the amount of time they'd be out of work or their base level of money available for that time.
This is only a problem when you have very limited housing supply, so you need to combine it with things like better housing/zoning policies and rent control.
Landlords and other oligopolistic goods-sellers with a lot of leverage and cartel-like dynamics can now count on a base income for everyone. I don’t see how low income housing doesn’t instantly becomes more expensive across the board, with profits funneled to established landlords.
At least with SNAP/EBT, your landlord can’t take that money.
UBI is sold as a cheap program to run because it eliminates the application and verification processes involved with existing benefits programs. But those same concepts could be applied to existing programs.
Other pro-worker reforms could also replace the whole UBI idea, where UBI just feels like a band-aid for a society with worsening income inequality and increasing corporate control. It has a “fix the symptom” vibe.