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Comment by lootsauce | Hacker News Reader

I used to be very excited about Universal Basic Income. Then I thought about what might actually happen. UBI will cause dramatic price inflation in response to everyone knowing that everyone is getting x amount of money. This will quickly neutralize the intended effect of UBI. It might sound great to get 10,20,40k automatically for everyone but this will have an immediate inflationary effect especially on rents and housing. Price controls would need to be enacted. This situation is untenable, either inflation or the effects of a race to prevent inflation will counter-act the intended effects of UBI. UBI is an illusion that we need to move past. You have to actually identify the why and how of the massive inequality we see in society to do something about it. UBI does not answer why or how inequality happens and is no solution to it.

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If you want to get excited about UBI again , consider the opposite action:

Take the US, and instead of giving everyone in the country 10,000 USD/year in UBI, take 10,000 USD away: add a new 10,000 USD/year flat tax.

Do you still think all prices will re-stabilize, and everyone will end up _exactly_ the same as before? Or, isn't likely that taking 10,000 away from a poor man will hurt more than taking 10,000 away from a rich man?

So, intuitively, wouldn't giving every person in the US 10,000 USD help the poor more than the rich? Where's the evidence to suggest all of that money would immediately be swallowed up by cost inflation?

Of course, the effect in reality will be a little more complex, and hard to measure, but I'd argue that intuition suggests UBI, by nature, _has_ to help fight inequality, just like free education, free healthcare, nationalized insurance, and any other progressive services that give equal benefits to all citizens. The question isn't if we should try it, but how much should we give.

Except this has already happened. The poor today have $10K more than they did 50-100 years ago. I don’t think inequality has improved. And prices have all gone up.

Until we have unlimited resources, resources will, by definition, be limited, and they’ll be distributed by some form of money/credits/whatever.

So, think of it this way.

If UBI was 40k/yr, and your current job gives you 80k/yr, suddenly you're... still making 80k/yr.

Only 40k of that is from your job and 40k is from just existing. Do you still want do your job with that much of a paycut? No? You're probably not alone there.

Tons of people would rather not do their job for such little money.

Suddenly, it falls on society to create meaningful jobs without coercing people with bankruptcy or starvation.

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