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Comment by SilasX | Hacker News Reader

>The assumes financial excess. The reason for UBI is that there isn't excess. If 78% of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck, then that's not excess. If 63% of Americans can't afford an unexpected $500 bill, that's not excess.

But if the core problem is that everyone is bidding away all their financial slack on rent, then they will still take any such windfall and do the same with it, pushing themselves right back to the same (low) level of slack they have today.

Earlier advocates for poverty alleviation noted this effect early on. Winston Churchill told of a time when they got the tolls on a bridge removed, and then rents advanced by the cost of using the bridge twice a day.

http://www.landvaluetax.org/current-affairs-comment/winston-...

(search for "bridge")

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This is what bothers me most about arguments against UBI. They seem to have baked into them an assumption that any reduction of inequality will be eaten by rents. Then it follows that the only thing is to balance concentrated private economic power with concentrated public economic power. But what I want to see is more people with more control for themselves not planned for them by a program or economic happenstance.

So if it’s hopeless then what’s to be done?

So you're saying the argument must be wrong because it would imply things are hopeless? That's a textbook fallacy of appeal to consequences. You're not actually addressing whether it's true.

The point is that the UBI isn't going to fix things until you first fix the dynamic that's responsible for gobbling up all the economic slack, so that should be the priority.

I am obviously not addressing whether it's true or saying the argument must be wrong. I'm pointing out there's some circular reasoning here that's unexamined in most online discussions about UBI.

I am pointing out there is an assumed and implied argument that 1) inequality is a problem and must be corrected, but 2) straight redistribution of some wealth with UBI will fail because-inflation/rents, but 3) we should have less inequality though even if we did that would put us in the similar position as with UBI where costs rebalance.

And at the end I ask, rhetorically but still, what's to be done. So here you also assume it's true without addressing it and offer no answer to how to address the gobbling up of the economic slack.

>I am pointing out there is an assumed and implied argument that 1) inequality is a problem and must be corrected, but 2) straight redistribution of some wealth with UBI will fail because-inflation/rents, but 3) we should have less inequality though even if we did that would put us in the similar position as with UBI where costs rebalance.

I wasn't making anything like that argument. I was saying that, if you don't address the dynamics that gobble up household economic slack, then a UBI won't produce the additional slack you're trying to produce. Three's nothing circular about that.

>And at the end I ask, rhetorically but still, what's to be done. So here you also assume it's true without addressing it and offer no answer to how to address the gobbling up of the economic slack.

In fact, the link I gave was from (the aptly named) landvaluetax.org and is from an organization that has one theory and solution for how land rents eat up slack and a solution.

And even if I didn't, it's still a valid point that the primary problem is "things that extract household slack", and needs to be address before any UBI is piled on.

Hey, you're right :) I was talking past you because I didn't realize you were the OP that prompted my thought. Also I was thinking about a more general trend in points and not yours specifically. You've got a great point about land too. I'm in Texas so I hadn't considered some places don't have a land tax because while it has it's challenges (disagreements between state and citizen on land value) it's kind of backwards not to have one.

I'm not saying the argument fails because there is a circular loop. I am saying there is something more to the system and we shouldn't drop consideration for UBI based on the argument that inflation will gobble up all of the increase because that argument holds true equally if we improve equality to everyone gets a wage increase.

Which really makes your point even more important. Particularly the one about land having the strongest growth pressure.

They are saying you are wrong because there are other things in the market besides housing. If you inverse your logic it means lowering wages provides cheaper rent. And that just sounds ludicrous.

>They are saying you are wrong because there are other things in the market besides housing

They said nothing like that; that might be what you think, and I'd be glad to address that, but it doesn't help the discussion when you invent arguments that were never made and expect me to have already answered them.

Real estate, unlike cars or food, can't be brought on the market to rapidly respond to demand, and people don't keep raising bids to the point where they leave a certain amount of slack in their budget.

There are ways to get around this (like with faster building and scaling up of transportation infra) but it would need to be address before throwing on a UBI, which was my point.

>If you inverse your logic it means lowering wages provides cheaper rent.

Rents generally do decline when wages fall.

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