The claim is that UBI eliminates people’s need for jobs or cities’ need for service workers?
“UBI lets all the poor people leave” is not convincing at all.
“UBI lets all the poor people leave” is not convincing at all.
So, the simple argument that UBI will not increase minimum rents by 2k a month overnight with no improvement in living conditions: landlords will have to compete to get the UBI out of individuals hands. Right now, the lowest income housing isn’t in competition for individuals, it’s competing for government approval and integration. If everyone individually has 2k a month to spend, they have the luxury of shopping around.
The value proposition for service workers in high-COL cities like SF is probably already bad. How would UBI make it worse? At least it'd be easier to move away from those areas. Maybe cities would have to pay serivce workers more to make sure they stay.
Companies can go ahead and pay more to keep them. You know what happens then? Prices go up more.
Where is all this capital flowing to? Landlords. Who didn’t pay for UBI, didn’t build the infrastructure, didn’t employ those people.
Yes, see retired social security recipients as an example. But you won’t find these folk renting in SF on a social security check.
SF’s desire for (inexpensive) service workers is a separate matter.
Do you dispute that?
The mechanisms are the same, though. Amazon putting HQ2 in a city causes rent to go up (higher productivity).
A coal mine developing a new, more efficient train to move coal around will also cause rent to go up (higher productivity).
2. That's a really naive sense of economic productivity. Here is a thought experiment.
A) Let's shut down all of Amazon HQ1.
B) Let's shut down the dams that provide 86% of Seattle greater area's electricity.
Which one of these entities is ACTUALLY responsible for that "productivity" then? And I bet you rents in Seattle without electricity would drop far greater proportionally than they do out by the dams. Rent follows incomes, not productivity.