I'm willing to concede UBI (or other unrestricted cash grants) could impact specific segments of a market. But, I can't find good evidence one way or the other that those negative pricing impacts offset increases in productivity, wellness, etc.
I'm willing to concede UBI (or other unrestricted cash grants) could impact specific segments of a market. But, I can't find good evidence one way or the other that those negative pricing impacts offset increases in productivity, wellness, etc.
Over the same time period that loans have become easily obtainable (via US government backing), massive amounts of regulation has also been imposed on colleges/universities.
While people love to talk about football stadiums, luxury dorms, and other amenities, one of the largest increases in the cost of running a college is administrators to keep up with regulatory demands.
I'm not claiming administrators are solely responsible, only that it's not as simple as "Uncle Sam gives students money and college spend every penny".
Additionally, public funding of colleges has dropped over the same time period. As of 2018, state funding of public colleges was down ~$7 billion since 2008. It was slashed during the down economy, but never brought back up again.
[0] https://www.experian.com/blogs/ask-experian/state-of-student...
The rapidly increasing headcount growth, including professor headcount growth is driving the increased cost which is driving increased borrowing.
Universities need much bigger class sizes, many fewer professors, and many fewer administrators. Overall headcount at universities needs to shrink by ~70% to get the cost back inline.
No politician, or university president is going to say that because it would be so brutal to oversee. But... students are suffering with massive debt loads and someone is going to have to make the right choices to cut those costs.
[0] https://washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/septoct-2011/administ...
I wonder, however, if administrations just take on a life of their own and grow bounded only by available budget. It seems like this happens in the private sectors with layer upon layer of management.
We have several teams of developers pushing out state-level regulatory updates to our software (and these updates are frequent and often done on short notice), plus more teams doing annual federal regulatory updates.
And again, I'm not claiming this is the largest contributor, only that it's one of many reasons (easy access to loans included as well).
"We find a pass-through effect on tuition of changes in subsidized loan maximums of about 60 cents on the dollar, and smaller but positive effects for unsubsidized federal loans. The subsidized loan effect is most pronounced for more expensive degrees, those offered by private institutions, and for two-year or vocational programs."
I've looked, but all I see is conjecture. Nothing academic. The academic articles I do find tend to assert the opposite - that any changes in consumer prices are smaller than increases in income, granting the recipient more buying power.
fwiw i noticed above you mentioned that there will be an increase in productivity, wellness etc. although i tend to agree with the wellness aspect (esp. compared to our current circumstances) the degree to which wellness would increase is also unclear. for some colinear studies, i'm thinking of finkelstein's work on medicaid expansion in oregon where they found exposure to medicaid increased reported well being of recipients.
and i don't think productivity increases under a ubi holds water on theoretical grounds.
you seem to be assuming large increases in productivity and wellness and other benefits and then asking if inflation will erode that, when we also need to consider that the possible benefits will themselves be attenuated, particularly for those already at lower incomes or those who will earn a ubi.
UBI would allow an unprecedented level of freedom for people to relocate with little risk, and that would itself have a massive influence on city make-up and the housing market. If a lot of the unskilled labor in the bay area actually chose to move somewhere else, wages for those people would either have to increase greatly to meet demand, or the area would finally have to allow much more cheap housing.
I imagine other shifts like that would play out large in small in almost all aspects of the economy. UBI entirely changes everything.
* employer wages for low-demand workers will drop, as competition for low-demand workers will not increase, and those workers will accept a lower wage reasoning that the UBI 'makes up the difference'
* if employer wages are not allowed to drop below a certain point (the minimum wage), then more disposable income will create increased demand for scarce resources (e.g., housing that is a bit better than currently occupied) thereby causing prices to rise.
I'm no Econ major, so happy to hear how my reasoning may be in error.
The logical leap that you are missing is that prices don’t always rise quickly enough as a response to increase in wages. What a person is willing to pay is only part of the pricing equation. You also have to consider what competitors are charging and how much potential margin there is to play with.
Inevitably though, all prices consolidate and all players in the market will charge more to meet the increase in wages, it’s just a slow process.
The only time it happens quickly is if each business conspires to raise prices simultaneously, which isn’t going to happen or may be illegal.
So yes, increase in wages or handing out UBI inevitably raises prices after a period of time, necessitating the need for even more increase in wages and more UBI. It’s not a one and done thing.
Because housing expenses are generally the single largest expense in any household budget, that means landlords are going to reap the majority of the benefit here. People selling homes also know that wages have gone up and by what amount, so this will impact the sale price of new homes. So, any amount of UBI would end up being a huge cash transfer from renters to landlords and other existing homeowners.
Isn't the other part of Adam Smith's supply and demand stuff the idea that competition will drive down prices? Sure, everyone's got another $2,000, but if I can undercut the guy who's trying to mop it all up, wouldn't I? And wouldn't someone else try and undercut me?
Wouldn't that bring prices down? And if not, why not? If there's another larger force at work keeping prices high and keeping people in poverty -- and if poverty is something we want to do something about -- doesn't that suggest that we need to constrain sellers' behavior in some ways we aren't really doing now (like laws against gouging)?
All prices? No. Clothing is now effectively free, for example. Prices of necessities are the only things you want to watch. Basic food products, healthcare, etc. Those prices have risen around the same as the rate of inflation or spiraled out beyond. Food prices cannot outstrip the inflation ever, because of food subsidy and/or ebt which is tied to it.
For food, some people buy bulk staples and some buy high-end food at Wholefoods.
The degree of substitutes and variety available on the market is staggering for consumer items.
We've seen this with higher minimum wages. The amount of inflation is much lower than than the wage increase, and poor people end up with more buying power.
It should also be noted that inflation is not immediately present following a cash stimulus. It takes time for inflation to set in as a response to market conditions and as such inflation is measured as an adjustable change over a given period of time. That said specific single time examples of UBI not adjusting inflation only demonstrates a faulty understanding of economics.
Where do you think government's money come from? Financing UBI will require raising taxes.
empirically, however, things are sticky and so we have not observed concomitant decreases in employment with (small to moderate) increases in the minimum wage. my other guess (not sure if this is supported by the literature) this can also be because not only is the market sticky, but because workers were being paid a lower wage than their employer could have afforded.
There is plenty of literature that contradicts your assertion. Here are a few links...
https://medium.com/basic-income/wouldnt-unconditional-basic-...
https://www.peoplespolicyproject.org/2020/03/18/understandin...
What the other replies have failed to consider is that UBI is just injection of cash. It isn't a voucher for a specific class of goods, such as rent. It is just cash that can be used for absolutely anything. If that means burning cash on a $5000 handbag then so be it. Inflation is literaly the injection of cash into a market.
The problem with inflation is lost value. Cash is an abstraction of value to conduct an exchange. The real world worth of that abstraction is variable. When the availability of that abstraction increases disproportionately to a real world value it will be able to purchase less. The most common reason is that prices increase to follow the increased availibility of cash, but there are other reasons as well.
When everybody equally has uniformly increased purchasing power the natural counter-reaction is to reduce availability of goods and services. That can mean raising prices. It can also mean removing goods from market to make them more exclusive. Any means of restoring value to the prior state will happen to lower disruption to the transfer of goods.
Had you read the wikipedia article it would have addressed everything I just said.
Australia currently has a program where anyone impacted from the effects of the pandemic, receives $1,500 a fortnight- and yet is experiencing deflation. The very fact of this debunks your argument, as it is a significant portion of the population who is now receiving a cash injection. This money is not exclusively for rent, nor is it tied to food stamps; it is $1,500 to spend as you wish.
Further, The Reserve Bank Of Australia is in favour of these payments. And it's also worth noting, many economies have an inflation target of about 3%, which indicates that inflation is healthy and to so staunchly avoid anything that may affect inflation is a fools errand.
Regardless, please read more than a wikipedia article before holding such a strong opinion. The other commenter called you out for being lazy, and I wholeheartedly agree with them.
In this case the goal of stimulus is inflation and it isn't enough to repair the economic disruption.
Despite the sharp and historic deflation this is not unusual though. Pandemics are historically known for economic deflation. Europe experienced a devastating pandemic about once a century for more than 10 centuries in a row yielding plenty of economic evidence to this.
The most important thing to learn from this is that a sudden economic deflation hurts poor people and corrections insufficiently help poor people. Wealthy people are not directly impacted, at all. Attempting to correct for that difference with an economic stimulus, such as giving poor people cash, does not at all balance that disparity.
If anything this current pandemic illustrates that a UBI is an insufficient control for balance. Instead of focusing on what to do about poor people if the goal is to balance the disparities of wealthy people against poor people then wonder what to do about wealthy people. Tax the shit out of wealthy people and use that increased government revenue to grow the economy directly in ways only business can: increased infrastructure (there is more to that than just roads and telephone poles).
As for taxing wealth I am a huge fan of a complete estate tax and not a huge fan of income taxes. Take everything greater than $10 million of estate value when a wealthy patron dies.