Wouldn't work without also instituting rent control. The moment landlords get wind that people are getting money from a UBI the rents will double. So many parts of our system are so beyond broken that it's like playing whack-a-mole with all of the worst elements in society.
this post was submitted on 27 Oct 2025
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Lawmakers float a nationwide basic income experiment that would cover the cost of a 2-bedroom apartment
(www.businessinsider.com)
Exactly. It’s a proven that will only show up at scale, and these little randomized studies will never demonstrate it.
Democrats don't seem to understand this and just want to throw money at our systemic problems. I'm in favor of some form of wealth redistribution in the form of UBI, but so much of our system can only be fixed by controlling costs, and that needs to come first. Rent is one, health care another.
Japan has private insurance, but all procedures have a standard, fixed cost associated with them. As a result, their costs are low because the system has no room for middlemen and the enormous waste and economic inefficiency they create.
Democrats have (mostly) united to force the issue with the ACA subsidies. But they want to continue making enormous payments to prop up a broken system that is structurally incapable of controlling costs. The shutdown fight may be the right move in the short term, provided when people go to enroll they experience sticker shock and learn that Republicans are striving to double their premiums), but it can't be the long-term solution.
If you pay everyone, it will just be slurped up by the rent-seekers and middlemen our system is built around.
Supply and demand are not perfectly elastic. A portion of the UBI will go into both landlord and tenant surplus, and we can tax the landlord surplus.
I floated the idea of going for a run later. It’s not going to happen but I’d like some praise all the same
I floated the idea of giving you some praise, I can sleep soundly tonight knowing my intentions are good.
Good job, internet Stranger!
And without rent caps this is useless
Or pricing controls broadly. There is a reason why everyone has the same story of always having "just barely enough to get by." It's because we live in a carefully balanced system that has been refined through decades of pushing the line back and forth until the majority of people are paying exactly just as much as they can afford for everything without sparking revolts and riots.
I feel like they do this "trial" for UBI once in a while on purpose without other legislation to support it just to "prove it doesn't work" so they can keep milking us like horseshoe crabs on a rack.
No it's not, because supply and demand are not perfectly elastic. A portion of the UBI will go into both landlord and tenant surplus, and we can tax the landlord surplus.
Sounds like an argument against spillage that's simply just pointing to an old rag and saying "duh". 🤷🏽♂️
Also, not dissimilar to "doing just barely enough to shake things up, but expecting everyone to pull their weight to keep it going", which is beyond ludicrous at this point and edging toward negligence, IMHO. gestures at recent socioeconomic events
I don't understand what you're saying here. Do you think it's "useless" because it's not enough?
That would be a logical fallacy.
Right, because rent hasn't been skyrocketing already.
It 100% has, but if they don't put rent caps in, landlords will just raise rent bc they can. And then the UBI will be pointless.
Next up: Landlords floats raising the rent of two bedroom apartments to one million dollars.
Someone saying we are selecting 20,000 people with very low income to be a part of our basic income test run. The idea is to make sure they can afford to live. Then being told you are one of those 10,000 that they picked to compare too.
Id still be happy some people were being helped and would hope it helped future people but damn would that be a bummer. We found 5,000 of the 10 we chose not to help either wound up homeless and malnourished while all of them had less happy lives and opportunities, couldn't afford to have as many kids and the suicide rates were much higher.
We know it works. Why the pilot? Just fucking do it. They managed to do it during COVID. If we're going to spend all this money anyway why the hell not. 7.2 trillion a year. It'll cause inflation, sure. But there are advantages to devaluing currency as well.
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Scummy landlords- "Oh no, I need to put the rent up by a few hundred percent! How unfortunate for you!! What are the odds. Phew!''
As if that isn't already happening.
Supply and demand are not perfectly elastic. A portion of the UBI will go into both landlord and tenant surplus, and we can tax the landlord surplus.
I see you bringing this up multiple times here and it got me thinking. Is housing even elastic at all?
I mean the market may respond in an area if there is room, it is zoned correctly, and if it is profitable. But it is not like people are going to drive the price down anytime soon just through their preference.
I have seen some municipalities rezone areas to encourage companies to build apartments. Unless there is some nonprofit or government element they are not affordable though.
Yes. Very few goods are perfectly inelastic, like land. While there are multiple ways to increase the supply of housing, one simple answer is taller apartment buildings that would otherwise not be cost effective.
AI leaders such as Tesla CEO Elon Musk and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman have long supported the idea of a universal basic income in response to AI. Altman helped fund a large basic income study that ended last year.
Really? That's surprising.
That's how much he thinks his theft-based guess machine is worth lmao
Yeah it will float on down the river with GOP in charge.
Incoming: "YoU hAvE tO wOrK hArD wHiLe ThEsE lAzY pArAsItEs TaKe YoUr TaX mOnEy AnD dOn'T wOrK!! It's a Communist Democrat giveaway, denied!!"
(Ignoring the reality of people actually working)
Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I read somewhere a long while back that UBI is a non-solution to wealth inequality. IIRC if you don't also radically change the rest of the regressive tax structures then the supply of cash still gets funneled upward. Most of the hype is from PR and the inherent good vibes of getting a check in the mail.
In the sense that “poverty exists not because we cannot feed the poor, but because we cannot satisfy the rich,” you're correct that putting a floor on wealth can't solve the whole problem by itself. But that doesn't mean it can't help, especially when you consider:
- UBI's ability to lower the opportunity costs for things like retraining and entrepreneurship by helping people sustain themselves during that gap in earning, which gives them power to get themselves out of exploitative work situations. Addressing that power inequality between employers and workers is real, and is something UBI accomplishes a lot better than schemes, especially stuff like welfare with work requirements that do the exact opposite by forcing people to take any job, no matter how shitty, to remain eligible.
- That the money for it has to come from somewhere, and most proposals for funding UBI involve making other taxes more progressive.
What I don't get is the assumption that a fixed stipend of currency will provide for basic necessities.
If the society was committed to universal housing, food and healthcare access then just make that the stated goal and get those funds involved directly in housing/food/healthcare. Just giving someone $1000 doesn't stop their landlord from increasing rent by $900 to match; a government owned housing alternative does.
Just giving someone $1000 doesn’t stop their landlord from increasing rent by $900 to match
It doesn't need to; market forces do that. The supply and demand for housing don't actually change just because the buyers have more money in their budget (to divide among housing and other things) so it's not reasonable to expect prices to rise all that much either.
I admit, that's not a super-satisfactory answer, but it's a complicated and counterintuitive enough topic that nothing I could write succinctly enough for a Lemmy comment would address all possible counterarguments. As such, best I can do is cite some sources that explore it more fully:
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https://widerquist.com/will-basic-income-cause-rent-to-increase/
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https://ubiadvocates.org/will-universal-basic-income-increase-house-prices-and-rents/
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https://www.givedirectly.org/how-do-cash-transfers-impact-neighbors/ [this is the "Kenya study" referenced by somebody in the Metafilter thread from the previous bullet point]
It doesn't need to; market forces do that.
I don't claim to be an economist but I'm doubtful that pulling indirect levers and letting the market regulate itself works. If it did we'd already be 45 years into a Reaganomic utopia.
Reformation of regressive tax structures is a must, and pricing controls broadly for everything from rent to utilities to groceries. They're all interconnected.
It's not a coincidence that you always seem to have "just barely enough to get by" and never a penny more. The system is currently balanced like a fine Swiss watch to make sure you are paying out exactly as much as you possibly can without either dying or starting a riot. We've spent decades watching them push the line back and forth until we got to this "sweet spot."
UBI is a great idea, but part of what makes it currently a far-off dream is how much restructuring would need to be done to guarantee it works. And it is NOT going to make the corporate donor-class happy so it will be attacked and sabotaged at every opportunity.
Sorry guys, we all hate work and the associated requirements that come with working within our shoddy system, but it's not going anywhere anytime soon.
No great socialist leader is going to topple the system. Super-intelligent AI is not going to overhaul our entire world. We're not retiring into a star-trek, post-scarcity future. In fact, shit is only going to get harder and harder. Save money, get a job and take it seriously whether or not it's fair, learn tradeskills AND have backup plans to do anything from Uber to selling doorstops on Etsy. We don't fix things if we don't survive so to you out there reading all this and despairing, yah... I know it sucks. Find something inside yourself to push through and survive.
There are MANY different theories for UBI.
But the concept of it isn't really about wealth inequality. It is about decoupling existence from labor. Can't find work or decide to take some time off to "work on yourself"? You can still eat and you aren't at risk of becoming unhoused.
But you also aren't going out for hookers and blow every night.
The model I like is that UBI is there to effectively provide minimal housing and food. Want to have money for luxuries like video games? Starbucks is still hiring and that will supllement your income (lowering wages drastically for companies). Want to move somewhere bigger and better? Go back to school and get an advanced degree. And so forth.
Because you can't address wealth inequality without wealth redistribution and... most online leftists rapidly realize they don't want that once it is pointed out they are "upper middle class". And... I would argue we don't actually want that (outside of closing loopholes so that rich fuckers actually pay their taxes) because it encourages people to strive.
If you're going to have the same quality of life whether you spend eight years working towards an advanced degree and then another decade to become a globally recognized expert in your field or you don't work and just edge yourself to orgasm all day? Which are you going to pick? And, yes, there are people who work because it is what they love but those people tend to never turn in anything actionable because they are just having too much fun constantly iterating. Let alone all the service industry jobs that fucking NOBODY wants to do (and with good reason) but that the world needs to function.
Because you can't address wealth inequality without wealth redistribution and... most online leftists rapidly realize they don't want that once it is pointed out they are "upper middle class". And... I would argue we don't actually want that (outside of closing loopholes so that rich fuckers actually pay their taxes) because it encourages people to strive.
People don't need a reason to strive. They do it all on their own, and they'll have more energy for it without worrying about the baser logistics of life
There is a just a lot here that is based on some baked in internalized presumptions, some of which just straight up are contradicted by research that has been published in the last few decades. But the one thing I want to respond to is the assertion that most leftists are against the idea of wealth redistribution. There is a huge and growing cohort of people strongly in support of extreme marginal tax rates at the top brackets and wealth taxes and/or caps. These aren't fringe topics even remotely.
in support of extreme marginal tax rates at the top brackets and wealth taxes and/or caps.
Which is not going to address wealth inequality.
If musk is capped to even a million dollars a year in take home? He is still making more money than the vast majority of the world can ever even dream of.
But also? The friend who has "a tech job" and is hitting six figures out of college is ridiculously rich compared to the friend who is making minimum wage.
People support wealth redistribution in the sense of "eat the rich". But once you think beyond a slogan that you append to your donation message to a leftist streamer in a mansion, it starts to get REALLY messy what "the rich" actually is. And that is where it tends to fall apart because "no. I am not rich. I just buy a new iphone every year. Don't eat me"
Which, again, is kinda the thing. UBI and even actually properly taxing the fucking millionaires (let alone billion and trillion) isn't about wealth inequality. It is about raising the floor so that the people on the bottom can fucking exist. There is still going to be vast inequality between even the high school janitor and the high school teacher, but they won't need to have 2-3 side hustles just to not get evicted this month.
No one is seriously talking about a 100% tax bracket at 1mil/yr. Moreover, wealth taxes and caps look at an entity's total value. Many of the super rich are not making the money they spend as traditional income, you have to go after actual wealth. Finally, those progressive taxes and caps are typically put forward as the primary method to finance something like UBI or wealth floors--literally a manner of redistribution.
I don't necessarily disagree with everything you've said, and what i do disagree with is more along the lines of thinking you're painting with an overly broad and ambiguous brush.
Then I honestly have no idea what you are arguing outside of MAYBE being overly pedantic and insisting that people like wealth redistribution just not in any capacity that addresses wealth inequality which... "distinction without difference".
Yes, we need to tax the rich. I specifically said as much
And… I would argue we don’t actually want that (outside of closing loopholes so that rich fuckers actually pay their taxes) because it encourages people to strive.
But beyond that? This goes back to the idea that UBI et al are specifically not about wealth inequality and are instead about survival. Specifically to reply to
I read somewhere a long while back that UBI is a non-solution to wealth inequality.
Without easily accessible public transit that picks up every ten minutes, that is just cruel. No money for video games means no money for books and good luck finding anything outside of RW and evangelical propaganda at the library. Btw, what self-enrichment schemes are in place for disabled or differently abled?
Some upper middle class I know and poor people are willing to share, so by "most" do you mean you personally?
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What about food?
In this case it sounds like it wouldn't cover all basic needs but substantially subsidize.
Food?? Oh sure, next you're going to say you also want "water" and "a roof to keep the rain off your body" and even "clothing."
Jesus, there's no satisfying you spoiled youngers and your "basic needs for survival."
/s ?
I'll smack that thing outta your hand, back in MY day we didn't need "joke ruiners" to sanitize our wild takes. Back in my day, you had no idea who meant what and that's the way we liked it, goddamn it.
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