Indeed, a critical problem. But wait ... what's that? You say there are places where the state builds housing? How could it be?

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estearum 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Sure but now you're not just talking about UBI, are you?

You're now talking about UBI, plus rent controls, plus state-built housing.

All to make UBI actually do anything at all other than enrich existing landlords.

Why don't we just skip the UBI and the rent controls and instead just have the state build housing?

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PaulDavisThe1st 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Because UBI is largely orthogonal to those things. It's a way of taking productivity gains and ensuring that the entire population benefits from them.

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estearum 2 hours ago | parent [-]

But... without those other changes... UBI doesn't benefit the entire population, as we've just established.

It benefits landlords.

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PaulDavisThe1st an hour ago | parent [-]

The broader claim that you're making is that any increase in after-tax income benefits only the rent-seeking classes (since the same argument you've made for landlords would apply to all other rent seekers, including netflix, airlines and more).

I don't know enough about economics these days to know if anyone who knows a lot about thus stuff thinks this is true, but it seems on the face of it to be absurd, since it would mean that pay raises are substantially diminished by rents paid for anything where demand is not elastic. I mean, I'm not insisting that cannot possibly be true, but it seems unlikely ...

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estearum an hour ago | parent [-]

No, this argument does not apply to rent-seeking classes. I am describing land ownership specifically. Land is a totally n-of-one asset in that it is completely inelastic. It is not created nor destroyed by any human intervention whatsoever, and so its supply is not affected by prices whatsoever.

The relevance of this is amplified by the fact that land is a required input for all forms of production. People and machines must exist in space, and therefore demand land.

This does not apply to any other asset that we care about.

	▲	PaulDavisThe1st 27 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		OK, so there are classes of activity that are fairly inelastic, but not as inelastic as those requiring use of land. Fair enough. But why would the cost of air travel not increase in response to UBI? It's not inelastic, but modest increases don't appear to reduce demand much at all. Or eggs (again, not inelastic, but not very elastic either)? The housing:land demand ratio is also not fixed, due to multi-level dwellings (hence, for example, Singapore or Hong Kong), or increased density (e.g. ADUs or smaller lots). I just don't see why you see UBI only affecting owners of a nearly-inelastic resource (land) rather than everything else too (even if to a lesser degree) ?