I agree there are immense benefits but it fails to recognize that markets rule the world. Once there would be a Basic Income, that is when market prices would go up to cancel out the benefit. You underestimate the rulers of the world (wealthy) to hold onto their advantage.
I see it as many times better than welfare or unemployment since it is distributed equally to everyone. If there is a limit it will eventually be too low, so even rich people would get it, they would have to or it would be destroyed.
Social security is an insurance policy really that doesn't hit wealthy wallets much beyond what everyone pays, but people still want to destroy it and this is against workers directly paying in their whole lives for a subpar investment, yes small businesses pay the full 15%ish and social security returns 2% annually and also props up our dollar big time with investment in t-bills. So even benefits like that are too social for many.
But a Basic Income distributed to everyone would lose the current perception of welfare/unemployment being bad when really these are helpful to keep the low end propped up and in the end I believe it saves money. You'd have to keep moving it up like minimum wage as the effects are normalized, it really is a travesty that minimum wage hasn't gone up as well.
People in America really don't like helping one another so this and other programs with even a hint of social aspects will not catch on. But if someone gets a benefit that the complainer also gets, they would probably be ok with it. However this does not redistribute and would eventually be cancelled out in pricing.
Why would prices go up? It's a money redistribution scheme, not a money creation scheme. The poor have more money, the rich have slightly less, the middle class have about the same, and the bureaucrats and parasitical corporations that live off administering the welfare system have a lot less.
Goods generally purchased by the poor might go up slightly, but BI should shift the poor into the low end of lower middle class. In other words, putting them in a situation comparable to that of the majority of the American population, so the effect on the demand curve should not be large.
Because the propensity to consume is not equal across the economic spectrum; downward redistribution increases expected consumption and, therefore, overall price levels.
The idea that this would eat up the beneficial effects of BI is hard to justify, but the idea that some increase in overall price level is likely is pretty easy to justify.
Because the value of a dollar will shrink for one with more money in the system, unless it is a direct take from wealthy which just won't happen since they are closer to legislation. It would have to be equal to work and that would only last for a while, hence my comment that it would have to re-adjust frequently.
Just like salaries have gone up over time yet the value of a dollar has shrunk, there would only be a momentary boom from the extra money and then the market, as markets purpose is, will find the value and adjust. It would keep things in more of a wave though like when minimum wage goes up, there is a temporary boom to low end markets but it always makes it back to the current distribution (I think minimum wage is a good thing). The money given would always find the way back up through pricing with a basic income though. Apartments suddenly would be x% higher and price increases because there is more money out there and if more actual printed then pricing has to come up. It is a forever balance and the only way to break it I can see is to ramp up the ladder individually.
Markets run everything and they are good, we would still all be farming and dumb if there weren't markets to trade goods for services. Markets and exchanges created conditions for the need for mathematics and allowed people have more free time as they could make products and sell them. This led to more time to think and create/innovate and the reason we have mathematics and technology today. But markets do find fair product to market/user value. Markets are as key to innovation and the evolution of human intelligence as anything. But they will always normalize after infusion, just recently we infused it from the top to banks, which may have kept us from the brink of destruction but only to get it back to 'balanced'. Why didn't they instead just give everyone 6k? Monetary distribution, unless we go away from markets/currency as value, will be pretty close to what we have now always (doesn't mean individuals can't climb it).
It could be proven that we all think like the wealthy on this, once a human gets ahead, they don't want to lose that ground or progress. Case in point the US, if you live in the US like I do, we might have a higher quality of life and currency status than many parts of the world. Would you give that up to allow all countries in the world to be equal in monetary value? If you aren't in the US how about where you live? The people above the fold want to keep it that way, the people below will want it another way, the people above the fold create the game rules, repeat until entropy.
I see it as many times better than welfare or unemployment since it is distributed equally to everyone. If there is a limit it will eventually be too low, so even rich people would get it, they would have to or it would be destroyed.
Social security is an insurance policy really that doesn't hit wealthy wallets much beyond what everyone pays, but people still want to destroy it and this is against workers directly paying in their whole lives for a subpar investment, yes small businesses pay the full 15%ish and social security returns 2% annually and also props up our dollar big time with investment in t-bills. So even benefits like that are too social for many.
But a Basic Income distributed to everyone would lose the current perception of welfare/unemployment being bad when really these are helpful to keep the low end propped up and in the end I believe it saves money. You'd have to keep moving it up like minimum wage as the effects are normalized, it really is a travesty that minimum wage hasn't gone up as well.
People in America really don't like helping one another so this and other programs with even a hint of social aspects will not catch on. But if someone gets a benefit that the complainer also gets, they would probably be ok with it. However this does not redistribute and would eventually be cancelled out in pricing.