Prices for what? How would anybody coordinate this?
The joke at Google is that if we get a company-wide raise, Mountain View landlords are the ones who celebrate.
(Also, laws against randomly raising rents by 50% would be useful.)
Then there's the possibility of some people working less or quitting one of their 2 jobs so they can enjoy their life a bit more. So their actual income could remain flat. If enough people do this then landlords wouldn't be able to increase rates either.
If there are more places to live than people who need them, then I'm curious where this place is. In populated areas where the rental market is already insane (SF, NYC, etc), then it could really only increase rent prices.
So you're misunderstanding supply and demand?
I realize that housing supply is constrained in many areas, which complicates this analysis, but in many areas that is more a regulatory failure than a necessary condition.
They don't, though, because UBI isn't funded by magical outside injection of value; the maximum mean additional after-tax income in any plausible UBI scheme (ignoring gains by induced economic growth or tax policy changes not germane to UBI funding) is $0. In a sense, it's a means-tested program where the means-test is within the taxing structure rather than a separate bureaucracy.
More to the point, though, local and interregional competition on rent, the same thing that stops landlords from capturing all the gains in income from all sources, is what constrains this (or not, if it is absent); UBI presents no special features in this regard.
Yes, do.
> Taxes historically are taken out every pay check.
And witholding formulas will be adjusted to reflect the additional taxes to pay for UBI, so people with jobs or other income subject to withholding (with income high enough that, at the level of approximation provided by withholding formulas, they would pay some additional tax for UBI) will have their non-UBI regularly-received take-home pay commensurately reduced.
> This person is now receiving $X dollars a month "for free", insofar that it doesn't require any actual input on their end to receive this money. Rationally, of course it's not magical free money, but and the end of the day they do ultimately have X more a month to spend.
No, even in the take home pay before filing taxes and settling up at the end of the year sense, not everyone will get equal (or any) additional income under a UBI scheme, and the mean will still be around $0.
Why call it universal base income if you can price yourself out of it like you can with normal welfare? I thought that was the entire point of the system.
One thing to note is that we're not really constrained on "places to live". We're much more constrained on "places to live that are nice enough and close enough to ways of making enough money." A UBI directly increases our supply of "places that are close enough to ways of making enough money."
Also bear in mind that landlords aren't competing just with identical units, but also with alternative living arrangements. If landlords charge more, I save more if I live with a roommate or stay with my parents.