What happens if you do this in a major economy using it as the source of money? We know what would happen if a bunch of money were printed. What if it was taken out of taxes and crapton of government programs were cancelled? Especially long term.
What actually happens depends on who gets the money. If rich people get it, I would not expect much to happen. If middle income people get it, we could reasonably expect inflation. If low income people get it, that grows the economy even in a major economy.
Let me explain. Yes, if you give middle income people more money, then they can afford to pay more for widgets. So, the widget store owner can increase his income by increasing his prices: Inflation.
If low income people get the money, now they can buy the widget that they wanted. So, the widget store owner opens a widget store in a low income area and orders more widgets. The widget manufacturer puts on another shift. Both groups make more money and more people are employed.
Should the widget store owner raise his prices, fewer people can afford widgets and the store owner loses money. This won't happen.
The real world is more messy than this, but I think the principle applies.
"Inflation" is often a bugaboo used by resentful people to brand social innovation as harmful. Such people eventually hurt themselves and hurt their country.
[1] https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2023/demo/p60-27...
But not everybody earns the same. So handing out cash to everyone should have a compressing effect of wealth.
My taxes have tripled in the past 5 years. Appliance, construction, repairs, insurance are all much higher.
If I was renting to people - in what world wouldn’t I be forced to raise their rent? Why would I cover that for someone when I have to pay it?
If you want to reduce the cost of living you increase supply. UBI will not affect supply nor demand, it will just affect the existing demand’s ability to pay a higher price universally and knowably. As a landlord, I would be an idiot not to raise rents by $x soon after implementation. Every landlord knows this and so they’d all do it together, no coordination necessary.
We need to increase supply by upzoning and speeding up permission processes.
That will increase supply, depress prices, and solve a lot of social ill without needing UBI.
There should be studies that show when minimim wage or welfare/other forms of assistance increases that rent follows.
> Increases in state minimum wages significantly reduce the incidence of renters defaulting on their lease contracts by 1.7 percentage points over three months, relative to similar renters who did not experience an increase in the minimum wage. This represents 10.6% fewer monthly defaults. However, this effect slowly decreases over time as landlords react to wage increases by increasing rents.
Of course, one could imagine a compassionate government giving additional UBI money to those who are disabled. But, that would require some bureaucracy to verify claims and make adjustments. At which point we’re back to having an assistance program.
We could always dig at the cultural issue and work towards making greed a degenerate trait to be shunned and managed out.