Comment by triceratops
17 days ago
> This is why UBI is a nonstarter. It will just get absorbed by landlords
Not necessarily. People live where they live because there are jobs. If they don't need jobs because of UBI, or they can take lower-paying jobs, they can move wherever housing is plentiful.
Not necessarily? Not that we've had one recently at the federal level, but there are multiple studies that show that state or city level minimum wage bumps tend to show an increase in average rental price, by the same percentage, within sometimes as few as four months.
You have to live in or near the city to collect the higher minimum wage. With UBI you could live anywhere. Even outside the country maybe. They aren't comparable.
UBI doesn't fix this because whereever someone live will start the process of someone absorbing income, regardless if it's income or not. You need to break the chain between income of people and land ownership by taxing land ownership.
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There'll always need to be other constraints on landlords because there's zero reason why they won't just all screw renters over in every area no matter how plentiful housing is.
You have to make it impossible for them to exist. Rentiers are the lowest form of business, and incentives need to make it difficult for them to prosper too much.
These issues are why policy was oriented around individual home ownership for decades.
Orienting policy around individual home ownership just ends up eventually with more people’s voting interests aligned with landowners, and is part of the reason why increasing property values and NIMBYism is so entrenched in American government structures
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There's an argument that landlording gets entirely too favorable treatment from the tax code compared to any other type of business or investment. Seriously proposing eliminating property rentals is weapons-grade stupid.
How would they do that if housing is plentiful?