Personally, without cost containment on the supplier side (ie, inflation), or pegging this benefit to inflation, it sounds like a bad idea.

Cash handouts are some of the most cost-effective things a government can do (up to a point), as dollars given to people living on a shoestring often recycle in the economy up to 5x, and result in about $1.73 returning to government via taxes for every $1 spent.

That looks interesting; can I have a source for those numbers?

A person receiving $1,000/mo or more in benefits will not see any change at all.

I doubt that the American electorate would go for it in the next fifty years. Given that it’s gaining support first on the left combined with the impressive propensity of the Democratic Party to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, navigating such a successfully nuanced political proposal seems to require one of the once-in-a-generation leader.

High hopes, no expectations of success.

These effects might not be visible with a "mincome" type RCT experiment because they rely on there being enough extra income lying around for it to be worth it to industry to design programs and policies around it.

Instead, we should nationalize certain industries and make them free of charge to end users (e.g. healthcare, public transit, housing, education, etc).

But wouldn't this be more efficient than subsidy programs? There is the idea that the needy will have the flexibility be able to obtain what they need most, rather than rely on programs that do not necessarily provide what they need most or in a way that they can't properly take advantage of.

In particular, it discusses what happens at different levels of UBI, with lower affordable levels creating more precarious workers with higher levels being completely unaffordable.

Yang's $1000 a mo. for all 18+ adults would cost about about:

(~200M 18+ adults) * (12k $/yr) / (19T GDP) = ~12% GDP

I would take serious issue with Yang's 18+ requirement as families with children need more money, not less! It also doesn't help you at all if your landlord raises the rent by $1000. They would argue this is fair, because they know you can pay it.

In contrast, when you nationalize those industries, there is no incentive to drive costs down. In fact, costs will likely go up because the more a nationalized industry spends, the more it gets from next year's budget.

To reuse an example from Richard Wolfe, if there are ten people that need milk, and there are 5 units of milk, we should distribute them according to need (e.g. medical, children, vs someone baking a cake). Instead, under a market, the rich get to buy it for their cat while the poor are priced out of the market.

The high price for milk and inflow of dollars from the high demand lead to more dairy farms, or research into milk alternatives. That does not happen if you seize the milk and distribute it according to need.

Both ways there's less milk available than needed, so the problem (lack of milk) still exists.

If those five gallons are to be distributed by need, then that difference in return needs accounted for as well (i.e. the government doing the redistribution should also be putting resources into improving milk production to avoid that situation in the future).

It seems the same activity (more milk production) would happen regardless, but instead of placing the rate of milk production in the hands of the current milk suppliers, it would be democratically controlled by the people buying the milk.

The producers of the good are typically much better positioned to determine how to efficiently spend resources to increase production. It is their own profits, future, and livelihood on the line so they are much more likely to choose carefully.

Can people with knowledge of milk production not be selected for government? Why would people choose to have those with less knowledge of milk production to run the milk production department?

In a market economy, everyone is free to compete, and everyone votes with his/her hard-earned dollars each time they purchase some milk.

With the government system, would you have people vote for the best milk producer? Is the general populace qualified or able to assess skill in milk production? If you instead decide to appoint this milk producer, how do you prevent corruption?

Is the general populace somehow more qualified or able to make that assessment if they're voicing said assessment in the form of dollars paid?

In contrast, when voting for a national milk producer, voters need to take into account the needs of the general populace, the future efficiency of each producer, possibly the weather and health of cows in different regions of the country. It is a much better deal to have the producers take on that risk, and let the consumers choose once the price and final product are known.

If a business tries to raise prices after UBI is implemented, other companies will enter the market for the increased margins and in turn, drive prices down again.

I don't think this is actually true, though I'd love to see an economic model that would convince me otherwise.

Sure, if the only income anyone had was UBI income, then increasing UBI by $1000 would (to a first order approximation) increase everyone's purchasing power equally, and the price of goods would increase by the same amount. (Though note that even in this simplified situation, due to effects like price/wage inelasticities, you wouldn't expect every price to move at the same time).

In the current UBI proposal, however, many people would still earn most of their dollars from other sources, and so the changes of purchasing power wouldn't be evenly distributed.

My intuitive model for this is that if the average person gets 1% of their income from UBI, and then UBI doubles to 2% of income, then prices should inflate by 1%, because everyone has 1% more to bid on the goods they want. But for those who are getting 100% of their income from UBI, then that 1% inflation on goods doesn't affect them the same way; it just means their purchasing power decreased by 1%, after doubling, so they still got a 99% increase.

1% is a placeholder, you'd need to model this with real data of course, true median salary and the proposed UBI.

Obviously the reality is way more complex since you have different mixes of goods and services purchased by the different segments of the population (e.g. perhaps more people in the bottom quartile of income rent than the top quartile), but we don't need to go into that much detail to disprove the argument above (at least with the level of detail that was afforded in the parent post).

further, it's an insidious wealth concentration mechanism aimed at removing both the motivation and means for upward mobility.

the better policy is to equalize capital and labor power in the economy. we've had 50 years of granting capital great favor, and those experiments have only led to corruption, unfairness, and growing poverty and homelessness.

Basically the idea is that UBI follows naturally from the fundamental right to the commons. To make the commons private property it’s only fair that the owner compensate the excluded commoners for the privilege.

I guess an other framing would be that property owners rent property from the commons, at market value. So it’s not really a tax either, more or a rent.

Wealth concentration mechanism? This seems like the exact opposite of wealth concentration to me. You're distributing money here.

The removal of upward mobility? Again, I fail to see how providing a basic income removes upward mobility. It's quite literally the exact opposite. One of the most difficult parts of getting yourself out of poverty and moving upward in class socioeconomically, is the seed level funding required to bootstrap yourself through your non-earning period to earning period. Usually in most cases, that's the time required to get an education when you're hemorrhaging money on both sides (i.e. having to pay tuition on one end while simultaneously having less time to work in favor of being able to have time to study/take the classes you're paying for on the other).

then think of an alternative world where labor and capital are equal partners in the optimal allocation of resources (the central promise of capitalism). labor is no longer in the dark about opportunity costs and accrued benefits and their fair share of it. consumers negotiate with corporations on equal footing so we get the fairest prices. as a free person, you no longer need a handout because you can negotiate fair wages and fair prices.

To clarify, in your original comment you said that it was a wealth concentration mechanism. Are you now saying that it is in fact a wealth distribution mechanism?

I think there might be some merit to your idea of UBI just keeping the existing elites at the top, if the foretold future automation taking away all the jobs does come to pass. In the meantime however, I think it's wrong to say that people will just stop working and trying to advance upwards. Most people aren't going to be happy with just a bare minimum income, they like the stuff a high income gets them. Plus work is still something many people derive meaning from, at all incomes. Work and upward mobility won't just go away with a comprehensive social safety net.

automation is an argument (and a threat) made by capital holders explicitly to depress wages, and distract from the shenanigans that already hugely imbalance the labor market in their favor. it's not some inevitability. our economy can evolve in an infinite number of ways, WALL-E be damned.