Hence "Yes, the math is more complicated than that". The practical tweet-sized outcome is about the same though.
The other thing missed by UBI advocates: money is merely a representation of value, it is not value itself. Someone living on $UBI (and I expect a great many would) has all their basic needs met without their effort ... except that those basic needs are not provided without effort. This badly distorts supply-and-demand. $1 costing a UBI recipient nothing, prices rise by $1 - knowing that the $1 cost nothing to obtain; to wit "easy come, easy go".
> Hence "Yes, the math is more complicated than that". The practical tweet-sized outcome is about the same though.
Only if we do nothing about housing supply constraints and nobody decides they'd rather move to areas without those constraints given a UBI. But we should do something about housing supply constraints, and people would move away from high housing cost areas either way, but moreso if we do nothing about housing costs. Either one invalidates your premise.
> Someone living on $UBI (and I expect a great many would) has all their basic needs met without their effort ... except that those basic needs are not provided without effort.
We already do this for people with disabilities etc. It's not a problem unless the number of such people is large.
Meanwhile most people are not satisfied to live in a studio apartment and eat nothing but rice and beans forever. Anyone with more ambition than not starving to death would still have plenty of incentive to go out and do productive work, so the majority of people would continue to do so.
This is also another reason to fix the amount of the tax. If hypothetically too many people started to live off the UBI and not work, the tax would generate less revenue, the UBI amount would decrease and fewer people would be inclined to live off it.
> This badly distorts supply-and-demand. $1 costing a UBI recipient nothing, prices rise by $1 - knowing that the $1 cost nothing to obtain; to wit "easy come, easy go".
Giving everyone $1 doesn't cause prices to rise by $1. Some people would buy things with elastic supply whose quantity rather than price increases with increasing demand, some people simply wouldn't spend all of the money. (The second is more commonly done by corporations, but it's still very common, and the economic effect of the money being removed from circulation after being spent one time isn't that much different than zero.)
Also, that still only happens if you print the money. If it comes from someone then it doesn't cause price changes unless the two people would have bought different stuff -- which is not the case if they were both buying housing.
The other thing missed by UBI advocates: money is merely a representation of value, it is not value itself. Someone living on $UBI (and I expect a great many would) has all their basic needs met without their effort ... except that those basic needs are not provided without effort. This badly distorts supply-and-demand. $1 costing a UBI recipient nothing, prices rise by $1 - knowing that the $1 cost nothing to obtain; to wit "easy come, easy go".