this post was submitted on 08 Apr 2026
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UBI will just cause inflation, it increases aggregate demand without increasing aggregate supply. More dollars chasing the same amount of goods leads to inflation.
It also doesn't really address inequality, anyone's relative position on the income hierarchy doesn't change, if I make $500 more than another guy before UBI, I'll still make $500 more than them after UBI, and your position on the income hierarchy determines your standard of living, not your absolute income. Eg. If you get a raise that matches inflation your absolute income may have gone up, but your relative income stayed the same and thus so did your standard of living.
We need to stop focusing on money and focus on the systems of production and hierarchy that actually determine our living standards. Money is just an expression of those structures, it's downstream, and changing that won't change the actual structures.
UBI is an uplift mechanism which, along with socialized housing, transport, food, healthcare, etc., provides those who would otherwise be marginalized with the means by which they can become more productive. There will be people who take advantage and live on the dole, but in all of the trials done thus far, that has been a vanishing minority. What has happened is people went back to school, learned a new trade, produced art, and made themselves better and more able to help society in a fashion that better suits their capabilities.
Is it perfect? no, absolutely not. It's a patch that can be implemented with relatively little difficulty in most "western" governments, and help a lot of people.
For your inflation argument, say I make $5,000 a month before UBI, and maybe I'll make $10,000 after. Jeff Bezos alone robs us of about $24,000 every 60 seconds and wants more. UBI would have about as much impact on inflation as pissing on a forest fire to put it out would.
UBI doesn't uplift people, again it doesn't touch the income hierarchy which is the source of inequality, it just inflates the hierarchy.
All the previous trials were limited to a set group. If you give money to a set group then yes there position on the income relative to everyone else will increase, and thus there access to goods and services. If it is truly universal and everyone gets it then the income hierarchy remains the same, just the incomes are inflated in absolute terms. Just like if everyone got the same percentage raise in a year prices would just go up by that same percentage because the people setting the prices know you can now pay x percent more. If you give a select group of people a raise though then they can now outbid others and get more products and services.
Jeff bezos doesn't spend most of the money he gets, it just gets reinvested into his ungodly hoard. If that money doesn't actually get spent and doesn't enter the economic system it doesn't effect inflation. The lower you go on the income ladder the larger percent of your money gets spent until you get to the bottom of people living paycheck to paycheck, saving nothing. If you give those people money they'll spend it right away, because they have to, and that will contribute to inflation.
Wouldn't inflation be a good immediate signal on which systems of production need to be fixed first? E.g. housing prices spike = need more housing
Also, if someone earns 1000 and you earn 500 before an UBI of 500, they earn 2x as much as you before and 1.5x after.
We have way more than enough housing. The problem is they're wildly unaffordable or hoarded by people buying vacation homes or investment properties. Some are also from inheritance that they just refuse to get rid of cause they'd lose money or some nonsense.
Maybe but we already know we need more housing, no need to spend a bunch of money to find that out, especially if that money can be spent on actually building housing. There are plenty of other stats and signals we can use to determine what to produce which don't require bringing inflation into the mix that can cut into peoples savings.
Yes but your ability to outbid that other person stays the same. In a market system your access to limited goods and services is determined by your ability to outbid others to gain those goods and services.
Take housing for example, say I can spend $500 on housing for a shitty apartment and another person can spend $1,000 on housing for a good apartment, and there's another unhoused person who can't afford any housing.
Now give each of these people $500, like you said the relative gap has shrinked but the place in the hierarchy stays the same. The person with the good apartment will bid up prices to keep me from moving into their unit, and I'd be forced to bid up for my unit to make sure the unhoused person doesn't get it. The distribution of housing would stay the same, assuming no new housing gets built, and all the money just goes to the landlord.
Why are you assuming an extra shitty apartment that cost $500 wouldn’t be built, now that the unhoused person has some money to pay with?
Because some money doesn't mean it's enough to profit off of building that shitty apartment. If UBI is implemented and the economy inflates then the price of building a shitty apartment will go up, and if that price goes up past the point where it's profitable to charge $500 a month for it then it either won't get built or they will increase the rent, probably to the new $1,000 market rate.
You can do social housing and remove the profit incentive, but it's hard for the state to build housing when all of its money is going to UBI.
That’s the same flawed argument often used to shoot down minimum wage increases. Income increases to the poorest people historically does not lead to unsustainable inflation.