Wages would presumably raise prices only in industries that can't be heavily automated. As a result, industries that are automatible will have lower prices, while industries that require human labor will have inflated prices. In the end, those who make close to minimum wage are probably better off, since they can afford more of the automated things, and those who automate things are probably better off since they have more people to sell to. Those who are well off but don't automate things will probably be about even, since they'll need to pay more for human labor, but will receive UBI and automation benefits.
Rising wages means more competition over the same resources, leading to inflation. Even inflation in some industries/products will affect the CPI.
Where would the UBI come from? Presumably it would be from those who automate. This means your claim of lower prices will likely be marginal - the people need to support themselves whether they or a robot does the work. So UBI would mostly offset.
UBI would hopefully come from land-value taxes. This has been debated a lot and seems to be one of the best methods. Another would be making every American turn in their bank accounts into a single account, and slap a limit on how much you can have in there.... whether that's 50 million or 20 billion... piss off the billionaire class for sure, but who cares.
Inequality shouldn't be that out of whack anyways and having a max speed on it could encourage better equality.
Personally if I had UBI I'd work more on side-projects and try to get some recurring income coming in...I'm still trying to do that but it's harder w/ all the distractions of doing client/freelance work..and the depression when I can't meet bills because I'm having a ADHD poor-motivation month, or anti-social-can't be bothered w/ marketing to find new clients month... both of which seem like every month since the Pandemic began...
I'd hope a lot more people would actually go into science fields and do research when they can afford to go to school and have a guaranteed home and basic necessities...
Honestly a utopia to me would see 95% of kids becoming scientists and technologists, the rest in the arts... and everything else being automated and we work on solving things like aging, space travel, and climate change.
> Another would be making every American turn in their bank accounts into a single account, and slap a limit on how much you can have in there.... whether that's 50 million or 20 billion
This is a fundamental misunderstanding of how money works beyond a small $ amount.
Nobody just keeps millions of dollars in a bank account. When you have lots of money, you own businesses which generate income. The value of those businesses is not fixed, but constantly changing, and dependent on the values of other businesses. So it’s very difficult to assess “PersonX has $Y million” because the value of the companies that they own changes all the time.
They might have $300k in cash, $700k in stocks, and be the founder of a company worth $40m, but they can’t just spend or be taxed on that $40m. The company is significantly less valuable without them running it. And if they tried to sell some of it, then the value would drop and they’d be worth even less. But their net worth still says $41m. How do you tax that?
We don’t tax ownership of companies today because it’s WAY too complicated and convoluted, and would cause significant problems. Instead, we tax the transactions. Meaning that if they sell half of their $40m company for $20m, then they have to pay taxes on that $20m that got converted from “fake money” (company valuation) to “real money” (cash from selling). That’s “Capital Gains” and is taxed today.
Or we also currently tax payments, aka dividends. When a company converts value within itself to cash for its owners. If the $40m company makes $4m in profit and pays that out to the founder, they pay income tax on it.
But the fact that they own a company that’s “worth” $40m shows up in their net worth, even though that’s not real money.
Ah, "you will own nothing" accelerated! This seems like the fever dream of a World Economic Forum plutocrat. Let's make it so people will literally never be able to own a house because of prohibitive taxes. This will solidify the domination of those who already have houses, like older generations, while completely selling younger people down the river with the promise of a tiny handout that will be totally devalued by time it reaches you.
Land value tax seems like a terrible idea. The land doesn't generate value, yet you need to some how generate enouhh tax to support people. It seems this would drive down inequality by making everyone poor.
It makes sense to tax money where there is money - income and gains.
> Wages would presumably raise prices only in industries that can't be heavily automated
If it is funded by eliminating the preference for non-labor income in taxes by bringing up taxes on other income (which also itself reduces the incentive to automation created by premium taxes on labor), that's not true.
