The idea is nice, but if it causes widespread increases in costs / consumer goods / rent due to the reasons I mentioned, then the only places you may be able to just stay at home and work may not be the place you want to be.
For example, I live in London and enjoy this city. I would love to be able to stay at home and work on my side projects in hope of making extra money, but given the outcome I believe from this, everyone who was to only accept the basic income amount would no longer be able to afford to live in London and would have to relocate to less desirable places in the country.
Yes, you would now be free to work on your projects from your own home, but you would now not live where you want, with the people you are friends with, in an area which would be full of people who also are only taking the basic wage and probably a pretty horrible place.
The on paper calculations of the affect of this is like a snapshot of some code, before you press run. In the first state it is in, it would be fine, but the economic effects from this over the long term both in social and financial terms would be profound.
That is incorrect, London is not like that today.
London is an extremely multi cultural city, with both rich and poor living side by side in the same boroughs. A lot of people argue that most of London's unique culture in places like Brixton came from the poor and that's what made London in a lot of ways great.
If you say, everyone in London will need a job, then you are then moving the poor / unemployed on mass out of the city. On paper this may look great, but for social-economic reasons this is a disaster.
You would end up with a 'walled garden' of elite living in London and the poor / unemployed living outside. The city would lose it's unique cultures, become even more gentrified / elite than it currently is and social unrest could start to occur.
London is turning into a ghetto for the rich just like most major cities as it is today. Which is really sad, I agree, but I don't see how this concept would change that in one way or another.
Hmm, London still needs the services of those poor that you speak of. If people are willing to pay the exorbitant prices for having a home there, I don't see why they can't be prepared to pay more to get the basic services running.
The further London moves away from the UK, the more are cities like Brighton, Cambridge etc. looking more attractive. More attractive to people willing to live in a more mixed area too.
Come to brighton! We have a nice little tech hub style arrangement going on, it just lacks a fancy silicon-related name because it isn't built on billions in government funding.
BTW,
>You would end up with a 'walled garden' of elite living in London and the poor / unemployed living outside. The city would lose it's unique cultures, become even more gentrified / elite than it currently is and social unrest could start to occur.
This is already happening/has already happened, unfortunately.
>For example, I live in London and enjoy this city. I would love to be able to stay at home and work on my side projects in hope of making extra money, but given the outcome I believe from this, everyone who was to only accept the basic income amount would no longer be able to afford to live in London and would have to relocate to less desirable places in the country.
Some models call for a universal income which takes location inconsideration. The income would be higher in London, for example. That's a pretty controversial model, though.
That's obviously nonsensical. All the basic income would be sucked up by rising rents, raising cost of living, go to step 1. Basic income should be set up to pressure people to live where it is cheaper.
In any monopoly/duoploy/oligopoly/cartel-ish environment in which prices are determined by limited supply and therefore buyers ability to pay (seller gets the economic profit) makes buyer side cash infusion useless.
If we assume people prefer to live in a major city, and incomes are adjusted so that your income matches your cost of living, there is no downside to living there. That puts upward pressure on an area that is probably already maxed out for living space, which causes people to pay a little bit more in order to secure a place to live. Then, your income rises to offset your new costs of living there, providing the money necessary to allow someone to pay just a little bit more than you, thus beginning the cycle.
Outside of the city you would find a low demand and high supply of housing under such a scenario, and thus there would be no fuel to ignite a race to out-pay each other to find a place to rent. In fact, there you could probably convince the owner to accept a little bit less for rent as few people are interested in the place at all. If your offer is not accepted, it might sit vacant.
Note that income can be adjusted even if it doesn't exactly match the cost of living. For example, if living in the capital is 25% more expensive basic income could be 15% more in the capital. That might allow a lot of people to live in the capital with basic income. I don't know how that affects your scenario.
For example, I live in London and enjoy this city. I would love to be able to stay at home and work on my side projects in hope of making extra money, but given the outcome I believe from this, everyone who was to only accept the basic income amount would no longer be able to afford to live in London and would have to relocate to less desirable places in the country.
Yes, you would now be free to work on your projects from your own home, but you would now not live where you want, with the people you are friends with, in an area which would be full of people who also are only taking the basic wage and probably a pretty horrible place.
The on paper calculations of the affect of this is like a snapshot of some code, before you press run. In the first state it is in, it would be fine, but the economic effects from this over the long term both in social and financial terms would be profound.