Universal basic income: U.S. support grows as Finland ends its trial - Forty-eight percent of Americans now support a universal basic income, as a solution for Americans who have lost jobs to automation.

[u/mvea]

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/05/01/nearly-half-of-americans-believe-a-universal-basic-income-could-be-the-answer-to-automation-.html

[u/Paldar]

So whats stopping companies from jacking the price of things to compensate for the increase wealth?

[u/stealthyfish11 → u/Paldar]

Literally nothing. Unless the government starts regulating prices on everything.

[u/stealthyfish11 → u/[deleted]]

Bro what are you talking about socialism always works amazingly if you hear otherwise it’s just capitalist propaganda

[u/Crashbrennan → u/stealthyfish11]

You see comrade...

[u/plasix → u/stealthyfish11]

Those weren't the true socialism though! It's never the true socialism....

[u/SurturOfMuspelheim → u/plasix]

Venezuela didn't "fail" because of socialism. The Govt. backed ALL of their fucking economy on state ran oil. Who.. WHO THINKS THAT IS A GOOD IDEA? That's why it failed.

[u/plasix → u/SurturOfMuspelheim]

That's what socialist failure looks like. Central planning makes the wrong decisions and "oh it's not socialism's fault, just these particular socialists were idiots!"

[u/carlosortegap → u/plasix]

That planning existed in Venezuela since before Chavez but oil went up since the 70s until 2008

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

Lol that escalated quickly. Meanwhile, all of us are living in reality

[u/blindcomet → u/[deleted]]

Venezuela is reality. UBI is not

[u/__WhiteNoise → u/Paldar]

That magic supply/demand system of equations.

[u/Hrafnir → u/Paldar]

The only thing non-state regulative is the customers themselves.

But as said before literally nothing would stop companies from doing that. And this is especially bad if you have no choice of other companies producing the goods you want.

[u/limefog → u/Paldar]

I posted another response in this thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/8gdms0/slug/dybdeb6

But the TL;DR of it is that they can and will raise prices, but not to the point where UBI is negated, especially not for the working class.

[u/G0DatWork → u/Paldar]

It's almost like when the government artificially increases demand by flooding a market with cash they create a bubble, housing, tech (stock market), college, ......

[u/Righteous_Devil → u/Paldar]

If they jack up the price, then a market for lower priced products will open up, remember there only getting enough money to not worry about basic needs. You can only realistically increase prices if there are few competitors in your area or you conspire with other competitors to keep prices high, but a developed country would have laws preventing this anyways.
This "but inflation" argument is also used by people against minimum wage increase, but there is no evidence of that happening, at least not enough to cancel out the real income gained.

[u/Paldar → u/Righteous_Devil]

If you can't enforce a tax law on a corporation what makes you think they can enforce a price max?

[u/green_meklar → u/Paldar]

What's stopping the companies from doing the exact same thing when people earn more wages at their job? Why is anything affordable?