I know what your point is, but if you imagined that I repeated your point, you're wrong. What I said was that targeted assistance was MORE likely to cause price inflation in areas like, say, housing than guaranteed income was, precisely because it generates "income" that can only be spent in competition for this particular housing category.
The benefit of basic income over targeted assistance is that basic income is relatively low-administration cost to flexibly meet the needs of people who don't have housing needs, and in that it is a relatively non-market-distorting intervention.
Bureaucracy has overhead, I'll give you that, but I assume you're saying that UBI is a replacement for assistance programs, rather than being used alongside them?
That's the only way for cost administrative cost savings. What about when UBI isn't enough for something as trivial as Medicaid?
Would UBI cover the cost of health insurance for everyone, since it's replacing the "expensively adminsitrative" medicaid? Even if you took away employer insurance today, many people with steady income can't even afford their own health insurance.
I don't think that basic income could replace healthcare programs. It might replace section 8 housing and food stamps and at least some kinds of disability and unemployment insurance and some kinds of child credits and so forth.
I actually don't think it would successfully replace any of those things, which is one of the reasons I don't really support it. But it's an intriguing idea that should be debated on its merits.
For sure. I think that switching healthcare over to being a public utility would open the door to debating a lot of different programs, including basic income. Maybe then someone will figure out a way to handle the housing issue.
The benefit of basic income over targeted assistance is that basic income is relatively low-administration cost to flexibly meet the needs of people who don't have housing needs, and in that it is a relatively non-market-distorting intervention.