Political Memes

His proof that UBI reduced inflation is… A line graph of CPI comparing Alaska vs the US.

I did do some more digging and found that the graph from Scott Santens is supported by data from the stlouis Federal reserve. See stlouisfed graph

I think its largely common sense that businesses would have sales to when money goes out. The same thing happens when refund checks come out. The author is of course biased, but that it not a reason to discredit the data. Are you suggesting he fudged the numbers for the graph?

If the oil dividend caused the decrease in inflation, you would be able to find many scholarly articles on the subject, yet the entire proof is a single graph.

No one is claiming the dividend caused it because causation is notoriously hard to prove since https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correlation_does_not_imply_causation. The author simply provides evidence in a graph that the after the dividend (Alaska's UBI) Alaska had a noticeably lower inflation rate compared to the rest of the US. Graph in question Take a look and make your own conclusions.

Alaska’s 1600 per year is more akin to a tax refund.

It may be on a smaller scale than is traditionally advocated for with a UBI like program, but it is a UBI. According to Wikipedia, the PFD(Alaska Permanent Fund Dividend) is a Basic Income in the form of a resource dividend. Any adult Alaskan resident is eligible for it whether or not they pay taxes. It's not a tax refund.

If 300 million people suddenly had an extra 24,000 dollars to spend in a year, you don’t think every business in the country would be scrambling to get their cut?

Of course they would be. That is why a lot of business offer sales, when the Alaska dividend check go out. They want to convince you to buy their crap. When businesses want money, they have to convince people to buy their stuff via sales and promotions. That usually means lower prices.

Yup. I recieve them because I am disabled with a progressive condotion and of course, poor. But I'm lumped in with those called "leeches". I'm just trying to feed myself and my family. I will shamelessly swipe my EBT card as many times as I must.

It is not like it has to be either or anyway. I would certainly support healthcare and other similar programs but would caution against making them overly restrictive. The restrictions of the programs are the problem as they are excessively restrictive to stop people from using the programs. Effectively these restrictions mean only ~1/4 people eligible for assistance actually get it.

See this paragraph from the post authors blog.

Before the pandemic even hit, 13 million Americans were living in poverty entirely disconnected from all federal assistance programs. The best functioning program is our food assistance program which reaches 2 out of 3 people in poverty, and lasts for 3 months every 3 years. Our worst is our temporary assistance for needy families program which varies by state, and in my home state of Louisiana reaches only 4 out of every 100 families living in poverty. Our disability assistance reaches 1 out of every 5 Americans with disabilities, and the average waiting time to qualify is two years. Our housing assistance reaches 1 out of every 4 Americans who qualify. Our unemployment insurance reached about 1 out of every 4 unemployed people in 2019. Over and over again, with targeted program after targeted program, our safety net tends to let three out of every four people fall right through it.

I would just prefer a UBI like program over other alternatives since its focus is on eliminating burdensome restrictions that serve to discourage people from using the existing programs.

It depends how it's funded. Strictly speaking that's only the case if it's funded monetarily by a central bank printing more money for a government to fund UBI. For example this is how most countries funded businesses and individuals during the pandemic and what has lead to the inflation you're referring to. Otherwise there is the same amount of money in the economy, it's just been fiscally re-distributed using a UBI policy. You might still see some inflation in some parts of the economy due to rising demand but if people can afford more, rather than less, this inflation no bearing whatsoever on people's actual prosperity. If funded fiscally UBI would outstrip any inflation it might incur and therefore actually represent real-terms deflation for the vast majority of people. As a side note, what we are getting at the moment is the exact opposite: money was printed in huge amounts by central banks during the pandemic which largely ended up in the pockets of people who bought up assets like housing and are now out-competing everyone else in the market and extracting yet more profit. It might feel like inflation to us because food and bills have increased in value faster than our wages, but the wealthy have actually been experiencing real-terms deflation because their stash has been growing faster than their costs.

This is actually the opposite of what studies seem to be suggestion.

The fear is, instead, that it will reduce values, especially housing, and that businesses and wealthier individuals would move away. Admittedly, if it's truly universal, then there would be nowhere for them to move. But the real, often-forgotten underlying gain is that it would create some leverage for employees seeking jobs and raises.

Of course, an "unemployed-only" income would create more employee leverage, possibly matching or exceeding the leverage provided by unions because the employee could afford to strike indefinitely.

You can't just cite an entire field and call it an answer. Especially when than field is basically a pseudoscience.

If you make the maths, the direct inflactionary effects of UBI are quite small unless people were getting tens of thousands of dollars per month, and there are indirect effects pushing in the opposite direction (for example, fewer loans hence less money getting created by banks).

You're making claims that an entire domain supports your conclusion but haven't even gone to the trouble of making the maths to confirm it - you just assumed.

For example the "average household wealth" in the US is $1,059,470 and the average household size is 2.5, so an UBI of $500 per month for every man, woman and child of the United States (rounded to 300 million because I couldn't be arsed to find the exact number) would depreciate that wealth (i.e. inflate its nominal worth) by about 1% per year (assuming 12x UBI payments per year). This is are only the first order effect, as indirect effects push in both directions (for example, it will push salaries at the low end higher, which is inflationary but not by much because it's only lower salaries being affected, and it will reduce number of loans issued which reduces money creation and is thus deflactionary but again the strength of that deflactionary effect depends on actual proportion of loans that are not issued due to UBI making the money available).

All together macroeconomics does not confirm the effect you claim it does (an in fact the Alaskan experiment shows the opposite) but even if you only consider first order effects, it shows an inflactionary effect which is around half of the FED's anual inflation target, so a mild effect and certainly not justifying the statement that UBI "only works in a perfect society where the market doesn’t take advantage of it".

That's just a repackaged argument against minimum wage. It's wrong there, too. Market competition is a thing, even for shitty landlords.

In the present day, the vast majority of the money created (over 90%) is created by banks when they give loans (I kid you not: you can read all about it in the paper "Money Creation In The Modern Economy", from the Bank Of England) so it actually makes sense what seems to have happenned in Alaska (as pointed out by others) that in overall UBI reduced inflation if UBI ended up reducing the number of loans people took.

This effect exceeding the inflation from UBI is probably only possible because it's a fixed amount per-person rather than a percentage of all the money in circulation, so it's a small percentage of all the money in circulation (a $660 UBI for every man woman and child in the US would be 1% of M3) and a tiny percentage of all the money in existence (i.e. including wealth held in various non-monetary forms).

So yeah, UBI would create some inflation, but not as much as you seem to think it would and it has side effects that work in the opposite direction which, judging by the experience in Alaska, are strong enough to offset the direct inflactionary effects of UBI.