A rent freeze is decent, but what would really help is everywhere to implement caps on how much you’re allowed to charge for rent and utilities. Without those, then they’ll just raise prices by however much the freeze cost them. UBI will also be ineffective without it cause they’ll just raise prices by however much the UBI is.
They just announced that they’re raising water and sewage in my area by 300% by the end of the year. No reason given, just because they can. It should be fucking illegal. They’re also planning on putting in a few data centers, which are currently being hotly contested, because they’re supposed to make everyone’s electric bill go up about 300% as well. I’m terrified as to how I’m going to afford my electric bill. Water and sewage is included in my rent, I can’t wait to see how much that increases when my lease is up this winter and I also have no idea how I’ll afford it, but I also don’t know if I could find anywhere to move that would be cheaper and not give me a commute that negates any savings.
I mean, broadly speaking, you want staples and basic lifestyle needs provided at-cost by a public functionary. Leaving groceries and housing and health care and education to the free market has created enormous amounts of waste, a maze of barriers to entry, and ballooned administrative overheads.
Countries with much lower cost of living tend to be where utilities are owned and operated by the state as a social amenity, while luxuries and economic frontier advancements are left to private experimentation and entrepreneurship. But even then, the intention is to glean the wheat from the chaffe, incorporating the best of the frontier into the interior with an eye towards efficiencies of scale.
USA operates the exact opposite of this. We use the government to do the big things that aren’t/won’t be profitable immediately to set things up for big business to rake in all the benefits later by building their businesses on that foundation. Of course, all those business owners “did it on their own,” neverminding the fact that the ground they walk on only exists because of everyone else.
This isn’t theoretical. UBI has already been tested in real life, and rents do not increase as much as incomes do. This is because supply and demand are not perfectly elastic.
Rent caps are a great idea and would help, but they aren’t strictly necessary for UBI to be a net gain.
A rent freeze is decent, but what would really help is everywhere to implement caps on how much you’re allowed to charge for rent and utilities. Without those, then they’ll just raise prices by however much the freeze cost them. UBI will also be ineffective without it cause they’ll just raise prices by however much the UBI is.
They just announced that they’re raising water and sewage in my area by 300% by the end of the year. No reason given, just because they can. It should be fucking illegal. They’re also planning on putting in a few data centers, which are currently being hotly contested, because they’re supposed to make everyone’s electric bill go up about 300% as well. I’m terrified as to how I’m going to afford my electric bill. Water and sewage is included in my rent, I can’t wait to see how much that increases when my lease is up this winter and I also have no idea how I’ll afford it, but I also don’t know if I could find anywhere to move that would be cheaper and not give me a commute that negates any savings.
I mean, broadly speaking, you want staples and basic lifestyle needs provided at-cost by a public functionary. Leaving groceries and housing and health care and education to the free market has created enormous amounts of waste, a maze of barriers to entry, and ballooned administrative overheads.
Countries with much lower cost of living tend to be where utilities are owned and operated by the state as a social amenity, while luxuries and economic frontier advancements are left to private experimentation and entrepreneurship. But even then, the intention is to glean the wheat from the chaffe, incorporating the best of the frontier into the interior with an eye towards efficiencies of scale.
USA operates the exact opposite of this. We use the government to do the big things that aren’t/won’t be profitable immediately to set things up for big business to rake in all the benefits later by building their businesses on that foundation. Of course, all those business owners “did it on their own,” neverminding the fact that the ground they walk on only exists because of everyone else.
This isn’t theoretical. UBI has already been tested in real life, and rents do not increase as much as incomes do. This is because supply and demand are not perfectly elastic.
Rent caps are a great idea and would help, but they aren’t strictly necessary for UBI to be a net gain.