UBI is implemented tomorrow. Every citizen gets $1000 per month.
Landlord now knows you have an extra $1000 that you never had before. Why wouldn’t the landlord raise prices?
Now you have an extra $1000 a month and instead of eating rice and beans for a few meals you go out to a restaurant. The restaurant owners know everyone is eating out more so why not raise prices and maximize shareholder profit as always. The restaurant/corporation is on TV saying, “well, demand increased and it is a simple Economic principle that prices had to increase. There’s nothing we can do about it”.
Your state/country has toll roads. The state needs money for its deficit. UBI is implemented and the state/country sees it as the perfect time to incrementally raise toll prices.
Next thing you know UBI is effectively gone because everything costs more and billionaires keep hitting higher and higher all time net worth records.
No, because having money is power. The more money you have, the more leverage you have, in general. This argument comes up a lot and I think it’s mostly coming from a widespread attitude of learned helplessness about money. Especially a UBI that is funded by some form of redistribution would mean a lasting shift in wealth inequality that could not be undone just because some businesses would like it to be.
In areas that have housing shortages you probably would see a rise in rent as the market of people looking to buy nicer places increases quickly but actually increasing the housing stock in desirable areas takes some time.
I think in the long run it would be a net positive and also would need to be paired with some measure of regulation around arbitrary increases in rent for landlords.
I think it would rise some, but not enough to absorb the whole UBI, because not everyone is looking to throw all of their money at living in the most fancy place they can, most people I think would prefer to do something else with most of their money. To me at least ‘niceness’ doesn’t matter that much if the living space is functional.
Also takes political will to overcome protectionist policies preventing new construction and preventing denser housing. My ideal combination of policies would be UBI plus reforms and subsidies to increase the housing supply and intentionally crash the housing market by doing so. As for direct price controls, I don’t think the economy works in a way that it could ever be effective beyond the very short term and a majority of economists tend to agree.