> If I'm buying a car or a house, and the guy I'm bidding against is getting a $12k check, and so did I, then he ups his offer and I match it so doesn't the price just jump by the same $12k?
Only if something is preventing the market from responding to higher demand by building more cars or housing units rather than raising the unit price. And if that's happening then you're screwed independent of this, because anything that causes ordinary people to have more money would do the same thing. If energy costs went down then people would have the money they didn't spend on electricity and that would cause housing costs to increase.
This is why restrictive zoning rules are very bad.
> I know it's considered "regressive" but if we're going to pay for that I think it shouldn't come out of income tax, it should be sales tax.
Sales tax is considered regressive for two reasons. One, it's a flat rate, but that's the thing we want in this case because we're using it as the de facto phase out for the UBI. Two, rich people don't spend as much of their income. But that one has always been a giant fraud because it's really income tax that allows the rich to defer taxes (via unrealized capital gains), and when they do that they don't even pay taxes on the money they spend, since they can borrow against the assets and spend on credit.
So using a consumption tax actually works perfectly well in this case and is even more progressive than the status quo where the rich can avoid taxes entirely.
Only if something is preventing the market from responding to higher demand by building more cars or housing units rather than raising the unit price. And if that's happening then you're screwed independent of this, because anything that causes ordinary people to have more money would do the same thing. If energy costs went down then people would have the money they didn't spend on electricity and that would cause housing costs to increase.
This is why restrictive zoning rules are very bad.
> I know it's considered "regressive" but if we're going to pay for that I think it shouldn't come out of income tax, it should be sales tax.
Sales tax is considered regressive for two reasons. One, it's a flat rate, but that's the thing we want in this case because we're using it as the de facto phase out for the UBI. Two, rich people don't spend as much of their income. But that one has always been a giant fraud because it's really income tax that allows the rich to defer taxes (via unrealized capital gains), and when they do that they don't even pay taxes on the money they spend, since they can borrow against the assets and spend on credit.
So using a consumption tax actually works perfectly well in this case and is even more progressive than the status quo where the rich can avoid taxes entirely.