I have an intuition that if we implemented universal basic income, the prices of necessities would rise to the point where people without other sources of income would still be in poverty. I assume there are UBI supporters who've spent more time thinking about that question than I have, and I'm interested in their responses.
(I have some thoughts myself on the general directions responses might take, but I haven't fleshed them out, and I might not care enough to do so.)
If you want information on how increased income due to UBI would affect people's spending on food, you can look at the data that we already have on the relationship between income and spending on food. Three stylized facts:
As income goes up, the proportion of income spent on food goes down.
As income goes up, the total amount of money spent on food goes up.
As income goes up, the proportion of one's food budget spent on restaurants goes up.
These trends generally hold if you are comparing different countries with each other, or if you are comparing different ...
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