I suspect that rents might even go down. One of the reasons that rents are so high is that many people are forced to live in cities (i.e. high rent places) to have a chance at a miserable job. Freeing them from that could also foster more people living in the countryside with much cheaper housing (or gasp! even ownership).
I suspect that this is the sort of thing that can only be determined by running either a simulation or a pilot. This is too complex to be determined by logic or thought experiment.
Multiple pilots have been run in real-world circumstances. They aren’t true UBI (because they’re a tested cross-section of people, not everyone in a society), but the results have been positive for the recipients in every single pilot…and employment has gone _up_ in every single pilot (mostly because people are able to go back and get education that increases their employability).
> They aren’t true UBI (because they’re a tested cross-section of people, not everyone in a society)…
They're also time-limited, and the funds come from outside the test group. An actual UBI at scale would need to be effectively permanent and self-funded.
What the tests have shown so far is basically that if you pump a bunch of outside funding into a small community it tends to make most of the recipients a bit happier. Which isn't much of a surprise. They take the opportunity to improve their employability because the experiment is going to end soon, leaving them to fend for themselves. Who can say whether that effect would still be there if the extra income were guaranteed for life? That certainly doesn't seem to be the case for many lottery winners, and many people who inherit wealth from responsible parents end up spending it frivolously.
Is WFH actually more acceptable? Sure some tech companies have promised to go permanently WFH. But every other business that isn't a social media company cannot wait to get back to the office and constantly complain about lost productivity due to online meetings.
Maybe it's just my bubble, but unless someone had a tech job, they seem to hate WFH.
In the UK at least there are indications that several major companies are preparing to cancel leases and reduce their total office footprint.
Both Barclays and Lloyds for example have flagged that they expect to reduce the size and number of offices, with Barclays' CEO saying "putting 7,000 people in a building may be a thing of the past".
I don't think it will be a quick process, not least because there are a lot of long term leases in place, but odds are a lot of businesses will use e.g. expansion or leases expiring as an opportunity to experiment with more working from home to see how it works before making new long term commitments, and assuming it works there is every chance there will be increasing pressure from shareholders etc. if people see competitors slashing office costs dramatically.
I think that reflects more of a question of how to manage a transition. E.g. Barclays appears to have wanted to get rid of its investment banking office in London since before Covid anyway, for example, and even in this article, it says:
> In his latest remarks, Mr Staley appeared to cast doubt on the idea of abandoning those hubs, saying: "We also have a responsibility to places like Canary Wharf, like Manchester, like Glasgow."
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> He added: "We want our people back together, to make sure we ensure the evolution of our culture and our controls, and I think that will happen over time."
Which sounds like more of a question of how to handle the fact they're sitting on vast amounts of land in long leases in prime locations and have realised leaving offices empty without being able to point to economic benefits will lead to all the wrong kinds of attention, while realising that it will take them time to make it happen smoothly.
Also further down in the article, it points out this:
> However, not all big banks take the same view. Last week, NatWest told more than 50,000 staff in a memo that they could continue to work from home until next year.
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> The bank, then known as RBS Group, said it had been reconsidering how the bank works "in the longer term" and intended to tell staff about "future ways of working" later this year.
It's clear it will take a long time before things starts going back to normal any way, and every month these employers have to adjust to working remotely, and recover efficiency while working remotely, the incentive to go back to big offices will drop.
I also know someone who worked at UBS when they moved into their new London offices, and they'd totally ditched fixed offices for most staff and moved to hot-desking for everyone, with the intent of significantly reducing the proportion of staff in the office at any one day. That was well over a year ago. Many of these banks have been looking for ways to reduce their office footprints for years already.
The current situation may prove temporary, so some are hesitant to change their living arrangements. It is too early to see if wages will move for white collar city dwellers (since wages mostly change when people switch roles this has a lag). Already rents in some major cities such as London have declined.
But if people stop doing those miserable jobs, salaries will have to go up, which in turn will increase the price of goods and services, therefore creating inflation.
That hasn't been a huge problem as minimum wages have been raised.
In theory, yeah, sure, that is the textbook phrasing.
But the lowest tier jobs that are going to be affected is this scenario aren;t remotely close to the largest percentage of total wages, so I can't see any huge shift being induced.
UBI affects the cashflow of those making more than just subsistence money less and less, and I think that diminishing percentage is an aspect of this that gets lost in the battle of philosphicals.
I agree with inflation but not because the salary raise, but because with UBI the people purchasing power is theoretically higher so companies will just raise prices.
IMO I don't believe those people doing miserable jobs with low pays take a significant part of wage expenses, related to higher managements. If there are data about proportion of the wage we'll get more information.
