> I agree with that as a long term result...

I'm a little confused on what you are saying. A small business that cannot afford to raise wages certainly cannot with cash on hand afford to innovate.

> I don't understand the point here on illegal work -- could you lay out the scenario?

UBI means people are payed better whether they are hired or not, minimum wage only effects those with jobs. The latter incentivizes illegal jobs with skirt the minimum wage laws, since the employer is responsible for wages. UBI being financed "macroeconomically" means there less much less marginal incentive for an employer to go rougue because even if it lowers their wages, it won't allow them to skirt their UBI-funding tax obligations.

(I prefer simple, hard to evade taxes like VATs, LVTs, Carbon taxes, etc.)

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The stuff below the [edit] sounds great to me; since we agree on that I am wondering what about UBI you don't like?

> demand creates jobs

Yes! And nothing creates demand like a UBI since:

> Demand comes overwhelmingly from the middle and lower classes (well, except for very specific goods)

> The fact that more people at the bottom of the economy with disposable income means more profit for their own businesses, and just about every business. This means paying their employees more actually results in more profits for themselves in the long run (of course there's a bit of a prisoner's dilemma here).

UBI is supposed to be the ultimate way to defeat the coordination failure, since the actions of employers (as employers) don't effect the UBI at all! Whereas with minimum wage their actions do matter of a) how many employees b) illegal work perverse incentive.

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> I'm not sold on UBI -- no one has managed to give a satisfactory answer for why it won't lead to persistent (even if minuscule) inflation everywhere.

Happy to tackle this

> The best people get at is "competition", but very few "free" markets are as competitive as people think they are.

Agreed

> Once UBI takes hold, companies will rush to gain a percentage of that UBI (this is almost like securing a government contract that never ends)

Sure!

> and businesses will raise prices because at least intuitively every single customer now has more purchasing power and there's room for more profit.

I'll happy grant that they do; this is fine. Turning on UBI is a one-time adjustment, and this would be a one-time rise in prices. (I'm looking at all flows, no stocks here, to examine equilibria more simply.)

The thing to ask is, after that one-time adjustment, are we back where we started? The answer is emphatically "no".

Firstly, remember inflation is multiplicative, but wages are additive. If we scaled all wages by 1.2, prices could rise by 1.2, and we would be back where we started, but adding a fixed amount to wages is non-linear so no price scaling will restore the same distribution.

Remember now how richer people have helped jacking up the price of things like healthcare, childcare, housing, and education? (Those other cost diseases causer are at play). UBI with "compress" the purchasing power distribution so that the gap of "real" prices between that shit show and basic goods must shrink.

Now, we want the shit show goods to stop spiraling out of control, rather than the basic goods to join them. To that I have to argue spooky dynamics and appeal to the Keynsianisms we evidentally agree on. If the last few decades have been a case of too-low aggregate demand, then ratcheting up aggregate demand should lead to virtuous cycles like the WWII mobilization, not vicious cycles like 1970s inflation.

Finally here's a thing to consider: why are tech capitalists rather found of UBI? One might say singularity ideologically, but that's bullshit even if they do believe it. Here's a better one: competition between tech and traditionally elites. I think on some level tech is frustrated that they feel so much more productive than traditional business, but that very productivity frees up labor to make legacy businesses' operations cheap.

UBI, like I said above, is employment-agnostic and will raises taxes and wages on all corps. But if you are a more productive, demand-limited tech company, you can raise output (or embark in new fields) taking advantage of the new demand and make it up in volume. If you are a traditionally company, however, you will get screwed when your UBI-secure employees can bargain harder, and volume therefore can't save you.