If we instituted universal basic income, a probable side effect is inflation in the price of goods. Give every person an extra few thousand dollars a year, and all of a sudden you’ve got a greater demand for all kinds of things. People who previously lived with a relative would start moving into apartments. People who previously lived in apartments would start buying houses. More people wanting it means the price goes up. Depending on how bad the price inflation is, it could slightly minimize the amount the basic income is worth, or it could wipe out its value entirely, and basic income would then be a necessity that added nothing positive to people’s lives in the way it would to begin with.
Because most food products (eggs, milk, bread, etc.) are already subsidized and exist in mass excess, I suspect the price of food would not change, or at least wouldn’t change much. As for housing, inflated prices in the current housing market might be completely welcome by real estate agents, and apartment renters may not have too much to worry about with rent inflation, since the new demand created by basic income would be somewhat counter-balanced by the demand removed due to new house ownership. What we really need to answer questions about stuff like this is a serious economic analysis what exact numbers to put on “new apartment renters” and “new house owners” and the probable effects on price inflation that would follow.
The same thing could be said about the automobile market: more used cars would be bought, but at the same time more new cars would be as well, and that would be a welcome addition to the automarket and may not result in inflation at all, if factories can manage to produce enough cars to meet whatever new demand is created.
Macroeconomics cannot be computed by the human gut. That said, I think if we ever do get what we need to make an informed decision about basic income (what we need = reliable expert analysis of all these issues) the projected outcomes will be favorable to basic income.
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