The Death of the Middle-Class Musician

> I heard one answer more than any other: the government should introduce universal basic income. This would indeed afford artists the security to create art, but it’s also extremely fanciful.

Until we start viewing "fanciful" ideas as realistic, our problems will persist. This article is another in the long series of observations of seemingly distinct problems which are actually facets of a larger problem, namely that overall economic inequality is way too high. It's not just that musicians, or actors, or grocery store baggers, or taxi drivers, or whatever, can't make a living, it's that the set of things you can do to make a living is narrowing more and more. Broad-based solutions like basic income, wealth taxes, breaking up large market players, etc., will do far more for us than attempting piecemeal tweaks to this or that industry.

Except that socialism has failed already.

Universal basic income is impossible to justify morally.

> Universal basic income is impossible to justify morally.

It's pretty easy to justify morally. I mean at least as easy as any other welfare.

The net payments for UBI plus (income) taxes don't have to look to different from what many countries already do today. It's just the accounting that looks a bit different.

UBI means giving money to people, which means that money has velocity because it would be promptly spent.

We did this during Covid as furlough payments, and the result was high inflation. Wages didn’t significantly increase to match, so in my country anyway people feel that the cost if living is significantly worse post-Covid.

Anywhere that implemented UBI would also have to implement rent controls, otherwise Landlords would just see it as money on the table. But you couldn’t have controls for all prices, so inflation would still result.

> We did this during Covid as furlough payments, and the result was high inflation.

No. The high inflation was a result of Fed policy, not fiscal tricks like furlough payments.

> Anywhere that implemented UBI would also have to implement rent controls, otherwise Landlords would just see it as money on the table. But you couldn’t have controls for all prices, so inflation would still result.

You are right that UBI can lead to higher relative prices for rent.

And that's why you would want to pair UBI with land value taxes, not rent control.

(UBI would not lead to inflation, and would not necessarily lead to higher absolute rents. The overall level of inflation is something an inflation targeting central bank, like the Fed or ECB, controls.)

The primary factor behind high inflation was supply chain disruption.