I've Solved The Housing Crisis

[Butters]

Housing is a basic human right, not a commodity!

Here's how we fix it: everybody who has a job gets 1 housing token per month. Everyone gets the same size basic house. If you want a nicer house or go on vacation, you make more career or start a business and buy those things with money. But the public housing market is detached from the monetary system. It just costs one housing token per month.

If you're homeless by choice and refuse all work opportunities you don't get a housing token but you get a homeless token which is just a bunk bed in a shelter. If you're an entrepreneur and over a certain income threshold you don't get any housing token and you can use money to buy / rent in the private sector (much nicer homes). 

Minimum wage is always: 1 housing token + 20% cash. So if the min. wage in euros is 1500 per month, then it's now 1 token + 300 euros for food etc. Median income might be around 1 housing token + 1200 euros or something. Above median wage you stop receiving the housing token and can rent / buy private. 

Who's gonna build the houses? Well, the builders who build them get a 80% salary reduction, as they'll now receive 1 housing token plus some cash for groceries per month. End of the day this boils down to the same wage but without the rent ever going up.So now the building company has all this cash left cause they don't have to pay those salaries, and this money goes back to the government to build more houses.

We also add an extra wealth tax on billionaires for extra cash and funsies. You can still become very wealthy, but anything over $20 million in personal wealth / assets just gets taxed more heavily. Yes this creates some cheating and overseas constructions but who cares? This is just bonus, the main point is the housing tokens. 

Is this a good idea? I don't know. It would take decades to make this transition and requires the country to be 60%+ public housing, but if there's a will there's a way. If AI ends up actually reducing hours worked then why not? This doesn't mean the end of capitalism it just means the public housing market is (fake) detached from money. 

The main problem with all this UBI stuff is that it might kill ambition. Necessity is the mother of all inventions. Worst case everyone just gets a PlayStation and gives up on their dreams. Best case you have more spare time to chase them. 

Edited 4 hours ago by Butters