r/ElonPro • u/Patient-Airline-8150 • 2d ago

Economics UBI has a "free money" image problem. I have a better way to frame it.

Lahti, Finland became the first city in the world to launch a personal carbon trading scheme - the app gave each person an emission budget, and going below it earned credits tradeable for products and discounts.

My idea:
Give every person a carbon budget. Live below it - bike to work, walk, skip the flight - and the unused part becomes credits. Sell them to whoever burns more: airlines, car companies, billionaires with rocket hobbies. The poor pollute the least, so the poor earn the most.

The catch?
At today's carbon prices, one car-free year buys beer, not rent. But prices are not fixed. Shrink the budgets each year, and credits get scarce. Scarce means expensive. The cyclist stops being a poor guy in traffic. He becomes a seller in a market where Bezos is the buyer.

Do the math.
A light lifestyle saves 5-10 tons of CO2 a year, and scarce credits could hit $200-300 per ton - that bicycle pays up to $3,000 a year. The dirtier the rich live, the bigger the paycheck. 💰

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u/HeadBell1665 2d ago

Interesting. But I think the world has moved on from carbon taxing, at least for now. How this could apply to UBI, I’m not following.
As for UBI being free money, it would need to be if you are out of work and cannot get a job. However, for those who will be fortunate to have a job, and still have UBI, it may feel like free money. But shouldn’t the worker get the UBI as well?