Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

A Basic Income Is Smarter Than a Minimum Wage

bloombergview.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 498 posts

Re: A Basic Income Is Smarter Than a Minimum Wage

#121

Post by Eerie »

yanilkr wrote: post #95

A Basic Income from Govt comes at a huge price of loss of individual liberty. If someone gives you free stuff, they will expect controls like where you are allowed to spend your money and time. This model of taking from the productive sources and rewarding everyone else will have to break at a certain point. how come you get rewarded for enjoying the gossip column and I spend extra effort doing something else which i…

>This model of taking from the productive sources and rewarding everyone else will have to break at a certain point. how come you get rewarded for enjoying the gossip column and I spend extra effort doing something else which is harder and my earnings are taken away?

That's an argument that can be made against ABSOLUTELY ANY TAXATION.

Re: A Basic Income Is Smarter Than a Minimum Wage

#122

Post by yk »

RivieraKid wrote: post #81

Negative income tax makes more sense to me. (NIT is a system where you either get or give money from/to the governement, depending on your income.) First it's both a simple welfare and tax system in one package. Basic income as typically understood is only half of the story. It's also easier to reason about, the money flows are way more obvious, it's immediately clear whether you are a net contributor or receiver and…

The trouble with negative income tax, or at least the simplest models is, that you have to be very careful with the models. I once tried to calculate an admittedly very simple model and the results were a rather absurdly high tax already at rather low incomes. A slightly larger parameter space then produced a model of taxation with extrema.

Plus there are a lot of very good reasons for tax breaks (for example screen readers for the blind). So while I fully agree that a well engineered tax system would be a lot simpler than what we have now, I am not sure if a basic income should just be dealt with by taxation.

Re: A Basic Income Is Smarter Than a Minimum Wage

#123

Post by superuser2 »

kough wrote: post #29

> No one wants to hire them at a high minimum wage, especially when locals are readily available The main drawback to a minimum wage is that it artificially increases the cost of labor, to the point where it's no longer worth it to an employer to hire a low-output employee. I think we'd all agree that increasing employment is a good goal, but an increased minimum wage actually hinders progress on that front. As the m…

> I think we'd all agree that increasing employment is a good goal

Nope. Increasing good employment is a good goal; jobs which pay near minimum wage are not that.

Re: A Basic Income Is Smarter Than a Minimum Wage

#124

Post by rm_-rf_slash »

yanilkr wrote: post #95

A Basic Income from Govt comes at a huge price of loss of individual liberty. If someone gives you free stuff, they will expect controls like where you are allowed to spend your money and time. This model of taking from the productive sources and rewarding everyone else will have to break at a certain point. how come you get rewarded for enjoying the gossip column and I spend extra effort doing something else which i…

Basic income is necessary to distribute benefits for citizens with intangible value creation.

Ex: Stay-at-home parent raises children while breadwinner works. Breadwinner is freed from tedium and can be more productive at work. Children receive enough attention to become well-adjusted and productive adults.

What is the non-breadwinner worth? How do you calculate it? How do you compare value to non-working person taking care of sick family? Or a community volunteer (especially when the community needs volunteers and can't pay them)?

And that's why universal income makes sense.

Re: A Basic Income Is Smarter Than a Minimum Wage

#125

Post by Nogwater »

kough wrote: post #29

> No one wants to hire them at a high minimum wage, especially when locals are readily available The main drawback to a minimum wage is that it artificially increases the cost of labor, to the point where it's no longer worth it to an employer to hire a low-output employee. I think we'd all agree that increasing employment is a good goal, but an increased minimum wage actually hinders progress on that front. As the m…

> I think we'd all agree that increasing employment is a good goal

I don't agree, and I'm not sure why people would see employment for its own sake would be a good thing. I want to increase some of the things that employments brings (purchasing power, a sense of purpose, etc...) and not others (loss of time, feeling trapped, etc...).

Re: A Basic Income Is Smarter Than a Minimum Wage

#127

Post by fucking_tragedy »

empath75 wrote: post #59
Karunamon wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given the frankly despair-inducing statistics of what happens to poor people when they acquire a sudden cash windfall (and if you're flat broke and living on the streets, a few hundred every couple weeks is HUGE), I intend to agree. Most UBI implementations I've seen require gutting existing welfare systems - okay, fine, but what happens to the person who inevitably squanders their money?

I think probably the only thing that would have to go along with UBI is extreme restrictions on credit and borrowing for people that are relying on it. It's not really a huge problem for someone to blow all their UBI money for a month or two because they'll have more coming in. If they compound that with high-interest debt, they can dig themselves into a whole they can't get out of of.

Are you implying that receivers of government aid can't decide for themselves how to use their money?

The point of UBI is to do away with those restrictions, because people usually know how to allocate their available funds towards their needs.

Re: A Basic Income Is Smarter Than a Minimum Wage

#128

Post by DanielBMarkham »

pdabbadabba wrote: post #86
DanielBMarkham wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, from the very limited research I've done, the key question in the UBI discussion is this: what the heck is it? It's a great slogan, but you have to add at least a dozen or two bullet points or it can mean so many things that it effectively means nothing.

Interesting. I have always thought that its simplicity was its primary virtue. The government winds down all of its existing entitlement programs (except, perhaps, for health insurance) and, instead, writes everyone a check for $x per month. The big question is just the right value of x. But it sounds like you've looked at this harder than I have. What are the questions I'm overlooking?

I'm on the road right now, but here's an in-depth article I read awhile back.

Note that I'm not against the idea. In fact, I think it has huge merit. But just like everything else, the devil is in the details. Just like in startups, in policy an idea is mostly useless. It's the execution that matters. We really need to see several dozen different governmental entities give this a shot in order to start having any kind of intelligent discussion at all. Look forward to seeing that happen.

(PDF link follows)

http://object.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/pdf/pa773.p...

Re: A Basic Income Is Smarter Than a Minimum Wage

#129

Post by refurb »

empath75 wrote: post #32
harryh wrote: post #2

$10,000 * US_POPULATION ~= $3.2T ~= The total annual tax revenue of the US federal government. Just something to keep in mind when discussing this topic.

The top marginal tax rate would have to be dramatically increased to pay for it. Also, you'd have to increase capital gains and estate taxes. Make no mistake, basic minimum income would be a massive redistribution of wealth. I'm in favor of it, but let's not pretend we can pay for it by shuffling around some social safety net spending.

The top marginal tax rate would have to be dramatically increased to pay for it

Someone should do the math! Sure you could increase the top marginal rate, but where does that get you. Yes, the top 1% is very wealthy, but there aren't many of them.

I would bet you'd have to increase income taxes well down the income ladder, dipping down into what most people call the middle class. You simply can't avoid it, that's where all the money is.

Re: A Basic Income Is Smarter Than a Minimum Wage

#130

Post by maxerickson »

savanaly wrote: post #80
a3n wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The main drawback to a minimum wage is that it artificially increases the cost of labor, And? Why is that artificial increase a problem. Every law on the books is an artificial act. I don't see many people wringing their hands over the mortgage interest deduction, another of those artificial changes to the economy.

I usually really, really hate when people trot out the "go back to econ 101" argument, but in this case it applies. The reasons why a minimum wage might be inefficient (to what degree is very much debatable and dependent on the cirumstances) are explained thoroughly in any introductory microeconomics educational resource.

Sometimes econ 101 is macro.

I feel like a lot of the people who think economics is all terrible nonsense start off with macroeconomics (and maybe never get to microeconomics because of it).

Post reply on HN