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A Basic Income Is Smarter Than a Minimum Wage

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Re: A Basic Income Is Smarter Than a Minimum Wage

#171

Post by imtringued »

empath75 wrote: post #50
paulpauper wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Proponents of the UBI make the generous assumption that recipients will be as careful with money as they (the proponents) are . Choosing between food & housing credits vs. cash, the former has less room for abuse. Its like "I would never use my UBI on alcohol"...well you're not "most people"

People are perfectly capable of trading food-stamp bought groceries for booze right now.

It's also a good source of some passive income.

Source: http://nypost.com/2013/07/28/nyc-welfare-food-is-shipped-in-...

Re: A Basic Income Is Smarter Than a Minimum Wage

#172

Post by alttab »

msellout wrote: post #159
alttab wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disagree. I've owned 3 homes and my mortgage interest deduction made no difference on whether or not I purchased. The difference between renting and owning is income, savings rate, and lifestyle. If you can't afford to buy, you either don't make enough or don't save enough. It's the down payment that separates a lot of renters and buyers. If you are arguing homes are expensive, I'd argue that $15 minimum wage isn't h…

It changed the amount you paid.

Either you're wrong, or I'm about to learn something. Explain?

Re: A Basic Income Is Smarter Than a Minimum Wage

#173

Post by rm_-rf_slash »

floppydisk wrote: post #118
virmundi wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The advocates for such policy do keep this in mind. They require tax increases on business. If you make money, you have to pay. The idea is to help reallocate wealth because the market has moved beyond certain segments of labor. For example, when McDonald's can automate half its staff, the other half can't provide labor at the minimum price to be worth while. UBI says give these people, those displaced from the labor…

Playing devil's advocate, what happens to businesses in the presence of an even higher regulatory and tax environment and what will the impact of increased taxes be on employment and business viability as well as the cost of living? For the sake of argument, think about businesses with razor thin margins like restaurants. In the presence of increased taxes, their margins significantly diminish, if not vanish, and it…

Most restaurants derive most of their cost from labor. With basic income in and minimum wage out, you can pay people much less than you had to before. Yes, you may pay more in taxes, but that's from profit after everything else has been taken care of.

So if you end up with less total profit than before, it sucks, but your control over the situation is far more variable than if you had to simply suck it up and plan to pay your $9.00/hr dishwasher at least $15/hr in three years.

Re: A Basic Income Is Smarter Than a Minimum Wage

#174

Post by JonFish85 »

refurb wrote: post #129
empath75 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 whe…

As with any tax increase, the middle class is always the ones that bear the brunt of it, because for all the noise about taxing the 1%, there just isn't enough money to take. The people that end up really paying the price are the people who worked their entire lives to be able to pay for their kids' college, not the people who have $10b in assets.

Politicians are happy to talk about raising the taxes of the wealthy and to cut taxes to the middle class. However, in practice, this means a massive loss in tax revenue, so eventually the middle class taxes have to go back up, or cuts need to be made.

Re: A Basic Income Is Smarter Than a Minimum Wage

#175

Post by clarkmoody »

QuotedForTruth wrote: post #136
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…

The counter argument is that human labor has an actual cost. That is the cost to keep a human alive and in some level of comfort. Government benefits of many different types have "artificially" lowered this cost. Where employees refuse to pay enough for a human to live on, the government picks up the slack. Raising the minimum wage may be "artificial," but its not the first control placed on some otherwise natural la…

Critical omission on your part: not everyone needs to live on this wage.

Think about high school kids trying to get a summer job. They don't need to survive on this wage, they simply need something productive to do over the summer.

Should my business be required to shell out $15/hr for a high school kid, when the value of his/her labor is way less than that?

Re: A Basic Income Is Smarter Than a Minimum Wage

#176

Post by tikhonj »

protomyth wrote: post #145
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…

Plus, everyone doesn't need the income and we cannot afford it anyway. I'm partial to trying pro-rated guaranteed minimum income paid weekly or nightly (one can dream). I have seen several proposals that include a clause affecting voting rights of the receivers.

I am generally in favor of a negative income tax, but fiddling with voting rights is a complete non-starter.

Disallowing people to vote, or giving some people more voting power, skews all politics in ways that are inherently hard to fix or even address. It creates a weirder incentive scheme for the government which already behaves oddly thanks to odd incentives. A plan that took voting power away from its beneficiaries would sow the seeds of its own undoing—if not in a single action than over hundreds of small amendments and exceptions. The end-game I'd expect is for most of the benefits of the plan to be chipped away, leaving only the changed voting rights.

That's really not the way to go.

Re: A Basic Income Is Smarter Than a Minimum Wage

#177

Post by msellout »

p4wnc6 wrote: post #64
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 generally agree with this, but I think it is often overstated. There are still many domains of employment where there is room to raise the minimum wage significantly before getting anywhere near the margin at which the employer feels it's not worthwhile to hire the additional worker. Food service, for example. There are examples on the other end of the spectrum too, such as cashiers in a major convenience store cha…

You have some good points, but I think calling anything a "right" will bring downvotes. I suggest not asserting anything is a "natural right" as that's too open to interpretation and brings a visceral reaction for many people.

Re: A Basic Income Is Smarter Than a Minimum Wage

#178

Post by lujim »

rm_-rf_slash wrote: post #142
rmc wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it artificially increases the cost of labor That's the point. A floor. Through which people should not have to work below at.

Whereas universal income means that everyone in society can tell terrible bosses that they can take their shitty job and shove it, and still live with dignity, a greater dignity than having to work at the absolute minimum of pay, regardless of whether 51% of politicians choose to call it a "living wage."

I'm sure we have all had terrible bosses. I have probably had one of the worst bosses you could imagine. Quitting that job was one of the best days of my life. However it still isn't a persons birthright or written anywhere in the constitution that you have only have to work for people you like.

If you want to avoid bad bosses you need to learn a skill that makes you highly sought after or be self employed.

Re: A Basic Income Is Smarter Than a Minimum Wage

#179

Post by knodi123 »

athenot wrote: post #37
paulpauper wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Proponents of the UBI make the generous assumption that recipients will be as careful with money as they (the proponents) are . Choosing between food & housing credits vs. cash, the former has less room for abuse. Its like "I would never use my UBI on alcohol"...well you're not "most people"

It's easy to knock on the poor for making bad choices with their resources. But what the well-off percieve as "frivolous" or "irresponsible" may very well be the most cost-effective way to maintain sanity when undergoing stress that is not unlike what founders experience when struggling to keep a company afloat.

Let's not portray alcoholics as reasonable people making the best mental-health decisions available to them.

Re: A Basic Income Is Smarter Than a Minimum Wage

#180

Post by Rylinks »

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.

Just make UBI payments unrecoverable by lenders and let the market sort it out.
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