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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

#291

Post by bluecalm »

zxcvvcxz wrote: post #266

> Besides, Sweden has one of the rich world's biggest gaps between native and immigrant employment rates. Youth joblessness is 70 percent higher among the foreign-born than among Swedes. Lowering the minimum wage could draw more of the new, mainly Middle Eastern population, into the workforce and reduce social and ethnic tension. A minimum wage is simply not moral. It prevents me and you from entering into an employm…

>>A minimum wage is simply not moral. It prevents me and you from entering into an employment agreement with which we may both benefit. Instead, the government is telling me how I have to interact with you.

This argument doesn't make any sense. It is often the case that preventing people from entering a contract thy both benefit from is beneficial for society. It's a standard social dilemma example of which is tragedy of commons.

You may argue against minimum wage but "simply not moral" is just a wrong argument. This kind of thinking is what frustrates me about common libertarian arguments. You can't just ignore social dilemma implications when arguing for voluntarily contract being the end of it.

Re: A Basic Income Is Smarter Than a Minimum Wage

#292

Post by Turing_Machine »

msellout wrote: post #199
johndevor wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Won't higher taxes here in the US drive more and more business overseas (specifically to China) and further exacerbate the problem of income inequality? We already see corporations keeping massive amounts of capital overseas because of high tax rates. That money should and could be here in the USA.

Empirically, no. Or at least not to the extent that many people fear. Many businesses are headquartered in NYC, despite the city's extra taxes.

They may be "headquartered" in NYC, but they're domiciled in Delaware, Nevada, etc. and their production facilities are located in China or Indonesia.

Re: A Basic Income Is Smarter Than a Minimum Wage

#293

Post by randyrand »

mmanfrin wrote: post #282
randyrand wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No its not in practice. NIC is generally tied to working. A part time employed person will make less than a full time one. Under BI it is not tied to working. The incentives are worse.

How? A full time employed person will still make more than a part time. Basic Income is flatly applied, everyone gets it; earning more then means you still have more. This isn't some cutoff-if-you-make-too-much thing.

> Basic Income is flatly applied

Thats the difference.

Of course it depends on the model used, but generally NIC is applied based on how much you work. Generally a non-working person makes $0 , and a fully employed person makes the BI amount. To get the BI you need to work for it. That's the difference.

To take this argument any further we would need to compare specific models. But NIC and BI are not the same and have similar but different purposes.

Re: A Basic Income Is Smarter Than a Minimum Wage

#294

Post by ThrustVectoring »

johndevor wrote: post #45
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…

Won't higher taxes here in the US drive more and more business overseas (specifically to China) and further exacerbate the problem of income inequality? We already see corporations keeping massive amounts of capital overseas because of high tax rates. That money should and could be here in the USA.

That's a most of why I'd like to fund GBI in part with a land-value tax.

Re: A Basic Income Is Smarter Than a Minimum Wage

#295

Post by RivieraKid »

yk wrote: post #122
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…

> Plus there are a lot of very good reasons for tax breaks

I agree, I think that the negative income tax could be a base system with a systematic way to give / tax more various groups of people or other modifications.

Re: A Basic Income Is Smarter Than a Minimum Wage

#296

Post by sievebrain »

yanilkr wrote: post #152
Eerie wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

did we ever try no taxation?

No taxation tends to get quickly replaced with "taxed by a local warlord". For instance, traditional government is largely absent from large parts of Afghanistan and eastern Pakistan. But these places are not libertarian utopias.

Re: A Basic Income Is Smarter Than a Minimum Wage

#297

Post by ksenzee »

petra wrote: post #250
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…

>> Down Syndrome [0] .. are they worth hiring at $2.00/hour? Yes, and they and their families are willing for them to work at that wage, because there are huge benefits to being productively employed. Realistically, for people with disabilities that aren't being able to be in the regular labor market, there are some societal useful things to do, like volunteering(say in a soup kitchen), helping their community,etc. T…

I don't know exactly how you're picturing the US, but it's not as dystopian as you seem to think. We do in fact have soup kitchens and volunteer opportunities and people with Down's Syndrome who contribute meaningfully to their communities. (What we don't have a lot of anymore are factories. Go figure.)

Re: A Basic Income Is Smarter Than a Minimum Wage

#298

Post by gorpomon »

zxcvvcxz wrote: post #266

> Besides, Sweden has one of the rich world's biggest gaps between native and immigrant employment rates. Youth joblessness is 70 percent higher among the foreign-born than among Swedes. Lowering the minimum wage could draw more of the new, mainly Middle Eastern population, into the workforce and reduce social and ethnic tension. A minimum wage is simply not moral. It prevents me and you from entering into an employm…

A minimum wage is moral. It ensure that you and I do not enter into an employment agreement where one side excessively benefits. The government as third party is ensuring we have minimum amount of fairness in our interaction.

The right-wing philosophy of wage bargaining is ironically hurting the workers of their countries. The reality is that first-world nations have predatory labor practices because citizens are systemically and by their own lack of resources unable to realize what fair wage is or how to effectively bargain for it. Instead of giving workers, who are almost certainly less educated and capable the ability live off their wage so they may better their lives constructively, we indenture them into subsistence living, where the minorest of life disruption can decimate savings.

It's just bad for the people living in the lower rungs of society. Being able to work at a living wage is fantastic for mitigating these shortcomings. You can actually do things like plan for the future and interact with people without worrying about the next big life problem. You can learn more labor laws to further advocate for yourself and others, and even the customs of other cultures, rather than fear someone cutting even your meager floor from under you. Without fair wage, workers can often find themselves being the "working poor", people whose jobs won't ever let them save enough money to do anything meaningful. And fair employment inevitably leads to high quality of life.

Institute a living wage. Give people the opportunities they want.

Re: A Basic Income Is Smarter Than a Minimum Wage

#299

Post by home_boi »

rm_-rf_slash wrote: post #261
home_boi wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the opposite. The utility of money decreases as the amount of money owned/earned goes up. $9/hr to a person without basic income is worth more than $9/hr to a person with basic income. Now people need more money to gain the same utility as they could have previously gained without basic income. Why would people wash dishes if they didn't need to pay the bills?

Sure, a dishwasher might not need to work to pay for rent and heat, but... Can they afford nice clothing to attract people they like? Can they save up for college? For their kids? Can they play the latest games? See the latest movies? Do they enjoy cigarettes, alcohol, or other recreational drugs? Do they like to eat out? Do they want a higher standard of living when they "retire?"

People would be less willing to work for those goods than for rent and heat, so employers would have to pay higher wages.

Re: A Basic Income Is Smarter Than a Minimum Wage

#300

Post by 1812Overture »

NoMoreNicksLeft wrote: post #258
rm_-rf_slash wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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. That's plainly false. No one's going to wash dishes at Chain Restaurant #12 for 15 cents an hour, not even if the government is giving them $10,000/year. Infinite increase in their current effort for a 1% increase in annual income? That's like the most pathologically…

$5 per hour to double their income though? You'll have takers there.
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