A Basic Income Is Smarter Than a Minimum Wage

True. Then the US has to lower its rates or the low tax company has to increase due to social unrest. We see this with China. The rising wealth of the writing class is causing party increases. So large that work us coming back to the US or to other south Asian countries.

All you're arguing is for a decrease in the cost of hiring from a specific labor pool, which is exactly what the government has already done by allowing companies to hire disabled workers for below the minimum wage.

I think there is huge difference between saying someone is personally responsible for their future and saying the only thing preventing the lower class from doing well is laziness.

A minimum wage would definitely not be close to a living wage, and a living wage doesn't include saving for retirement or other less basic expenses.The average income in 2015 in the U.S. for people with some college was around $37,000. That's around $18/hr for a 40 hour week. That is definitely livable in most places, but money would be a little tight.

Sure, maybe most people earning a below average income could improve themselves and do a lot better financially. But the average wage isn't really good, and low income workers will always be below average.

You could make the argument that if most of low income workers became a more valuable by raising their skill level then the average income would also raise. And you might be right, to a point. But I don't think there are enough decent jobs available for everyone. Not everyone is a good fit to work in the medical field or tech. So the increased average skill level would just mean that businesses could be more selective and even lower their pay.

I worked full-time for a short amount of time in a tech related field. I remember looking for entry level work, and it was really competitive. I did get a full-time contract position that was a really good opportunity, but the pay was very low. The job was good, it was at a good company, and it would provide me valuable experience. But I ended up going back to school to finish my degree and change fields. And I ended up applying for internships. And reviewing my offers I noticed that all of the decent offers were in the same range as an entry level full-time position in my old company. One offer was more than my yearly salary in the old field. I could have told my old coworkers that they would do a lot better changing careers, and it would be true. But if everyone in the field did that, there would be no-one applying for entry level work in that field. And I think that indicates a problem with the job market, not just a problem with laziness.

Sorry if that was unclear - working a job you love can and should have the opposite sign. That's why I said something like QALY: it maxes out at 1 QALY/person-year, which is incorrect when people would rather spend a decade as a rock star than 30 years retired in Arizona.

Probably roughly nothing.

I pulled my (small) suburban cities budget which is a many hundred page long PDF and parks and rec runs 40-something neighborhood city playground type parks and 2 pools on 2.3 million total per year. Of which staggeringly only 1.5 mil are wages (we live in a rough climate, maintenance costs are high, over $100K spend on electric bills alone, etc).

On the revenue side the two public pools combined pulled in about 1/3 of a million from fees collected at the door. Its pretty cheap compared to commercial entertainment (movie, restaurant, etc), they could certainly charge more without excluding too many people, given how much it costs to live here.

I know from experience that they have a couple kid lifeguards at each pool all the time so lets say 10 total staff at all instants (LOL no) at $15/hr for 10 or so hours per day (LOL no not open that much), open about 100 days a year (LOL no they'd be ice skating in the spring on the pool if that were the case), if I multiplied this out correctly in my head, at $15/hr, the kid lifeguards cost $150K/yr while bringing in $340K of revenue. Note that I don't have the misfortune of living in CA, so the actual cost of a seasons lifeguards at the two pools is more like $80K.

The cities very gross profit margin if by a miracle pools were free to build and maintain, just revenue divided by kid labor, is roughly $340K/$80K right now and if the min wage were $15 it would "collapse" to $340K/$150K which still ain't bad.

Honestly I suspect the pool spends more on chlorine and electricity than on the kids labor.

The capital cost is no laughing matter. The most recent ADA compliant complete remodel was something like $2M which for that one pool is roughly a decades revenue.

This quick analysis leads to the conclusion that open hours for the pool are insanely profitable, and the "pool biz" is overall dominated by capital costs. The kids pay is irrelevant.