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Universal Basic Income Is Superior to a $15 Minimum Wage (2019)

basicincometoday.com

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Re: Universal Basic Income Is Superior to a $15 Minimum Wage (2019)

#71

Post by grecy »

dang wrote: post #65
grecy wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

You have a long history of posting nationalistic flamebait to HN. We've warned you many times: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25800127 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22622642 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22604801 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22221660 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21880344 ... and you've only kept doing it. You've done it repeatedly in recent days, even in the last f…

I'll stop, though it would be preferable if we could have discussions around topics, rather than just banning them.

After living and working in the US, and Canada, and Australia, I genuinely don't understand why the US can't learn from other countries to improve itself. Honestly, I'm not trying to post flamebait, I simply don't understand, and I've never heard a good explanation.

My friends here in Canadian healthcare regularly compare and contrast the system to Australia/UK/Scandanavian systems and point out the pros and cons and how the Canadian system is adopting ideas/techniques from other places that have seen good outcomes.

Other countries do this regularly. Honestly - why doesn't the US?

EDIT: And here I am criticizing Canada (the country I live in, and hope to become a citizen of) just a minute ago - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25972362

I believe criticism and pointing out problems/weak points is the first step to improving a situation - after all, there can be no improvement until a problem is acknowledged.

The very fact this article and thread exist suggests there is some kind of problem / or something can be improved upon with regards to paid employment.

Re: Universal Basic Income Is Superior to a $15 Minimum Wage (2019)

#73

Post by nodesocket »

spamizbad wrote: post #47
nodesocket wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or how about the big elephant in the room that nobody seems to be bring up; the effect on small businesses that can’t afford to pay employees $15 or $20/hr. So, instead of helping the poor, these policies raise unemployment and actually are a detriment to the overall health of the economy.

The past 25-30 years of research do not show this to be true. The link between the minimum wage and unemployment isn't really a thing. I recognize your position was the conventional wisdom in the 1990s but newer research and analysis (along with tons of states experimenting with minimum wage over the various decades) paint a clear picture that it helps not just low-income workers but can help firms too by boosting pr…

Most certainly businesses as a response will be forced to raise prices and thus increase inflation and make everyday products more expensive.

These studies are obviously politically and progressively motivated (coming from firms such as american progress) so we have to assume a large scale national increase of minimum wage as significant as this would have unintended negative consequences.

Re: Universal Basic Income Is Superior to a $15 Minimum Wage (2019)

#74

Post by Spivak »

Turing_Machine wrote: post #26
SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hate to ask, but can you dumb this down? I still don’t really get it. Are you saying that if you have no job that 100% of your income is tax funded, but if you have even a shitty job that you still get more benefit than the job alone but this is sliding scale down to some unknown point which you no longer receive any benefit at all?

It's actually worse than that. There's often not any kind of sliding scale. Make $x and you get rental assistance, medical care for your kids, food aid, whatever. Make $x+1, and you get jack and shit. There's no reason for it to be that way, in a world with ubiquitous calculators and computers, but that's how it often is.

The crucial bit is that there's a gap. Say financial assistance worth $12,000 is available for people who make * If you make $20,000 then your effective income is $32,000.

* If you make $32,000 then your effective income is $32,000.

* If you make $25,000 then you're effective income is $25,000.

This creates a terrible incentive structure where you actually don't want to make more then $20,000 unless you're sure you can make more than $32,000. Well actually more because there's really no incentive to move up to $32,000 exactly.

You have to make sure that when a person makes more money they are always better off for having done so. Having a hard cutoff for benefits doesn't work and neither does a back-off system that matches income (e.g. at $25,000 you get $7,000)

Re: Universal Basic Income Is Superior to a $15 Minimum Wage (2019)

#75

Post by GizmoSwan »

azey47 wrote: post #5

I agree UBI is better than a minimum wage, but it seems a Negative Income Tax as advocated for by Milton Friedman would be still better. It would have the desired effect of supporting the poor with guaranteed income (something minimum wage can’t do because of the labor shortage it creates, especially amongst low-skilled employees), but do so a lot more cost effectively than UBI since you wouldn’t be guaranteeing paym…

So there is such a thing as low skill work that would be in high demand! That would mean there is a need to train people to have lower skills then!

There is no guarantee that anybody with any type of skill set will be offered a job aligned with their skills depending on economic issues. Skill is a vague idea.

Re: Universal Basic Income Is Superior to a $15 Minimum Wage (2019)

#76

Post by aww_dang »

thatguy0900 wrote: post #62
reader_mode wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a very narrative driven world view. The problem with UBI is that some jobs suck but need to be done, and if you set a guaranteed income for doing nothing the incentive for doing that job suddenly needs to be a lot higher to compete. Saying that it's just the capital owners is ridiculous - consider for eg. elderly care - good luck living in with your demented mother who needs assistance to perform even the basi…

So poor people need to exist because otherwise we wouldn't be able to force people to do things we ourselves wouldnt want to do? And if they are not poor they would stop being in awful servitude jobs noone wants? I guess it just sucks to be born poor then, too bad we can't help them

At the end of the day most people don't want to work, but the option to be paid for not working isn't available. We all dislike working to some extent. Otherwise we would do it for free, as a hobby. There are some low paid jobs people choose out of passion or interest.

There are also bottom rung jobs that beginners with no job skills can enter. Think about people with no language skills, don't they deserve a chance to be productive?

Even some of the lowest paid workers take pride in their work. Some of the savoir-esque rhetoric here borders on condescension.

Re: Universal Basic Income Is Superior to a $15 Minimum Wage (2019)

#77

Post by throwawayboise »

overton wrote: post #19

Authors like this frame the UBI/minimum wage debate as if we just haven't figured out the right policy mix to fix poverty or precarity -- as if it's a problem of ideas. I propose that it's in fact a question of power -- 1) who benefits from people being poor and how much 2) power do they have? 1) Owners of capital, who don't want to see their labour costs escalate and use firing/the poverty gun as a disciplinary tool…

You left out a big one.

3) Politicians who view the poor as a voting bloc, who endlessly promise solutions that they never really deliver.

Re: Universal Basic Income Is Superior to a $15 Minimum Wage (2019)

#78

Post by randomdata »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #21
randomdata wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't the practical difference the past vs. the future? A negative income tax is based on already reported income, whereas UBI is clawed back once income is reported.

This is equivalent to whether the UBI is paid on the first day of the period or the last day of the period and is only a meaningful distinction in the first period of implementation.

To wrap my head around this, let's assume the period is the calendar year. Let's assume that I made enough from January to March that I exceed a payout position under a negative income tax system, but COVID-19 saw me lose my job in March and my income dried up since then.

When I report my income as of December 31st, 2020, I still made enough for the year that I won't receive benefits, despite not having an income. That means that I will be unsupported through 2021 and won't see the money until 2022, correct?

If it were UBI and I were paid on January 1st 2020, it would be clawed back on December 31st as I still made enough money, but I would receive another payment on January 1st 2021 to get me through the year where I have no income. Isn't that the intent of UBI and not something afforded through negative income?

You could pay out a UBI-like stipend and then claw it back on the same day (December 31st, 2020), but is it really UBI at that point? That sounds like the negative income tax.

Re: Universal Basic Income Is Superior to a $15 Minimum Wage (2019)

#79

Post by gtsop »

aww_dang wrote: post #69
gtsop wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you see the irony in that the shity jobs that noone wants to do are the ones that pay less? There is another solution to give incentive there, raise the salaries for these shity jobs to attract people. It is very convinient that this shityjob-noincentive argument is being propagated by the same people who will never have to do these jobs or live by limited money.

>argument is being propagated by the same people who will never have to do these jobs or live by limited money How were you able to determine this from across the Internet?

> How were you able to determine this from across the Internet?

Who told you my source is the internet? :) we all live irl and discuss with people. I never heard a low-paid worker throw this argument. It always comes from people who have better jobs and more stable income

Re: Universal Basic Income Is Superior to a $15 Minimum Wage (2019)

#80

Post by dd_roger »

reader_mode wrote: post #46
overton wrote: post #19

Authors like this frame the UBI/minimum wage debate as if we just haven't figured out the right policy mix to fix poverty or precarity -- as if it's a problem of ideas. I propose that it's in fact a question of power -- 1) who benefits from people being poor and how much 2) power do they have? 1) Owners of capital, who don't want to see their labour costs escalate and use firing/the poverty gun as a disciplinary tool…

That's a very narrative driven world view. The problem with UBI is that some jobs suck but need to be done, and if you set a guaranteed income for doing nothing the incentive for doing that job suddenly needs to be a lot higher to compete. Saying that it's just the capital owners is ridiculous - consider for eg. elderly care - good luck living in with your demented mother who needs assistance to perform even the basi…

Yeah that's a major issue that I bring up everytime UBI is discussed and that for some reason UBI proponents never address.

If UBI isn't high enough to ensure that welfare as we currently know it isn't needed anymore, then why have UBI at all? It just adds complexity to the system for no apparent gain. On the other hand if UBI is high enough to go by without working there's a lot of things that just won't get done anymore.

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