Universal Basic Income Is Superior to a $15 Minimum Wage (2019) • Hacker News Board

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

#111

Post by hehehaha » Sat, Jan 30, 2021, 9:31 PM UTC

akvadrako wrote: post #104

hehehaha wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With UBI, people will be more selective in their job search. With negative tax rate not so much since you would need to work in order to benefit. I am not a fan of them because they will simply push out cost of living and the poor will be back in same relative economic disadvantage. The only realistic solution I see is free education even into adult age.

> With negative tax rate not so much since you would need to work in order to benefit This is not how NIT works. You can read this for an intro: https://www.scottsantens.com/negative-income-tax-nit-and-unc...

You still need to work and have income. If I am missing something I’d love to know.

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

#112

Post by robocat » Sat, Jan 30, 2021, 9:32 PM UTC

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #9

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…

The only difference between a UBI and a negative income tax is framing. Suppose you have a negative income tax in the amount of $12,000 which phases out at a rate of 25% up to $48,000 in income, and a 5% marginal tax rate on people who make less than $48,000 and a 30% marginal tax rate on people who make more. Suppose you have a $12,000 UBI and a flat 30% tax rate. These are really the same thing. The advantage of th…

> The only difference between a UBI and a negative income tax is framing.

No way.

Taxation requires benefit systems for those that are not working (unemployment, disability, maternity etc). UBI simplifies benefit systems, administratively and for the needy. The social outcomes for benefits are entirely different from what a UBI would bring.

Taxation is chunky (per year) and delayed (processing delays). There are heaps of corner cases of employment and salary changes during the year that might be equivalent over periods of many many months, but where a weekly UBI payment would make a huge difference to you if you were poor or unfortunate.

Taxation has more scope for fraud so requires much more overhead for prevention. A UBI is simple to manage - the things you need to detect are far more limited and are more easily checked and less invasively checked.

Disclaimer: I am not a UBI fan: I am just arguing against your point because it is so egregiously incorrect.

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

#113

Post by maxerickson » Sat, Jan 30, 2021, 9:40 PM UTC

grecy wrote: post #71

dang wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 healthca…

I genuinely don't understand why the US can't learn from other countries to improve itself.

There's a pretty broad assertion buried in your confusion.

Like for healthcare, the issue isn't that we can't look at other systems and see that there are advantages, it's that there is widespread resistance to moving away from the existing system. There isn't any single reason for it (lots of people like that they are making lots of money, other people have ideological concerns, etc, etc). Trying to reduce that down to "US can't learn" isn't really very interesting, as that isn't the problem.

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

#114

Post by scsilver » Sat, Jan 30, 2021, 10:05 PM UTC

syshum wrote: post #107

slg wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>And politically, I think it’s more appealing to be able to say to everyone: You have intrinsic value. The universality of UBI is key to its political viability. Just look at the number of people who are against forgiving college debt because they have already paid off college or are past the stage in their life in which they are personally concerned about college debt. Most people still view "fairness" as everyone b…

Fairness is treating everyone equally, the fact you put that in quotes is concerning... Further it is not just people that have paid off college debt or are past the stage where are concerned about college debt.. Many people worked their ass off to become good at a trade or other profession with out incurring college debt, why should we then have to pay increased taxes to pay of those that bought into the college lie…

Fairness often leads to zero sum outcomes, sometimes positive sum outcomes for all parties can be had from "unfair" allocation.

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

#115

Post by andrewflnr » Sat, Jan 30, 2021, 10:13 PM UTC

bhupy wrote: post #29

hehehaha wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With UBI, people will be more selective in their job search. With negative tax rate not so much since you would need to work in order to benefit. I am not a fan of them because they will simply push out cost of living and the poor will be back in same relative economic disadvantage. The only realistic solution I see is free education even into adult age.

I'd argue that this is a feature, and not a bug. It gives the lower-income worker leverage to walk away from a bad job without fear of starvation.

Absolutely, this is one of the most important reasons to have it IMO.

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

#116

Post by imtringued » Sat, Jan 30, 2021, 10:13 PM UTC

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…

Honestly, just do a jobs guarantee. If there is a job that cannot pay more than $13 and the government says $15 is the minimum wage then just let the government employ that person and let it cover the missing $2. Your government funds will go much further.

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

#117

Post by imtringued » Sat, Jan 30, 2021, 10:16 PM UTC

A12-B wrote: post #10

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…

> something minimum wage can’t do because of the labor shortage it creates It's important to read economic literature beyond old dead economists because many modern economists disagree with this, or think it doesn't paint a full picture of the situation. Noah Smith comes to mind.

Come on, when there is a labor surplus companies don't have to employ all workers. They can just pick the lowest bidders and if you deny people the ability to bid lower they might not get employed at all.

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

#118

Post by andrewflnr » Sat, Jan 30, 2021, 10:16 PM UTC

noodle wrote: post #55

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.

Everyone talks about it. This is pretending that businesses would do nothing in response to the changes. They'd do a lot of stuff, like raise prices, invest in efficiency improvements, invest in their employees, reduce employee hours, offset the increase in lower level wages by reducing upper level wages, etc.. What the response would be just depends on the business and their circumstances. Edit: also, I can't find t…

> This is pretending that businesses would do nothing in response to the changes

No it's not, it's proposing that one of the things they'll do in response is hire fewer people. Which will absolutely happen in a non-zero fraction of cases. The only question is how big a fraction.

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

#119

Post by vsskanth » Sat, Jan 30, 2021, 10:18 PM UTC

richwater wrote: post #48

UBI will never work because it's based on the fact that we remove all other forms of welfare, which, will never happen.

Could you elaborate on why ? I've also thought about this and would like to hear your thoughts.

If I were to take a guess, it would be politically connected organizations benefiting from the welfare system. I wonder what these organizations would be.

Or, there might be some political calculus that makes means testing and administration more favorable to the ruling establishment.

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

#120

Post by imtringued » Sat, Jan 30, 2021, 10:19 PM UTC

nodesocket wrote: post #73

spamizbad wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If businesses can increase prices they have done so already and that would show in the form of higher demand for labor.

So really, the only benefit is a psychological trick. Simply handing out money to underpaid workers would drive inflation much more effectively and do the exact same thing.