>Otherwise it sounds like you don't think anyone should be able to live anywhere reasonable without roommates? I think your confusing "should be able to" with "shall be able to, enforceable by law". I don't expect that a 15 year old working his first job as a fry cook at an Arby's should be compensated enough that he can afford to live on his own. In fact, that could be dangerously disincentivizing his hard work towa…
Why shouldn't someone working as a fry cook be able to live on his salary? It's not dangerous to have a system where not everyone needs a university degree to earn a living.
Think about that. Let's take your world, the fry cook can live on his salary. Now the person with a University degree can command a much higher wage since his skill is in great demand.
He's got more money, so he can afford more expensive stuff, increasing demand, which increases prices, and now your fry cook can no longer live on his salary.
Do you want to respond by raising wages again? You're in a never ending loop.
A universal basic income would have some advantages over a minimum wage. Minimum wage interferes with supply and demand in the labor market, which is why some economists dislike it. UBI moves the supply curve to a different place, but it allows those principles to function.
UBI could allow the elimination of minimum wage entirely, along with a ton of other scattered welfare programs that have lots of administrative overhead and the typical middleman industries that leech off of government programs. It’s a no-brainer!
Most people working for minimum wage (and probably most people in general in the US) work pay check to pay check (like the Applebee's manager stated in the article). They max out their available credit so that the interest takes up all of the possible slack in their income. Under UBI how to you prevent people from now borrowing more money (spending it on a vacation, clothes, fancier car, etc.), paying all the UBI as interest and ending up back in the same financial situation they were before. I don't think UBI solves peoples financial problems. I think Thomas Paine's idea of getting a large lump sum when reaching the age of maturity has some merit. Maybe a manditory two year service in the military or other government org after high school and then they receive a large chunk of money to start their life ($200k or something like that). The person could spend it on school, start a business, down payment on a house, wedding, etc. Having classed in high school discussing what one should do with that money would be a great way for students to think about the future and in a positive way.
1) UBI is not UBI unless everyone gets it. 2) Any income surplus generated by UBI is rapidly consumed by middle people and rent-seekers. That’s how we get inflation.
I do not understand what you are trying to convey through either of these points. Would you mind clarifying?
He's saying that if everyone has extra money, then everyone can afford higher prices.
Since they can afford higher prices, people will charge those higher prices. And you are back where you started.
I know this won’t be popular but minimum wage shouldn’t exist. Basic income, sure but not minimum wage. Every discussion of minimum wage blames employers for something that is completely out of their control: inflation. When the price of gas, housing and food rises the business where you work doesn’t suddenly have more money to hand out. If anything their costs have gone up too reducing what they can afford to pay ou…
Hmmmm, how could a business possibly compensate for increased costs including labor costs?
I wonder what the USA would look like if minimum wage was defined as; two people being able to afford a 1 bedroom apartment within a 1 hour drive without traffic. The static (both in the nominal and inflation adjusted sense) for minimum wage doesn't make sense imo. Minimum wage should be tied to some level of living (not necessarily a great living, but something ) This guy smh
Inflation, probably followed by corruption. Minimum wage would rise to the point where a person could afford a 1BR apartment within a 1 hour drive without traffic. Then the rents of those 1BR apartments would rise to capture that new minimum wage. Then minimum wage would rise to afford the new rent, and so on. Eventually someone's going to say "Hey, I own an apartment block downtown, I'm supposed to rent it out to th…
Zoning. You link the "zones which employ people" and "zones which house people" to balance so you don't have significantly more jobs than homes.
Next you zone for type of housing, where you only allow a certain percentage of the most profitable 1BR apartments to be built, and require those to be above certain size thresholds so that a variety of life situations can actually live in your city.
You don't need to "incentivize" construction, the people that do that already make enormous amounts of money.
Seller's market is a funny way of saying they're not being held hostage for their lives.
> Seller's market is a funny way of saying they're not being held hostage for their lives. Sorry, are you saying that expecting people to work to meet their own needs is them being "held hostage for their lives"?
People being forced to sell their only product (labour) at any price to the first bidder or have that product vanish (hours go by) and starve in a situation with massive information asymmetry where the bidders are using collective bargaining and control the means of survival is not a market interaction.
I wonder what the USA would look like if minimum wage was defined as; two people being able to afford a 1 bedroom apartment within a 1 hour drive without traffic. The static (both in the nominal and inflation adjusted sense) for minimum wage doesn't make sense imo. Minimum wage should be tied to some level of living (not necessarily a great living, but something ) This guy smh
“Minimum wage” is different for a single guy and a single mother. Business shouldn’t be responsible for making sure everyone has a “livable” wage. If you believe that should be a policy -and I agree. Then that should be the responsibility of the government.
We already have something like that - the earned income tax credit. It just needs to be expanded. Every administration before Trump - both Republican and Democratic supported expanding it.
It does take into account the difference between my 18 year old son living at home and a single mother.
The government should collect taxes and implement social policy - not private business.
> You can rent them for very cheap but just as you're about to move in they suddenly become unavailable for whatever reason? I mean, presumably in this hypothetical situation we wouldn't want to simultaneously dissolve basic renter's rights.
Yeah, and this is the trouble with trying to get people to engage with hypotheticals on the internet in thoughtful ways. The usual formula for any engagement with hypothetical ideas is for it to be reflexively dismissed with a "that'll never work" response. Most of the time I think this is the instinctive friction we feel at being asked to engage with a new idea, and saying that'll never work for [insert reason] is i…
It's not really that complicated. If everyone has more money, then everyone can afford to pay more, so prices will rise to consume that extra money.
And you are back where you started. Or you have to raise prices again, in a never ending loop.
I suppose you can hand out ration cards for food and housing, so those never have a price, just a government supply. That's the only "out" I can think of to keep the loop from happening.
A universal basic income would have some advantages over a minimum wage. Minimum wage interferes with supply and demand in the labor market, which is why some economists dislike it. UBI moves the supply curve to a different place, but it allows those principles to function.
UBI could allow the elimination of minimum wage entirely, along with a ton of other scattered welfare programs that have lots of administrative overhead and the typical middleman industries that leech off of government programs. It’s a no-brainer!
It recently occurred to me that the complex Byzantine structure of the existing welfare state does have one major advantage over UBI: it’s significantly harder to make the entire thing agenda driven. As soon as you have a UBI, there will be massive political pressure to use it for some agenda.
Of course everyone gets UBI…
…except the polluters
…and CO2 emitters
…and meat eaters
…and porn watchers
…and weed smokers
…and tobacco smokers
…and alcohol drinkers
…and maybe it’s distributed on a curve, depending on race
It could be corrupted so easily. And it’s a single point of failure.
I wonder what the USA would look like if minimum wage was defined as; two people being able to afford a 1 bedroom apartment within a 1 hour drive without traffic. The static (both in the nominal and inflation adjusted sense) for minimum wage doesn't make sense imo. Minimum wage should be tied to some level of living (not necessarily a great living, but something ) This guy smh
The minimum would be way, way lower than $15 per individual in an extreme majority of areas. An hour from a job will get you well out of most every urban center.
Even in Manhattan two working adults could easily afford a 1BR apartment on a combined income of $30/hr. If you extend that out to one hour in any given direction it drops to as low as $24/hr.