A Basic Income Is Smarter Than a Minimum Wage • Hacker News Board

Re: A Basic Income Is Smarter Than a Minimum Wage

#221

Post by brbsix » Mon, Apr 04, 2016, 8:22 PM UTC

tikhonj wrote: post #176

protomyth wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plus, everyone doesn't need the income and we cannot afford it anyway. I'm partial to trying pro-rated guaranteed minimum income paid weekly or nightly (one can dream). I have seen several proposals that include a clause affecting voting rights of the receivers.

I am generally in favor of a negative income tax, but fiddling with voting rights is a complete non-starter. Disallowing people to vote, or giving some people more voting power, skews all politics in ways that are inherently hard to fix or even address. It creates a weirder incentive scheme for the government which already behaves oddly thanks to odd incentives. A plan that took voting power away from its beneficiari…

People still donate to charity, don't they? Or voluntarily sign up for insurance programs? If the programs were effective in reaching their stated goals, I wouldn't expect them to be entirely chipped away. If instead the programs revealed some perverse disincentives on the other hand, I'd expect the result you described, and rightly so.

Re: A Basic Income Is Smarter Than a Minimum Wage

#222

Post by BurningFrog » Mon, Apr 04, 2016, 8:22 PM UTC

a3n wrote: post #43

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…

> The main drawback to a minimum wage is that it artificially increases the cost of labor, And? Why is that artificial increase a problem. Every law on the books is an artificial act. I don't see many people wringing their hands over the mortgage interest deduction, another of those artificial changes to the economy.

Because it keeps desperately poor people unemployed and outside of productive society.

Re: A Basic Income Is Smarter Than a Minimum Wage

#223

Post by ThomPete » Mon, Apr 04, 2016, 8:22 PM UTC

Karunamon wrote: post #210

OntheFlipside33 wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We bail them out the same way we do the rich? I'm curious how this is of any real value or concern outside the usual "Well because it's MY tax dollars so I should have a say." Why focus on poor people spending their social welfare when the result will be far less harmful to humanity as a whole than how the rich spend their social welfare? The superfluous resource consumption by the wealthy, and I include not just the…

That's some fine whataboutism, but a poor answer to my relatively straightforward question. Again, every UBI implementation I've ever seen includes basically destroying the existing welfare structure. If someone blows their UBI due to, not just drugs/alcohol, but just plain old poor finanical management skills, what happens to them? They've got nowhere to turn for two weeks or more because we tore all that shit up .

How is that different than today?

The very point is that less people will be in this situation because getting your basic needs met is shown to make your more responsible. Se further up in thread for some of the studies.

Re: A Basic Income Is Smarter Than a Minimum Wage

#224

Post by mdorazio » Mon, Apr 04, 2016, 8:23 PM UTC

empath75 wrote: post #32

harryh wrote: post #2

$10,000 * US_POPULATION ~= $3.2T ~= The total annual tax revenue of the US federal government. Just something to keep in mind when discussing this topic.

The top marginal tax rate would have to be dramatically increased to pay for it. Also, you'd have to increase capital gains and estate taxes. Make no mistake, basic minimum income would be a massive redistribution of wealth. I'm in favor of it, but let's not pretend we can pay for it by shuffling around some social safety net spending.

Increasing capital gains taxes back to historical levels doesn't actually get you very far. Maybe another 100-200 billion [1]. Forcing corporations to pay taxes on all money earned in the US instead of tossing it offshore would get you another 90 billion or so [2].

Realistically, almost all of the revenue has to come from increasing personal income tax, probably mostly on the top 5% of earners, but realistically everyone would have to pay more. I haven't yet done the calculations, but it seems like we're talking double digit percentage increases.

[1] http://people.opposingviews.com/percent-irs-revenue-comes-ca... [2] http://www.americansfortaxfairness.org/tax-fairness-briefing...

Re: A Basic Income Is Smarter Than a Minimum Wage

#225

Post by home_boi » Mon, Apr 04, 2016, 8:24 PM UTC

virmundi wrote: post #146

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.

I agree, but the theory goes that eventually tax havens will disappear. Europe would probably adopt UBI along with us. So those lower rates would go away. China would do something similar or would be too scary for westerners to fully flee to. Right now many companies are fleeing to Europe for better corporate rates while their C level employees benefit from lower personal tax rates in the US.

Or some countries will take advantage of these fleeing westerners and keep their tax rates lower than the US

Re: A Basic Income Is Smarter Than a Minimum Wage

#226

Post by lisivka » Mon, Apr 04, 2016, 8:24 PM UTC

gozur88 wrote: post #188

rmc wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it artificially increases the cost of labor That's the point. A floor. Through which people should not have to work below at.

Yes, and what that means in practice is instead of making a little bit of money, people whose labor is worth less than some arbitrary amount can't get work at all. You can't mandate a minimum wage, because the true minimum is always zero.

Why we should care about these super low productivity jobs anyway?

Re: A Basic Income Is Smarter Than a Minimum Wage

#227

Post by Mz » Mon, Apr 04, 2016, 8:24 PM UTC

Gig work that works would be smarter than both. One of the problems with basic income is that decouples work from income entirely. One of the things paid work accomplishes is encouraging certain kinds of human behaviors. From what I have read, every society that ever tried to promise that "we will take care of everyone, regardless of their contribution or behavior" had to reneg on that when it backfired on them.

Decoupling income from being the work equivalent of "chained to the stove" is a great idea. Gig work that is well designed allows both people of low productivity and of high productivity to participate on their own terms. If someone who isn't very productive is willing to accept a de facto lower than minimum wage hourly rate, they should be allowed to make that choice. It empowers them in ways that welfare programs do not.

Re: A Basic Income Is Smarter Than a Minimum Wage

#228

Post by JamilD » Mon, Apr 04, 2016, 8:24 PM UTC

clarkmoody wrote: post #175

QuotedForTruth wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The counter argument is that human labor has an actual cost. That is the cost to keep a human alive and in some level of comfort. Government benefits of many different types have "artificially" lowered this cost. Where employees refuse to pay enough for a human to live on, the government picks up the slack. Raising the minimum wage may be "artificial," but its not the first control placed on some otherwise natural la…

Critical omission on your part: not everyone needs to live on this wage. Think about high school kids trying to get a summer job. They don't need to survive on this wage, they simply need something productive to do over the summer. Should my business be required to shell out $15/hr for a high school kid, when the value of his/her labor is way less than that?

It's worth noting that the average age of a minimum wage worker is 35, and the majority are women [0]. Middle-aged women, not teenagers, are the demographic which the minimum wage affects the most.

[0] http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/06/10/upshot/minimum-wage.htm...

Re: A Basic Income Is Smarter Than a Minimum Wage

#229

Post by justizin » Mon, Apr 04, 2016, 8:25 PM UTC

merpnderp wrote: post #82

a3n wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The main drawback to a minimum wage is that it artificially increases the cost of labor, And? Why is that artificial increase a problem. Every law on the books is an artificial act. I don't see many people wringing their hands over the mortgage interest deduction, another of those artificial changes to the economy.

And? It keeps people who want to work from working. People who would be willing to work at less than the minimum wage. Subsiding on government relief can lead to depression, loss of social status, load term mental illness. Not having a job is a very unhealthy thing for most people.

There are people willing to do valuable work for less than the minimum wage - they're called volunteers. A lot of work done by volunteers is more important than work done by minimum wage workers, but involves no commerce.

A basic income provides the opportunity for people to find healthy, fulfilling things that do not pay money.

I'm absolutely OK with some types of paid work going away entirely. Our society leans too heavily on the ability to pay someone else to do something at a rate that is usually more than we would like to pay and less than we would like to make. It is essentially a way of saying that we are more important than other people and that's lame.

Food delivery, for instance, is convenient, I take advantage of it, but I tip far more heavily than most people, and I could live without it. Some people who deliver for a pay service today may end up, with basic income, volunteering for meals on wheels. That's a better allocation of society's potential energy than to bring me a burrito when I don't feel like leaving the house.

Re: A Basic Income Is Smarter Than a Minimum Wage

#230

Post by stevesearer » Mon, Apr 04, 2016, 8:25 PM UTC

rskar wrote: post #204

clarkmoody wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Critical omission on your part: not everyone needs to live on this wage. Think about high school kids trying to get a summer job. They don't need to survive on this wage, they simply need something productive to do over the summer. Should my business be required to shell out $15/hr for a high school kid, when the value of his/her labor is way less than that?

Per http://www.dol.gov/general/topic/youthlabor/wages : The Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) requires a minimum of not less than $4.25 per hour for employees under 20 years of age during their first 90 consecutive calendar days of employment with an employer. After 90 days of employment, or when the worker reaches age 20 (whichever comes first), the worker must receive the minimum wage. Employers are prohibited from t…

California: Although there are some exceptions, almost all employees in California must be paid the minimum wage as required by state law. Effective January 1, 2016, the minimum wage in California is $10.00 per hour.

http://www.dir.ca.gov/dlse/faq_minimumwage.htm