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A Basic Income Is Smarter Than a Minimum Wage

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Re: A Basic Income Is Smarter Than a Minimum Wage

#361

Post by falcolas »

moftz wrote: post #321
falcolas wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about homeless high school kids? Or high school kids with one parent who are helping to supplement their household income?

There are other programs out there to support the homeless and single parents needing financial aid for their kids. A high school kid making money regardless of his family's wealth is making money as a supplement to what the parents or guardians should already be receiving from the government or otherwise, assuming they aren't emancipated but that is a very special case. If the parents can't afford to meet the basic…

This is, please forgive me, a very idealistic view of single parent families. It's very easy to earn too much money to qualify for welfare (or other government subsidies), while still not making quite enough to support a decent life.

There are frequently waiting lists, restrictions (my favorite is disability, where you are not allowed to work, but are given barely enough money for yourself to live on), and miles of red tape associated with government subsidies. There's also the very real cost to the pride of the entire family associated with these subsidies.

> why should the state allow for a child to remain in that home

Because moving a child is incredibly traumatic for the child and expensive for the state?

Re: A Basic Income Is Smarter Than a Minimum Wage

#362

Post by AnimalMuppet »

enraged_camel wrote: post #114
yanilkr wrote: post #95

A Basic Income from Govt comes at a huge price of loss of individual liberty. If someone gives you free stuff, they will expect controls like where you are allowed to spend your money and time. This model of taking from the productive sources and rewarding everyone else will have to break at a certain point. how come you get rewarded for enjoying the gossip column and I spend extra effort doing something else which i…

>>A Basic Income from Govt comes at a huge price of loss of individual liberty. If someone gives you free stuff, they will expect controls like where you are allowed to spend your money and time. No. The entire point of basic income is that it is unconditional . You get a check from the government at frequent intervals. Unlike food stamps, you can spend the money on whatever you want.

You're right, but...

Politics is a real thing. It means that government programs have rules changes when people decide that they're unhappy with the way it's currently being done. Basic income might not stay unconditional for long.

Re: A Basic Income Is Smarter Than a Minimum Wage

#363

Post by ThrustVectoring »

donatj wrote: post #333
ThrustVectoring wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People can still shop around, which is a balancing economic force. What makes people balk isn't just how much money they have, but the competing prices in the market. Less competitive markets will react to GBI to a much greater extent. I'd expect mobile phone service, internet service, housing, education, and healthcare to raise prices in response to GBI. I wouldn't expect the price of rice, steel, concrete, or airpl…

> I wouldn't expect the price of rice, steel, concrete, or airplane tickets to change much. Not at first, but the price of everything is connected eventually.

My point is that price is the balancing point between selling for as much as you can find a buyer for, and buying for as little as you can find a seller for. Different goods have a different balance of power between buyers and sellers. Gasoline, for instance, has highly visible prices and little product differentiation. Choosing a different gas station is as easy as crossing the street. Customers will tolerate very little increase in price relative to the competition, so the price of gasoline is approximately equal to the cost of selling people gasoline.

Re: A Basic Income Is Smarter Than a Minimum Wage

#364

Post by harryh »

InclinedPlane wrote: post #323
zxcvvcxz wrote: post #266

> Besides, Sweden has one of the rich world's biggest gaps between native and immigrant employment rates. Youth joblessness is 70 percent higher among the foreign-born than among Swedes. Lowering the minimum wage could draw more of the new, mainly Middle Eastern population, into the workforce and reduce social and ethnic tension. A minimum wage is simply not moral. It prevents me and you from entering into an employm…

This is horrifically naive. The minimum wage exists because there is an inherent power imbalance between employers and employees in today's economy. This distorts the labor market and puts workers and corporations on an unequal footing when it comes to negotiating pay, to the extreme disadvantage of the worker. The minimum wage is an attempt to force a correction to that inequality and unfairness. It is far from perf…

There is very little empirical evidence to support this point of view in non-monopsony situations.

Re: A Basic Income Is Smarter Than a Minimum Wage

#365

Post by fizzbatter »

Nogwater wrote: post #125
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…

> I think we'd all agree that increasing employment is a good goal I don't agree, and I'm not sure why people would see employment for its own sake would be a good thing. I want to increase some of the things that employments brings (purchasing power, a sense of purpose, etc...) and not others (loss of time, feeling trapped, etc...).

Agreed - furthermore, low cost employment is hard to get behind on its own for me. If we reduce minimum wage, and some unskilled worker is able to work where s/he otherwise wouldn't, is it really helping them? What good does $2/hr do if they ultimately can't provide for themselves or their families.

I feel[1] like lowering minimum wage below livable levels would require some type of basic income anyway. Am i wrong?

[1] I say feel, because i'm uneducated in these areas

Re: A Basic Income Is Smarter Than a Minimum Wage

#366

Post by jimbokun »

lujim wrote: post #178
rm_-rf_slash wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whereas universal income means that everyone in society can tell terrible bosses that they can take their shitty job and shove it, and still live with dignity, a greater dignity than having to work at the absolute minimum of pay, regardless of whether 51% of politicians choose to call it a "living wage."

I'm sure we have all had terrible bosses. I have probably had one of the worst bosses you could imagine. Quitting that job was one of the best days of my life. However it still isn't a persons birthright or written anywhere in the constitution that you have only have to work for people you like. If you want to avoid bad bosses you need to learn a skill that makes you highly sought after or be self employed.

Also nothing in the Constitution banning a basic income program.

Re: A Basic Income Is Smarter Than a Minimum Wage

#367

Post by wnevets »

QuotedForTruth wrote: post #136
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 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…

i.e the walmart model.

Re: A Basic Income Is Smarter Than a Minimum Wage

#369

Post by leroy_masochist »

Bershidsky really drops the ball when he makes the following point:

"One problem with a universal basic income, of course, is that it will make a country attractive to even more immigrants from poor countries where 550 euros a month looks like a princely amount. Keeping borders open will hardly be an option."

What he's missing here is that the UBI is only payed to citizens. If you get rid of the minimum wage (because everyone gets paid the UBI no matter what), then citizens become much more willing to work for low wages, because their basic cost of living is already paid-for.

By contrast, UBI would not be paid to immigrants. Non-citizens would still be working in the US to some extent, but the incentive for people to sneak across the border would be severely reduced if prevailing low-skill wages fell from $10 to, say, $5.

It's also worth mentioning that to the extent that deterring undocumented immigration is the policy of the United States, doing it with economic incentives is (IMO) a much more ethically sound solution than doing it with walls, violence, and incarceration.

Re: A Basic Income Is Smarter Than a Minimum Wage

#370

Post by evanpw »

QuotedForTruth wrote: post #136
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 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…

That would be contrary to how labor markets work in other income ranges: e.g., if someone gets a big inheritance, you'd expect them to be more likely to reduce their work hours than increase them.

Empirically, it seems like the same is true at the bottom of the income distribution ([1], [2]): if you give someone food stamps or cash assistance, they're less likely to work for the same wage. Means-testing the benefits makes the effect stronger, since the phase-out of benefits is equivalent to an additional tax and high taxes also discourage work.

[1] https://www.economy.com/dismal/analysis/datapoints/253947/Go...

[2] https://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/112th-congress-2011-...

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