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

Re: A Basic Income Is Smarter Than a Minimum Wage

#421

Post by aninhumer » Mon, Apr 04, 2016, 11:49 PM UTC

Karunamon wrote: post #249

ThomPete wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If you have no cash, and you've used up the meager funds TANF gives you, there are other programs still available to cover the necessities of life.. SNAP comes to mind, as do overnight shelters. It's not much of a life, but at least you're not out in the cold. A safety net for the safety net if you will. Okay, now that stuff goes away, and you just get the one (significantly increased, but still, just the one) payout…

I'm not sure what kind of answer you're looking for here?

If people use up all their safety nets then they fall, just like they do now. I'm not sure what you think we can do about that?

Re: A Basic Income Is Smarter Than a Minimum Wage

#422

Post by gwright » Mon, Apr 04, 2016, 11:51 PM UTC

ecobiker wrote: post #347

RyanZAG wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but it's a low paying job vs no job. Minimum wage is stupid - if you need people to get a higher income than the value they can output, you need to supply that additional income through social grants. Forcing them out of work by allowing robots to undercut them is idiotic when they are willing to work.

>> "higher income than the value they can output" Just so I can understand your argument better, can you elaborate this a bit more? How do you measure their output? How do you arrive at the dollar value?

It isn't really a matter of finding a specific dollar value but instead determining if the investment (a new worker) will result in a revenue increase that exceeds the cost of the new investment (ROI: return on investment).

This is what it means to run a business, to ask and answer that question and act upon the answer. If you answer correctly in a sufficient number of instances, your business succeeds and you are profitable. If you answer incorrectly in too many instances, your business fails.

A minimum wage puts a floor on labor costs and that will be an added constraint in the business model. For some business models, that added constraint may make the business unworkable. For others it may mean that prices need to be adjusted, or the number of workers and/or the type of worker hired needs to be changed. Perhaps it means changing the hours the business is open to manage staff costs. Maybe it means purchasing a machine to eliminate a worker because now the machine is cheaper than the worker whereas before that wasn't the case.

If you have an opportunity to talk to a small business owner that employees part-time, close to minimum wage workers, ask them what they have already done to adjust and what they intend to do. The affordable care act has already forced many employers to cut hours to their part-time workers to avoid the extra fees that kick in at 30 hours. Many employers will implement changes to their staffing long before the actual minimum wage change kicks in. This is called "running a business", which means planning ahead.

Re: A Basic Income Is Smarter Than a Minimum Wage

#423

Post by st3v3r » Mon, Apr 04, 2016, 11:53 PM UTC

clarkmoody wrote: post #263

dv_dt wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Teenagers don't need to live on this wage, but their parents need to have sufficient margin in their wages to support that.

Yes, but the alternative is that the teen sits around all summer causing trouble instead of having a job because the minimum wage is too high.

No, that isn't the alternative. There are thousands of summer programs, most educational in nature, which would be teaching the kid much more useful stuff than how to scoop ice cream.

Re: A Basic Income Is Smarter Than a Minimum Wage

#424

Post by aninhumer » Mon, Apr 04, 2016, 11:55 PM UTC

ThrustVectoring wrote: post #133

There's a non-obvious danger for basic income: rent-seeking behavior. Landlords charge whatever the market will bear, so there's a huge risk of funneling money through the recipients without improving their quality of life. And it isn't just landlords that hold that kind of rentier position - universities, for instance, would also extract more out of their position as employment gatekeepers. Attacking rent-seeking be…

If landlords are able to charge whatever they like, then the market for housing is not competitive, and that's its own problem.

Re: A Basic Income Is Smarter Than a Minimum Wage

#425

Post by JonFish85 » Mon, Apr 04, 2016, 11:56 PM UTC

jrs235 wrote: post #328

JonFish85 wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As with any tax increase, the middle class is always the ones that bear the brunt of it, because for all the noise about taxing the 1%, there just isn't enough money to take. The people that end up really paying the price are the people who worked their entire lives to be able to pay for their kids' college, not the people who have $10b in assets. Politicians are happy to talk about raising the taxes of the wealthy a…

"As with any tax increase, the middle class is always the ones that bear the brunt of it" because we continually keep talking about taxing income instead of wealth. Tax wealth more and income less. WHAT?!?!?!! People say? Well that really fancy and expensive military we are paying for.. it's not just protecting your income. It's protecting your wealth. Pay your fair proportional share for security of your assets...

Huh? As I said, it would take the combined wealth of the top 1000 wealthiest Americans to pay for the federal budget for one year. Pretty quickly you run out of people whose money you can take without getting to the middle class. No matter how you slice it, the real money is in the middle class.

Re: A Basic Income Is Smarter Than a Minimum Wage

#426

Post by aninhumer » Tue, Apr 05, 2016, 12:07 AM UTC

karmacondon wrote: post #209

The only way I can see Basic Income working is if the average person has a net income change of $0. That means someone making the average income of ~$45k/yr gets a $10k check from the government every year, but also has their taxes go up by ~$10k. I believe others have referred to this as a negative income tax. From what I can tell the average salary of a hackernews reader is above $100k. Each of us would probably en…

>Do you want to subtract $400 from each paycheck for the sake of total strangers?

Yes, happily.

>And I guess the second question is, why aren't we doing that now?

Because there's no point in half measures. If a charity had some kind of pact scheme that implemented basic income outside the government, then I'd happily participate. But I don't imagine such a thing is really possible unless it includes everyone.

Re: A Basic Income Is Smarter Than a Minimum Wage

#427

Post by justinhj » Tue, Apr 05, 2016, 12:10 AM UTC

VLM wrote: post #310

NDizzle wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm really interested to see what happens to the price of a season pass to the community swimming pool if/when doubling the minimum wage goes through.

Probably roughly nothing. I pulled my (small) suburban cities budget which is a many hundred page long PDF and parks and rec runs 40-something neighborhood city playground type parks and 2 pools on 2.3 million total per year. Of which staggeringly only 1.5 mil are wages (we live in a rough climate, maintenance costs are high, over $100K spend on electric bills alone, etc). On the revenue side the two public pools com…

I don't expect public pools to be profitable anyway since they are subsidized by city taxes

Re: A Basic Income Is Smarter Than a Minimum Wage

#428

Post by yanilkr » Tue, Apr 05, 2016, 12:20 AM UTC

aninhumer wrote: post #413

yanilkr wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People also don't want to let go of their hard earned money. It is also an enormous natural force. Our society is doing that to productive people forcibly and for your just theory you are picking and choosing which force of nature we should tolerate and which one we shouldn't. Your patience, forgiveness and empathy has any worthiness if it is voluntary and forcing it on certain set of people is no longer a just commu…

>Our society is doing that to productive people forcibly If they don't like it, they can stop producing. But I'm guessing they're not quite so willing to give up all the other freedoms their money grants them.

They are productive people, they do other things like move to places where there are less taxes mostly out of USA. They hire people outside USA where payroll taxes are less. Or they stash in cyprus and panama. Or buy politicians.

Why do you think Steve jobs and other CEOs give them selves 1$ salary because they want to avoid paying income tax and want to pay less capital gains tax.?

Re: A Basic Income Is Smarter Than a Minimum Wage

#429

Post by aninhumer » Tue, Apr 05, 2016, 12:22 AM UTC

anonymfus wrote: post #5

Why not both?

Because once someone's needs are met by a Basic Income, it's much harder to get them to work for exploitative wages, so the minimum wage is redundant.

If someone is accepting $1/hour for a job when their alternative is enjoying free time, then there's probably a good reason for it. Maybe they're learning skills, maybe the working is really fulfilling, or maybe they just got bored.

Re: A Basic Income Is Smarter Than a Minimum Wage

#430

Post by dvtv75 » Tue, Apr 05, 2016, 12:23 AM UTC

p4wnc6 wrote: post #78

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.

It is a problem if all of the would-be employers look at you and say, "Well, for what you bring to the table, I would be willing to pay $3/hour, but no more. If I have to pay more than that, I will simply make do with life having fewer employees." You would prefer $7/hr instead of $3/hr, but you would prefer $3/hr instead of $0/hr.

My employer, who hired me for my degree, told me that he was willing to pay me for 40 hours. I later found out that it was a requirement that I work 60-80 hours a week - not written into my contract, but this particular employer has an aversion to providing contracts. This displaces up to an entire employee. Said employer also gets taxpayer funding for the employee I've displaced.

I would prefer that my employer met the minimum (non-US) legal requirements for salaried employees, but the literal threats of violence and permanent unemployment should I complain to the government, have kept me on up to $5/hour less than minimum wage - without meal breaks, public holidays, and weekends - all in breach of the law.

Unethical law-breaking employers abound in my country, and many of the wealthiest have political contacts that mean they can get away with a lot. Having a minimum wage gives them something to dance around but if that disappeared things would get a lot worse: I would most likely find myself working for something nearer to $5 an hour.

This (small) city alone has a median wage that sits about 25% under minimum wage on paper, but if you started really looking into it you'd find that the paid hours don't match the hours worked.

No matter what your theories about minimum wage and the market say, you'll find that pragmatic side of having a minimum wage has a major positive impact on employees by providing some restriction to what employers can get away with.