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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

#461

Post by mc32 »

st3v3r wrote: post #420
jeffdavis wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe it's been plummeting because of minimum wage or other laws discouraging labor of HS students. And is that a good thing or something we should try to reverse? Employment has a ramp-up like anything else.

Well, what is better, or more desirable? A high school student earning some gas money, or someone else getting that job and supporting themselves?

An alternative is to have a two tiered system [as some countries have]. One for teenagers, another for adults, to compensate for lack of experience, or proxy for need.

Re: A Basic Income Is Smarter Than a Minimum Wage

#462

Post by jeffdavis »

st3v3r wrote: post #420
jeffdavis wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe it's been plummeting because of minimum wage or other laws discouraging labor of HS students. And is that a good thing or something we should try to reverse? Employment has a ramp-up like anything else.

Well, what is better, or more desirable? A high school student earning some gas money, or someone else getting that job and supporting themselves?

A healthy career is a journey that often begins long before you depend on the money. A first job is more than just "gas money".

Re: A Basic Income Is Smarter Than a Minimum Wage

#463

Post by faint_coder »

Basic income is dangerous for the society. The basic human being is, unfortunately, almost like an animal, he likes to sleep, eat, do nothing: you have to give him/her a "bone", a prize, to make him/her doing things. This prize is wage. If you give money to human beings for free, nobody will do jobs anymore. Only those who want to be richer, but are far less. You'll see people that will choose for a basic income, instead of a basic_insome+N, to clean dumpsters. Why someone would choose basic_income+N when that N is relatively small to clean dumpsters instead of staying home doing nothing? Give a basic income to everyone and NOBODY will clean dumpsters anymore, unless you set that N relatively high. Or basic income relatively low. Basic income will destroy the entire society in few months. Don't look at those nordic countries which applied basic income and the society is "working" well, because it depends from people, culture, and other factors. I'm from italy, and I can GUARANTEE that if do give basic income to italians, the society will fall badly.

Re: A Basic Income Is Smarter Than a Minimum Wage

#464

Post by kilotaras »

faint_coder wrote: post #463

Basic income is dangerous for the society. The basic human being is, unfortunately, almost like an animal, he likes to sleep, eat, do nothing: you have to give him/her a "bone", a prize, to make him/her doing things. This prize is wage. If you give money to human beings for free, nobody will do jobs anymore. Only those who want to be richer, but are far less. You'll see people that will choose for a basic income, ins…

>If you give money to human beings for free, nobody will do jobs anymore

All BI proposals I saw only include housing, utilities, healthcare(through central system) and food. People would still want to go out, watch movies, play with the new shiny iPhone, etc.

Most of the society already can get proposed amount from investments. If we talk $1000 monthly and 5% ROR (less than SP500) you have to have $240k in investments. That's easily achievable, especially if you already live on $1000 in preparation to doing nothing.

> NOBODY will clean dumpsters anymore, unless you set that N relatively high

And why should cleaning dumpsters be a low paying job? You said it yourself - it's crucial for society.

And don't forget about elephant in the room - automation. Upward salary pressure puts pressure on making each individual worker more productive.

Re: A Basic Income Is Smarter Than a Minimum Wage

#465

Post by crdoconnor »

ThomPete wrote: post #231
crdoconnor wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>But the whole point about Basic Income is what we do about there being fewer and fewer jobs that pay a proper salary. The fact that there are few jobs rebuilding America's crumbling infrastructure is due to a political choice, not some sort of inevitable outcome of a 'fair' and just market. Likewise, the fact that China makes most of the cheap things we buy at Walmart was thanks to a series of political choices (tra…

Well you are entitled to that opinion but I frankly don't see where you find the evidence that this is political. Every country in the west wether socialist leaning or capitalist leaning is experiencing exactly the same problems. Uber is affecting all countries the same way. Technology is disrupting even the nationstate and it's ability to control it politically. And yes there are plenty of reasons why you couldn't b…

>Well you are entitled to that opinion

And you're entitled to believe in the coming androidjobpocalypse.

>The Chinese are loosing jobs to the robots

Would love to see what sort of anecdotes you come up with for this gem.

It's a convenient fairy tale - pretending that reversing the trade deals that sent 5-10 million jobs overseas wouldn't matter anyway because strong AI is going to steal those returning jobs. Just a little light on evidence.

Re: A Basic Income Is Smarter Than a Minimum Wage

#466

Post by AlgorithmicTime »

tamana wrote: post #386
Overtonwindow wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the federal government and the states should reduce the tax burden on corporations that hire the disabled. For every disabled person you hire, your tax bill is lowered that much more. If 15% of your workforce is physically or mentally disabled, your state tax is zero. That would incentivize corporations to hire more disabled.

Why bother? Corporations can hire the abled, and government can support the disabled. If disabled are the only available workforce and a corporation needs work done, corporations can pay the disabled (high) market rates. And, you know, of they are doing useful work, maybe they aren't relevantly "disabled" to deserve a lower wage

Work can be both useful and not worth minimum wage. It's easy to imagine that the job of folding boxes would be cheaper to automate at $9 per hour, but at $4 it makes sense to higher someone to do it instead.

Re: A Basic Income Is Smarter Than a Minimum Wage

#468

Post by rskar »

ikeboy wrote: post #411
rskar wrote: post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting what you've given us to consider, in regards to "charity benefiting its owner", to suggest these two things as comparable: (1) insufficient wages (per Adam Smith) as set by private enterprise (2) private enterprise usage of services/infrastructure as provided by government above and beyond their share of taxes Walmart was in the news recently enough ( http://www.msnbc.com/martin-bashir/mcdonalds-employee-…

My point was the reverse, actually. We're fine with companies benefiting off roads, because they pay taxes. Roads are a public good funded with public funds. I think we should be just as fine with companies benefiting from the public good of welfare. If we don't think it's a public good, we shouldn't fund it. Now, if they were directly contributing to an increase in public funding, then we might wish to discourage th…

> Mandating a minimum wage, and letting those workers become unemployed, just makes things worse.

I'm not sure what you mean by "My point was the reverse" - "public good" is not charity I guess?

I'm trying to wrap my head around how a less-than-living wage is a necessity for certain kinds of industry to function profitably, and that, furthermore, indirect government subsidies to them via handouts are essential enablers. Is it that consumers perpetually undervalue the products of retailers and restaurants? Or is it that without the subsidies many retailers and restaurants would face much "pent-up demand" (as economists may call it)?

Frankly, for money to have any meaning to it, this situation must somehow have a cash-flow that at minimum breaks even. I.e., if these industries are gainful, that gain should somehow be reflected in the tax revenue back to government, the compensations to executives, the dividends to shareholders, etc. Which means if this is a good deal for the government, does it at least breakeven on the handouts it has made? Not sure if that is happening - there's certainly plenty of think-tank whitepapers available that declare social programs as unsustainable (e.g. http://budget.house.gov/uploadedfiles/rectortestimony0417201...).

But here are some fun factoids: From http://www.marketwatch.com, I get for McDonald's a net income about $5 billion on revenue over $25 billion; for Walmart it's a net of $15 billion on revenue over $480 billion. marketwatch.com also shows revenue per employee of $60,507 for McDonald's, and $209,622 for Walmart. So there's money to be made in cheap food and cheap goods. So, let's see, a $5/hr increase for a 35 hr workweek and 50 workweeks in a year comes to a $8,750 hit to the revenue per employee amount. So maybe a 14% increase in the price of fast-food burgers and 4% increase in white socks?

So in light of growing government deficits, growing corporate profits (well, we'll see about 2016 - http://www.bea.gov/newsreleases/national/gdp/2016/gdp4q15_3r...), and reasonable (whitepaper-ishly anyway) suggestions on the unsustainability of the "public goods" collectively known as the "Welfare State", in this discussion on whether wages need to have some sort of mandatory minimum - well, what are we to make of this? Too many economically useless people?

Re: A Basic Income Is Smarter Than a Minimum Wage

#469

Post by ikeboy »

rskar wrote: post #468
ikeboy wrote: post #411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My point was the reverse, actually. We're fine with companies benefiting off roads, because they pay taxes. Roads are a public good funded with public funds. I think we should be just as fine with companies benefiting from the public good of welfare. If we don't think it's a public good, we shouldn't fund it. Now, if they were directly contributing to an increase in public funding, then we might wish to discourage th…

> Mandating a minimum wage, and letting those workers become unemployed, just makes things worse. I'm not sure what you mean by "My point was the reverse" - "public good" is not charity I guess? I'm trying to wrap my head around how a less-than-living wage is a necessity for certain kinds of industry to function profitably, and that, furthermore, indirect government subsidies to them via handouts are essential enable…

You'd need to increase profits, not revenue. If profit margins are around 3%, you'd need to more than double revenue per employee for Walmart.

And of course, doubling prices makes less sales, so doesn't double revenue, it might even reduce revenue.

Re reverse: you said "above taxes paid" for roads, which I didn't mean to imply.

Regarding your "break even" idea: suppose the most someone's labor is worth is $22500 a year. Suppose the minimum required to live is $30000. The government has decided that nobody should starve, and so any outcomes where this person starves are not to be considered. There are two options: allow them to work for $22500 or less, whatever the market will pay, and pay $7500 from welfare, or forbid them from working, and pay them $30000. I don't see how the second is preferable to the first.

So if you believe that raising minimum wage hurts jobs (an empirical question that has economists on both sides), then you shouldn't support.

The other model you could have is:

Value of labor is $30000, but there's so much labor available that the market will only pay $22500. Then, mandating a minimum wage does raise the amount paid, although it can still have negative effects elsewhere.

Probably both models are correct for different jobs, and the question is which one is more often correct. I'm also neglecting inflation, part time, disincentives to work, and so on.

As I understand it deficits have been shrinking. Where are you getting the growing stat from?

Re: A Basic Income Is Smarter Than a Minimum Wage

#470

Post by alttab »

snerbles wrote: post #147
thesimon wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It would completely remove the necessity to be productive. That can't turn out well. As seen in welfare states in Scandinavia or Germany, where almost no one works because of the unemployment benefits.

Of course not, but the stability of such a state is becoming a concern with the current migration situation. http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2016/02/wel...

And it's ignoring culture.
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