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Another overlooked right-leaning perk of UBI: depending on the details, it could allow reducing or even eliminating the minimum wage. This means that labor woul
by lukifer 11y ago
Another overlooked right-leaning perk of UBI: depending on the details, it could allow reducing or even eliminating the minimum wage. This means that labor would be free to seek its true market value, resulting in more total jobs, and reduced incentive/necessity to ship jobs overseas.
- commandar 11y agoYup, exactly why I included the minimum wage in the list of things that could be scrapped in favor of UBI.
- lukifer 11y agoWhoops, overlooked that in your post! But I think it bears repeating. :)
- fpp 11y agoYou don't need a minimum wage when you have an UBI worth its name (not just around / below the current minimum wage e.g. like discussed in Switzerland £1,500 a month or more). People will either do the job or you have to pay a reasonable amount for it - one key principle of the UBI - more people get a choice how they use / sell their time and are not prey like today in many regions / countries to the few who dictate how much they will receive for their time.
- datashovel 11y agoNot sure any of us will see it, but I foresee a day when "employee" will be all but extinct. The reason? I think technology, taken to its logical extreme, will empower individuals to the point they'll be able to run fortune 500 scale businesses out of their garages (with all the automation-as-a-service that I imagine will exist). And board rooms? Who needs 'em when you've got the full power of sentient AI to help you accomplish what you want to accomplish.
- chucksmash 11y agoI like the idea of a Universal Basic Income but running the numbers is eye opening: £1,500 ~= $2,274 $2,274/person/mo * 12 mo/yr * 300,000,000 people = $8,186,400,000,000/yr. $8 trillion a year to provide that level of UBI to all 300,000,000ish Americans. Not an inconsequential amount of money!
- dman 11y agoBut if you combine that with a progressive tax rate wont the government take large swathes of that back in the form of taxes?
- kamaal 11y agoHow much would that be? 40%? That still close to $5 trillion. How will willingly pay $5 trillion of taxes after all the hard work only to watch everybody else living of their work for free?
- bryanlarsen 11y agoSubtract 2 - 3 trillion worth of welfare, unemployment benefits, the minimum wage, social security, etc and it suddenly starts looking feasible. Expensive, yes, but feasible.
- kamaal 11y agoPlease help me understand this. You promise to pay someone $x, but you will only pay $x-90%(say $y) The person receiving $y is actually getting it from the very taxes they pay. So essentially what you are giving them is a tax discount. Except in cases where a person makes $0, for which you have social security anyway. So this is basically a tax discount? You could simply say based on their income some a% of tax discount will be offered every year.
- ConceptJunkie 11y agoThe GDP is something like $14 trillion. We're talking about 60% of the GDP being redistributed. That will work really well... especially when the GDP drops by about a third, which will surely happen.
- carsongross 11y agoAnd another right-wing perk: if the basic income had a minimum age, it would attenuate the dysgenic incentives of modern welfare systems.