4 ms·
You 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
by fpp 11y ago
You 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.
- dllthomas 11y ago"We're talking about 60% of the GDP being redistributed." When assessing the amount being redistributed, much of what's paid in UBI should be netted against what's collected to pay the UBI. That is, if I am receiving $27k/yr in UBI, but paying $30k/yr in increased taxes toward the UBI, really only $3k/yr is being "redistributed" from me. This is still going to be a substantial sum, but quite a bit less than "people * UBI amount". Please don't take this as my asserting that I think $27k/yr would be sustainable in the US - for the record, I don't.