5 ms·

I've never liked the idea we should expect businesses to provide a living wage. If we, as a society, think there is some sort of minimum standard for living. (

by nimos 5y ago

I've never liked the idea we should expect businesses to provide a living wage. If we, as a society, think there is some sort of minimum standard for living. (We should) Then we, as a society, should pay for it. Increasing minimum wage seems like a roundabout unfair way of doing that via selective inflation. Which as far as I can tell would be largely a wealth transfer from the middle class to the lower class. Who spends a larger % of income at places people make minimum wage? I think the government should guarantee some minimum wage and top people who don't earn that. Obviously a lot of moral hazard issues and complications with a system like that but I think it is better to have businesses worry about employing people and governments worry about welfare. What seems to always be left out of these "if a business can’t pay a living wage, should it be a business?" discussions is what exactly are people going to do instead? I'm ok subsidizing people's labour. I'm not ok subsidizing people's leisure.

shkkmo 5y ago
>I think the government should guarantee some minimum wage and top people who don't earn that. That would be horrible. The bottom of wages would drop to zero (since offering above zero but below the government guatantee would provide no benefit in highering.) This would drag down other low wages since the jump from paying zero to paying just over minmum would be a huge cost increase for a minor highering benefit. UBI is really the only functional alternative to a minimum wage.
- chii 5y ago
  > UBI is really the only functional alternative to a minimum wage. i dont think that's true. re-education and re-training into higher value work is a better investment. it's just that education of adults isn't funded well by society, and thus the debt load for that re-education is too expensive for the benefit. I would argue that society should have a funding system where if you re-trained (may be in some category of work that society determins to be useful, like nursing), the cost of that education is only going to be placed on you if you earned above a threshold wage after graduating from training.
  - shkkmo 5y ago
    Education and training is solving a different issue, one that is orthogonal to the one solved by minimum wage or basic income. I think making public colleges free (similar to germany) would be a massive benefit to our economy. But making all education free doesn't do anything to help remove the need for the minimum wage. If you have an alternative to the minimum wage that isn't UBI, I would love to hear it.
    - chii 5y ago
      > one that is orthogonal to the one solved by minimum wage or basic income. no it isn't orthogonal - UBI and minimum is based on the premise that there exists people who would not be able to produce value that is enough to sustain themselves (aka, they consume more resources than they produce), and thus need the rest of society to pick up that slack (otherwise, they'd just die). I'm saying that people would always be able to sustain themselves if they are able to get trained to do something useful. As more knowledge is required in the modern day, this training becomes more expensive, and so society should make this investment, rather than place the entire risk onto the individual.
      - shkkmo 5y ago
        That is not the premise on which UBI is built. If I had to pick just one it would be that we have more productive capacity than we need, so threatening people with death (your words) to be productive is no longer necessary.
        chii 5y ago
        > we have more productive capacity than we need i'm not convinced that this is true, except with very basic necessities like food and water, and even then, those require a lot of energy to produce, and those aren't free yet since science hasn't discovered cheap or free energy yet.
        shkkmo 5y ago
- nimos 5y ago
  > Obviously a lot of moral hazard issues and complications Yes it would be difficult to implement. You would encourage people to seek higher paying jobs by progressively phasing the wage subsidy out. Or just not phase it out at all. No real difference between the two depending on income taxes. On the other side you could also target a certain cyclical unemployment rate and have a minimum wage employers must pay that fluctuates with that. That way there isn't an incentive to have "wink wink nudge nudge" pretend jobs. My problem with the UBI is I think the amount needed to be meaningful (1k+ a month) gives people enough money to check out of society and not be a contributing member. Its super inexpensive to live with friends somewhere kind of crappy and just do basically nothing productive.
  - shkkmo 5y ago
    The problem with a minimum wage or subsidized labor is that your are dependent on the availability of work for everyone which mandates a constantly growing economy that will destroy our planet. If you are comfortable with fluctuating minimum wage to control unemployment, you could do the same thing with UBI. Personally, I don't think that we should to threaten our citizens with homelessness and hunger to get them to be contributing members of society. I would personally institute UBI gradually, pairing UBI increases with reductions in the minimum wage during economic downturns to stimulate the economy.

by nimos 5y ago

shkkmo 5y ago

>I think the government should guarantee some minimum wage and top people who don't earn that. That would be horrible. The bottom of wages would drop to zero (since offering above zero but below the government guatantee would provide no benefit in highering.) This would drag down other low wages since the jump from paying zero to paying just over minmum would be a huge cost increase for a minor highering benefit. UBI is really the only functional alternative to a minimum wage.

chii 5y ago
> UBI is really the only functional alternative to a minimum wage. i dont think that's true. re-education and re-training into higher value work is a better investment. it's just that education of adults isn't funded well by society, and thus the debt load for that re-education is too expensive for the benefit. I would argue that society should have a funding system where if you re-trained (may be in some category of work that society determins to be useful, like nursing), the cost of that education is only going to be placed on you if you earned above a threshold wage after graduating from training.
- shkkmo 5y ago
  Education and training is solving a different issue, one that is orthogonal to the one solved by minimum wage or basic income. I think making public colleges free (similar to germany) would be a massive benefit to our economy. But making all education free doesn't do anything to help remove the need for the minimum wage. If you have an alternative to the minimum wage that isn't UBI, I would love to hear it.
  - chii 5y ago
    > one that is orthogonal to the one solved by minimum wage or basic income. no it isn't orthogonal - UBI and minimum is based on the premise that there exists people who would not be able to produce value that is enough to sustain themselves (aka, they consume more resources than they produce), and thus need the rest of society to pick up that slack (otherwise, they'd just die). I'm saying that people would always be able to sustain themselves if they are able to get trained to do something useful. As more knowledge is required in the modern day, this training becomes more expensive, and so society should make this investment, rather than place the entire risk onto the individual.
    - shkkmo 5y ago
      That is not the premise on which UBI is built. If I had to pick just one it would be that we have more productive capacity than we need, so threatening people with death (your words) to be productive is no longer necessary.
      - chii 5y ago
        > we have more productive capacity than we need i'm not convinced that this is true, except with very basic necessities like food and water, and even then, those require a lot of energy to produce, and those aren't free yet since science hasn't discovered cheap or free energy yet.
        shkkmo 5y ago
nimos 5y ago
> Obviously a lot of moral hazard issues and complications Yes it would be difficult to implement. You would encourage people to seek higher paying jobs by progressively phasing the wage subsidy out. Or just not phase it out at all. No real difference between the two depending on income taxes. On the other side you could also target a certain cyclical unemployment rate and have a minimum wage employers must pay that fluctuates with that. That way there isn't an incentive to have "wink wink nudge nudge" pretend jobs. My problem with the UBI is I think the amount needed to be meaningful (1k+ a month) gives people enough money to check out of society and not be a contributing member. Its super inexpensive to live with friends somewhere kind of crappy and just do basically nothing productive.
- shkkmo 5y ago
  The problem with a minimum wage or subsidized labor is that your are dependent on the availability of work for everyone which mandates a constantly growing economy that will destroy our planet. If you are comfortable with fluctuating minimum wage to control unemployment, you could do the same thing with UBI. Personally, I don't think that we should to threaten our citizens with homelessness and hunger to get them to be contributing members of society. I would personally institute UBI gradually, pairing UBI increases with reductions in the minimum wage during economic downturns to stimulate the economy.