Universal Basic Income Is Superior to a $15 Minimum Wage (2019)

I agree UBI is better than a minimum wage, but it seems a Negative Income Tax as advocated for by Milton Friedman would be still better. It would have the desired effect of supporting the poor with guaranteed income (something minimum wage can’t do because of the labor shortage it creates, especially amongst low-skilled employees), but do so a lot more cost effectively than UBI since you wouldn’t be guaranteeing payments to people who don’t need them and would avoid any welfare trap created by existing welfare programs.

I agree with most of the comments here about how UBI == negative tax, its really just changing the names of transfer payments in the economy.<p>That said, the really appealing thing is that it allows wages to be unbound from the question of supporting the poor. If people are below the poverty line you can raise UBI, but you don&#x27;t have to put your thumb on the scales of the labor market.<p>But to not just re-create welfare, you have to completely dissolve the tie between UBI and taxable income. And to do that effectively you boost the marginal rates above your cut off point.<p>You could plot that to show how much the UBI was a net increase to your annual income and then design the tax rates to have it be effectively 100% reclaimed as tax after $400K AGI or what ever number you pick.

Authors like this frame the UBI&#x2F;minimum wage debate as if we just haven&#x27;t figured out the right policy mix to fix poverty or precarity -- as if it&#x27;s a problem of ideas. I propose that it&#x27;s in fact a question of power -- 1) who benefits from people being poor and how much 2) power do they have?<p>1) Owners of capital, who don&#x27;t want to see their labour costs escalate and use firing&#x2F;the poverty gun as a disciplinary tool.<p>2) Overwhelming power, channeled through vectors such as billions spent in lobbying or campaign contributions or threats to take their capital to friendlier jurisdictions.

And why does the author not support both?<p>It&#x27;s articles like this that make me wonder if the purpose of the basic income movement is to act as a sort of pipe dream spoiler for more realistic progressive policies - like a $15 minimum wage.<p>Either that or a plan to make welfare &quot;fairer&quot; by ensuring that disabled veterans who can&#x27;t work and tech millionaires get the same $ amount each month from the government.<p>Especially since the author accused the $15 minimum wage &quot;burdensome&quot;... this is incoherent given the cost of providing, yknow, money for nothing for everyone.

Honestly saying a UBI is superior to anything else is so open to interpretation that it’s just asking for it to die by being gummed up in endless debate (which is where it’s been languishing so far).<p>Make a case that with all things considered (including government labour and other bureaucracy costs) that a UBI is fundamentally better value overall than the current system and you’d have it in two years.<p>I think that’s a case that could be made convincingly. UBI is <i>simple</i>. It’s impact is therefore easily measurable.<p>It’s self-regulating if you believe that the taxpayer will be incredibly sensitive to systemic abuse because they know they’re fundamentally paying a fixed amount directly. If abuse were becoming a problem, the public would express their distaste at the polls.<p>It also frees up a lot of people to pursue ideas they might otherwise be prevented from exploring, which could have outsized macroeconomic benefits.

With UBI, it&#x27;s going to be difficult to extract labor out of people who aren&#x27;t desperate. Without UBI, the same set of people will revolt one day. I think these are the choices being considered.

Thinking of how economics discussion usually goes with truly lay folk in this field makes me want to build a pretty little website showing various triangle diagrams for trade, market clearing under various actions etc.<p>Stuff from undergrad economics - mostly micro to start maybe. Maybe some international trade thrown in.<p>It seems way-to-hard to find such simple pictures for theory anybody can understand.<p>Then when alternatives are suggested it will be easy to see how they fit in the picture - what assumptions are modified etc.<p>I recall from my high school and college requirements for Econ it’s likely that most US educated people had a fake “civics and Econ” class in high school (We memorized questions about Sam Walton for our Econ tests, for example) and may have had one optional class in college. That makes it easy for unsound ideas to thrive.<p>In saying the above I make no statement about the ideas of this post. I wouldn’t hazard it online because I can’t promise to put the work in due to the above issue which I wish, similarly, I had time to address in my limited way. Since this is the internet I’ll say this: UBI seems fairly smart given the alternatives. So does Some kind of negative income tax.

Any country even conservative ones still has tax breaks, minimum wage, other social programs for people with low incomes. Combine those programs into one thing and that&#x27;s essentially universal basic income.

The minute UBI gets instituted is the minute that politicians will arise who want to lower the quantity for one group of people and increase it for the group of people that supports them.<p>Eventually it will end up being means tested in one form or another just like the income tax system has been made so complex by politicians favoring one group over another.<p>I absolutely love the idea of UBI but I just don&#x27;t see it surviving in a pure form with our populist and identity group focused political system.

UBI will never work because it&#x27;s based on the fact that we remove all other forms of welfare, which, will never happen.

Strong protections for unions are superior to minimum wages.

This is like contending that rewriting a subsystem is superior to a one-line patch. Sure, the new subsystem design might be great, but let&#x27;s not block all small patches while waiting for the big rewrite.

the general populace would have no knowledge of wallstreetbets without UBI and WFH.

Struggling to put the peasants on the reservation? Make things hard enough, <i>and they&#x27;ll vote for it themselves!</i><p>UBI? Capital idea!

Kind of a self defeating claim; sorta like saying McDonalds burgers are better than Burger King. Both are pretty pretty bad for you.

I&#x27;m not an economist so I would really appreciate insight into a thought I&#x27;ve had about UBI. Let&#x27;s say your rent is $1,000 per month, and the government began a universal basic income program of $500 per month for everyone. If your landlord raises your rent by $500, are you not in the same position as you were before without the UBI?<p>I ask this because my argument with a UBI is that it will create more money in the system, true, but there&#x27;s no limitation that prevents landlords and merchants from also raising their prices with the justification that they know you have it. So to take a stab at a question: Would a UBI lead to inflation?

Here&#x27;s an alternate idea.<p>Encourage (read: regulate) companies to offer very generous paid time off, like 3 months a year paid time off or more.<p>People can use the time off to work a second job, and thus receive more income from working the same hours. It will also increase worker mobility, because a worker already working 2 jobs should be much more willing to take risks and try out new jobs. This will create competition between employers, because many employees will be working two jobs. If you treat your employees bad, the will request fewer hours and spend more time at their other job, or just leave.<p>Or, the extra time off could be used for entrepreneurial pursuits. Or just to relax, etc.<p>This is an alternate plan that has many of the same benefits as a higher minimum wage and universal basic income. I haven&#x27;t hear it discussed by anyone else though.