That is the natural balance. People need to be paid enough to be incentivized to work. Work sucks. Especially low income work. But society needs these jobs to be done.
> If what you say is true, minimum wage increases would be worthless as they would just be swallowed by inflation. However, studies on the topic show this isn't true. Minimum wage increases have a negligible impact on inflation. This should be obvious because minimum wage positions do not make up the entirety of the labor market and the labor costs do not make up the entirety of business costs. So why would all prices increase in pace with the minimum wage?
That’s mostly true. But this is not a minimum wage increase. This is taking away the most valuable part of the paycheck: the part you need to survive. People aren’t going to work hard for $8 an hour if they’re taken care of by the government. It’s simply not worth it.
> I didn't say there would be no inflation. I said inflation would be progressive in that it wouldn't have much of an impact on stables in which demand is inelastic and working class people spend a relatively higher percentage of their income
It’s a supply side effect. Not a demand one.
Also, basically any non trivial inflation is enough to make UBI not UBI because it’s supposed to be just enough to be liveable.
>That is the natural balance. People need to be paid enough to be incentivized to work. Work sucks. Especially low income work. But society needs these jobs to be done.
You didn't just say that giving poor people money causes inflation. You said that giving poor people money causes the exact right amount of inflation to cancel out the money you give them. Where is the idea of this balance coming from other than it being theoretically convenient? Do you think society has some innate poverty rate that wage increases can never alter? If so, why is the US poverty rate higher than our peers like Canada, Germany, France, etc?
>That’s mostly true. But this is not a minimum wage increase. This is taking away the most valuable part of the paycheck: the part you need to survive. People aren’t going to work hard for $8 an hour if they’re taken care of by the government. It’s simply not worth it.
Do you make minimum wage? If not, why do you work as many hours as you do if you could be "taken care of" working less?
Most people don't work just to get the bare minimum to survive or else most people would be working a lot less.
>Also, basically any non trivial inflation is enough to make UBI not UBI because it’s supposed to be just enough to be liveable.
> You didn't just say that giving poor people money causes inflation. You said that giving poor people money causes the exact right amount of inflation to cancel out the money you give them.
I did not say that. That statement is of course stupidly wrong. I said inflation would rise to the point at which a person with no assets cannot survive without working. That is not the same thing by a large margin.
> Do you make minimum wage? If not, why do you work as many hours as you do if you could be "taken care of" working less?
Marginal decrease in the utility of money. $100 is worth a lot if you’re broke, a good amount if you have $1000, and basically nothing if you have $1000000.
The logic of working extra hours to get extra cash is a function of how much money you have and how much money you will get. If you have enough money (income) to survive, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to work low end jobs for a trivial amount of money. You will not earn enough to accumulate meaningful savings. I might work extra hours on my job if it meant larger rewards. But not linear gains. Heck for me personally I’d rather work 20% less and earn 20% less.
Think about it. In scenario A the worker is being kept alive by doing his job. In Scenario B the worker gets $64 in disposable income. Do you think those are equally powerful incentives?
Of course they are not. The Scenario B worker needs more incentive to work as hard as the Scenario A worker. The classic “single mom working two jobs” isn’t going to maintain that lifestyle if she doesn’t need to.
Not that it’s ideal for a single mom to be working two jobs.
I’d much rather we simply raise the minimum wage and pay people to raise kids.
That is the natural balance. People need to be paid enough to be incentivized to work. Work sucks. Especially low income work. But society needs these jobs to be done.
> If what you say is true, minimum wage increases would be worthless as they would just be swallowed by inflation. However, studies on the topic show this isn't true. Minimum wage increases have a negligible impact on inflation. This should be obvious because minimum wage positions do not make up the entirety of the labor market and the labor costs do not make up the entirety of business costs. So why would all prices increase in pace with the minimum wage?
That’s mostly true. But this is not a minimum wage increase. This is taking away the most valuable part of the paycheck: the part you need to survive. People aren’t going to work hard for $8 an hour if they’re taken care of by the government. It’s simply not worth it.
> I didn't say there would be no inflation. I said inflation would be progressive in that it wouldn't have much of an impact on stables in which demand is inelastic and working class people spend a relatively higher percentage of their income
It’s a supply side effect. Not a demand one.
Also, basically any non trivial inflation is enough to make UBI not UBI because it’s supposed to be just enough to be liveable.
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