>It might even allow employers to pay them less, because the UBI would remove the need to have a minimum wage. So someone who was making $15K/year full time at minimum wage who is now getting $12K/year UBI may now have to accept $12K/year in wages because the market for unskilled labor is highly competitive and $24K/year in total income is highly preferable to $12K.
It's not obvious which way it would go. I think my scenario above is plausible, but yours is as well.
But in your scenario, why wouldn't the employer capture the entire difference, or a larger part of it? Even if they pay $16k, that's still better than 12k. Or, maybe they'd work less hours.
I think that a more robust analysis than these kinds of handwaving arguments is needed. It's not a simple question.
You might. And then that employer might prefer to hire someone willing to accept $12 (or $10 or $8) and you become the unemployed person instead of them. Or the employer might realize that it's cost-effective to replace you with an automated process at the point of $11/hour and do that.
> It's not obvious which way it would go. I think my scenario above is plausible, but yours is as well.
It's pretty clearly going to be some of each. But if they even approximately cancel, I don't see what problem that is supposed to create.
> But in your scenario, why wouldn't the employer capture the entire difference, or a larger part of it? Even if they pay $16k, that's still better than 12k. Or, maybe they'd work less hours.
Maybe they would.
> I think that a more robust analysis than these kinds of handwaving arguments is needed. It's not a simple question.
The problem is it's not an analysis thing. It's a facts thing and the facts are always changing.
If you give $12,000/year to a person, what does it cause them to do? It depends what their options are. Maybe they'll keep doing exactly what they were doing and just have more money to spend, or use it to pay off debts. Maybe they'll demand a raise. Maybe their employer can now get away with paying them less. Maybe they'll quit their job and start a business. Maybe they'll quit their job and go to school. Maybe they'll take a different job that they like better but pays less. Maybe they'll take a different job that pays more but has a higher risk of loss of employment.
It depends on the person and their circumstances. Trying to measure it across the entire economy is chaos theory and the measurement you get today in one place won't be the same as it is at some other place or in the same place after a period of time.
The only way to know is to do it and find out. And if the worst case scenario is that companies have to pay some employees more to convince them to do unfun work, is that really the end of days?
If they cancel, there's no problem. If mine is significantly greater than yours, then production goes down, and BI becomes unsustainable.
>The only way to know is to do it and find out. And if the worst case scenario is that companies have to pay some employees more to convince them to do unfun work, is that really the end of days?
If it leads to less production, and then shrinks the economy, then everyone will be worse off.
At which point you're just making the argument for not turning on the Large Hadron Collider. We don't know what would happen. It could create a black hole and destroy the world.
There is only one way to find out. And at least in this case we can go back to the old system if it doesn't work out. Or try a version at half the dollar amount first to see what happens.
That's unfair. There's a plausible argument that this would be harmful, while there's far less plausibility that the LHC would be harmful.
>There is only one way to find out.
Somehow I don't think you mean "more experiments".
...then they would still be getting paid minimum wage, because the other half of the money comes from the basic income.
It might even allow employers to pay them less, because the UBI would remove the need to have a minimum wage. So someone who was making $15K/year full time at minimum wage who is now getting $12K/year UBI may now have to accept $12K/year in wages because the market for unskilled labor is highly competitive and $24K/year in total income is highly preferable to $12K.