A Basic Income Is Smarter Than a Minimum Wage

Re:A Basic Income Is Smarter Than a Minimum Wage by randyrand on Monday April 04, 2016 @04:27PM (#11425293)

> "Increase employment" is targeting the wrong measure.

What is the correct measure? Sounds like you are arguing for wealth per capita or total wealth.

Even still, wealth per captia is (productivity) * (employment) / (population). Ignoring time.

So even if I agreed with you, more employment is still a good thing even under your 'correct' measure.

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Re:A Basic Income Is Smarter Than a Minimum Wage by ThrustVectoring on Monday April 04, 2016 @04:41PM (#11425425)

The correct measure is something like quality-adjusted life years (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quality-adjusted_life_year), treating the particular details of the job as a disability.

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Re:A Basic Income Is Smarter Than a Minimum Wage by randyrand on Monday April 04, 2016 @04:50PM (#11425536)

For many people working improves their quality of life.

Making things, having some purpose, giving back to society, ect are all very rewarding things.

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Re:A Basic Income Is Smarter Than a Minimum Wage by ThrustVectoring on Monday April 04, 2016 @05:03PM (#11425651)

Sorry if that was unclear - working a job you love can and should have the opposite sign. That's why I said something like QALY: it maxes out at 1 QALY/person-year, which is incorrect when people would rather spend a decade as a rock star than 30 years retired in Arizona.

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Re:A Basic Income Is Smarter Than a Minimum Wage by kybernetikos on Monday April 04, 2016 @05:41PM (#11425928)

These sound good. I think there'd probably be more of all those things if people didn't have to work unfulfilling jobs of marginal benefit to society in order to feed themselves.

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