Re:Basic income doesn't emphasize divisions between poor and...
by maxerickson on Tuesday August 30, 2016 @09:07AM
(#12389668)
The EIC awards a max of ~$6,200 to people with 3 or more children.
How many people with 3 kids do you think are going to stop working if they get an unconditional government benefit of $6,000?
I think the EIC does a good job of addressing the need some people have to moralize about the sanctity of labor, I doubt it has much of any impact on the labor market (it mostly just makes the lives of some kids better).
A situation in which assistance is given to people who are working (albeit for a lower wage) is a much better situation than assistance being given to people who aren't working at all.
There is value in enabling people to have jobs, even low paying jobs.
Many workplace laws and regulations effectively increase the cost of labor in the aggregate. So "decreasing the cost of labor" is not all about lowering pay. Think of things like overtime rules, mandatory benefits, onerous compliance rules, shifting various legal burdens to the employer rather than the employee, making it more difficult to fire someone.