>Do this over and over, and ultimately, nobody's left at the bottom.
You made huge unfounded leaps here. There’s no reason to believe a magic money tap will just pay for the increased costs. It’s just as likely to kill jobs.
There’s a reason setting minimum wage to $100k a year doesn’t work.
> It’s just as likely to kill jobs.
And that's fine, there's no reason that all jobs have to be done by humans. This is why wholesale reform needs to take place as well, including basic income. Not leaning into robotization of low-skilled jobs amounts to turning America into a renaissance faire as a make-work project.
The other way around with means-tested welfare, since the taxpayers would pay more if the worker was not employed.
> All setting a minimum wage at a subsistence pay does is stop the companies from mooching off the taxpayer.
No, it stops the business, the customers it would have, the would-be employee, and the taxpayer from benefiting from the mutually-beneficial exchange that would otherwise take place.
To the extent there is an abuse prevented, it's that it is limiting the ability of employers to exploit the inherent power imbalance of capitalism to suppress wages for jobs with worth above the minimum wage to below it. But basic income provides a more robust solution to that problem without also prohibiting work at any wage.
People like you keep beating this drum in spite of the fact that every single initiative on that front has shown to be within the neutral or positive range for jobs within margin of error.
Yes, eventually a minimum wage will start to impact the job market--evidence is that we're a LONG way from that point.
Sadly at this point, "But think of the jobs" has been reduced to a shibboleth for "poor people (read: minorities) don't deserve to be helped." rather than a factual point deserving informed debate.
The minimum wage is basically a price control on the minimum cost of 1 unit of labour.
If you increase the minimum wage, you're not increasing the value of the economy (which is what leads to the pie growing), but you force employers to spend more on the same thing. The pie is the same size but more money is going to minimum wage workers.
The end result is inflation. People are not earning more, they are just getting a higher number every month.
That being said, I do ack my own bias here, and I get there's reasonable arguments from both directions, all I can say is that it's my gut feeling based on experience:
https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/052815/does-raising...
Do you have a source for that? Has anyone ever tried it?
The market correcting for disposable income is a problem. We'll never solve poverty if the market is just going to eat all the improvements we're making.
There are tons of other ways to change the calculus. E.g. tax code, employment laws, separating health care from employment, etc. I'm no expert and I don't know what the 'right' answer is but I imagine it's some combination of thought-out policy changes that, when combined, apply an economic force to pull the wealth gap closer over time.
Who is choosing to defect rather than cooperate in this scenario?
> This price increase allows drivers to earn a living wage which in turn decreases the number of people at the lower end of today's income scale.
This is unclear. If we find there are 5x low-income people who benefits from Uber for every Uber driver, and the increased Uber costs reduce the real income of those poor people by 25% per month, then it's making poor people quite a bit poorer. Adjust those variables and you might get different outcomes. Or maybe the demand for Uber rides is quite elastic, in which case Uber drivers will lose income because so many fewer people are riding that it doesn't offset the price.
You'd have to actually measure and find out. But overcoming deadweight loss problems due to artificial price increases is quite hard. I'd put money on this making low-income people worse off.
> Do this over and over, and ultimately, nobody's left at the bottom.
Sorry, this is abominable economics. If you "do this over and over" you're just transferring money around between groups in an extremely inefficient and arbitrary way. Also there will always be a bottom, unless we had exact equality of outcomes, which is for various reasons impossible (variation in life expectancy, for example, has all sorts of strange effects).
But let's assume that this means the people at the bottom still have a very comfortable lifestyle, which I think we all agree would be a desirable goal. The only way to actually produce that outcome is to produce more goods with fewer resources. Simply increasing prices here and there does none of that - it may actually produce less with the same amount of resources. In short, additional technology is required. Simply resorting to distributional tricks will not get you there, even first order. (Second-order and beyond effects would probably result in catastrophic economic damage, since many people would have strong incentives to produce less and no additional technology would exist that increases productivity. Again, the goal should be for people to produce more in less time and/or using fewer inputs.)
You're taking the parent way too literally. If you look at the rest of the post, they mention "number of people at the lower end of today's income scale" (emphasis added), "people in poverty", and people "hav[ing] the problems you're describing" (not being able to afford a car). Their argument is clearly that nobody will be left at the point corresponding to today's bottom, not that there won't be any bottom.
You talk about an ‘income scale’ and moving people from the ‘bottom’ of it. What do you think happens if you take the bottom 10 people on the scale and move them up 10 places?
Sure but this is a prisoner's dilemma situation.
This price increase allows drivers to earn a living wage which in turn decreases the number of people at the lower end of today's income scale. Fewer people will have the problems you're describing in the first place.
Do this over and over, and ultimately, nobody's left at the bottom.
On the other hand, if you reject all attempts to bring people out of poverty because there's currently people in poverty, well, you're never going to achieve a single thing.
This increase in wages also yields an increase in tax revenue, which can be spent to improve things like public transit, further ameliorating the situation moving forward.
Keep in mind this is a 25% increase in what many view as a luxury good, but the minimum wage is going up by... 25%. So, for everyone at the bottom, it's a net zero change. On the other hand their buying power in other areas of their lives actually goes up. So who is being hurt? I guess the folks in the donut hole?