There's no magic money here. Companies that don't pay subsistence wages leave employees to collect public benefits to make up the difference. The businesses are being indirectly subsidized by the taxpayer. All setting a minimum wage at a subsistence pay does is stop the companies from mooching off the taxpayer.

> 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 businesses are being subsidized by the taxpayer.

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.

> 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.

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.

You're not considering 2nd order effects. The increased buying power is eventually corrected. Those on a salaried position have less buying power too because of inflation. The whole economy is hurt by minimum wage increases, and the benefit they bring is temporary.

You make these negative claims about minimum wages with no evidence, while there is lots of high quality evidence that a minimum wage is positive or neutral.

There's plenty of evidence. This is pretty much Econ 101.

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...

"There’s a reason setting minimum wage to $100k a year doesn’t work."

Do you have a source for that? Has anyone ever tried it?

No one has tried it because it's a silly and naive idea. The rest of the economy would correct for the adjustment, leaving us in the same situation and causing a lot of pain for workers and businesses in the process.

If that's so (and I believe it is), then isn't this whole discussion a red herring?

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.

I don't think it's always the case that the market will eat any attempted improvements - it's just that an attempt to raise the wage floor without any other changes isn't enough to prevent the market from adjusting to the new baseline.

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.

That's my fear for UBI.

Mine too. I like the idea and the intent behind it very much, but nobody could yet explain to me how to prevent the market from adjusting across the board to cancel it out.