Poll of the Day > "I do not support a livable wage"

(+) Yeah! (+)

Zeus posted...

The issue is the expectation that you're entitled to a work week not exceeding 40 hours, which is a relatively new concept dating back less than a 100 years.

A century during which we've seen astronomical leaps in quality of life. But sure, let's disregard one of the major concepts that's contributed to that.

Zeus posted...

And if your labor has virtually no value and the expertise is so low that a monkey can be trained to do your job, you can't command good wages.

Then why does the position exist? Why hire somebody for something that you could train a monkey to do?

Zeus posted...

As for your argument about firing somebody, you acknowledge that employment is a contract about usefulness but somehow ignore the fact that it should extend to wages. If you're not useful enough to command a higher wage, you shouldn't receive that wage.

It should absolutely extend to wages. It just means that positions should not exist that aren't expected to generate enough value to allow the person filling them to live. If you can't afford to pay a living wage for a necessary position, you can't afford to be in business. It's as simple as that.

Zeus posted...

First, because the minimum wage is already livable provided you reasonably cut costs (roommates, etc).

You can just about live on pennies if you cut costs far enough, but most discussions about livable wages start by defining some sort of reasonable standard of living. Sharing a one-bedroom apartment with four people will cut down on your cost of living, certainly, but that's really not a reasonable standard to operate under.

Zeus posted...

Second, and more importantly, because the thing is predicated on the 40 hour workweek. If somebody doesn't make what they need in 40 hours, what do they usually wind up doing? They work more. Even a lot of people who don't necessarily need the money often choose to work more.

The key difference there being choosing to work more. There's a world of difference between deciding to work more because you feel like making some extra money, and having to work more because you need more money. A 40-hour week is the standard we're using here, because that's the standard for the civilized world. That's not an unreasonable standard, especially when you consider the effects of working longer hours (which is largely why there's been the push for shorter hours over the last century).
---

Smarkil posted...

UBI requires the money to come from somewhere

Most models for it actually save money over the current welfare system, given that being simpler (usually modeled as a sort of reverse income tax) dramatically reduces administrative costs.

Smarkil posted...

It's not supposed to be easy.

And why not? Why not make it easy? The resources are there, why shouldn't it be as easy as possible for everyone? Is that not the ultimate goal of human progress? We've spent millions of years figuring out how to make things easier. Why stop now?
---

adjl posted...

And why not? Why not make it easy? The resources are there, why shouldn't it be as easy as possible for everyone? Is that not the ultimate goal of human progress? We've spent millions of years figuring out how to make things easier. Why stop now?

Because we're not quite there yet. We're not at the point where everyone can live in a perfect utopia. Maybe it could be close if we put a very low cap on everyone's potential financial success but that's honestly not a world I wanna live in. A big part of the joy of life for many people is having goals and overcoming challenges to hopefully achieve success. You take that away and I think depression will skyrocket as people sit at home watching tv or surfing Facebook all day without any real purpose or reason to achieve anything

adjl posted...

Most models for it actually save money over the current welfare system, given that being simpler (usually modeled as a sort of reverse income tax) dramatically reduces administrative costs.

Let's do a little math. The numbers aren't going to be exactly right because I have to cobble them together from different sources, but this is just a rough idea anyway.

63% of the US population is between 18-65. So the population of working age individuals is approximately 194 million people.

Approximately 40% of Americans make less than 20k, so the number of working Americans making less than 20k is 77.5 million.

Let's say, for the sake of argument, we give about 1500 dollars to each person as a UBI who's making less than 20k per year. 1500 a month is a number that's been touted around, so let's just use that.

So 77,500,000 x 1500 = 116,280,000,000. 120 billion dollars spent every month to support people under the poverty line. That's roughly 1.5 trillion dollars spent every year in order to support a UBI for that 40% of the population.

The US budget is roughly 3.8 trillion per year. So close to a half of the budget would just go straight into universal basic income.

Does that sound feasible?
---

Smarkil posted...

So 77,500,000 x 1500 = 116,280,000,000. 120 billion dollars spent every month to support people under the poverty line. That's roughly 1.5 trillion dollars spent every year in order to support a UBI for that 40% of the population.

-$1trillion spent on welfare and that's $500 billion.
---

Kyuubi4269 posted...

Smarkil posted...

So 77,500,000 x 1500 = 116,280,000,000. 120 billion dollars spent every month to support people under the poverty line. That's roughly 1.5 trillion dollars spent every year in order to support a UBI for that 40% of the population.

-$1trillion spent on welfare and that's $500 billion.

Even if you could get rid of the welfare budget (good fucking luck), where are you going to get 500 billion from?

Even if you taxed 100% of the income of everyone making 1 million or more, you'd get something like 700 billion.

So I guess that works if you just take 100% of the income of those people.
---

Smarkil posted...

where are you going to get 500 billion from?

Make companies actually pay their taxes and you're atleast somewhat there.
---

Kyuubi4269 posted...

Smarkil posted...

where are you going to get 500 billion from?

Make companies actually pay their taxes and you're atleast somewhat there.

Okay.

So take 100% of the wages of people making a million or more - then tax businesses more and then we can give 40% of the population 1500 dollars a month.

So tell me this. Why would I, as a business owner, keep my business here? If I'm not making any money, and my business isn't making any more, what reason do I have to stay here and not go to somewhere with a lower tax rate?

You know California tried stuff like this and businesses in California have been leaving in droves for places like Texas. Why wouldn't they?

It's a good thing we're giving people universal basic income. Because they sure as shit won't be able to find a job in this new society.
---

I don't know why you want to steal everybody's money but UBI is a global concern, not a national one, so as long as every business wants to relocate to third world countries and subsequently get wrecked by aggressively increased import tax, you have a point.
---

Kyuubi4269 posted...

I don't know why you want to steal everybody's money but UBI is a global concern

Because that's the only way to fucking do it.

Until we have an entirely robotic workforce driving the cost of goods to pennies, we can't do it. We're not in the Star Trek universe. Until then, you're going to have to work for your own NEETbux.
---

Smarkil posted...

Because that's the only way to fucking do it.

No, it's the first thought off the top of your head.
---

Smarkil posted...

Let's say, for the sake of argument, we give about 1500 dollars to each person as a UBI who's making less than 20k per year.

That's where your math really falls apart. It's not simply a matter of giving $1500/month to everyone under the poverty line, it's a matter of giving everyone enough to bring them up to the poverty line on top of what they already have. That dramatically reduces the payout. It should also probably be varied regionally, given that cost of living is nowhere close to constant everywhere, but that gets really freaking complicated and is beyond the scope of this discussion, so we'll assume for now that the numbers more or less balance out overall.

Smarkil posted...

So 77,500,000 x 1500 = 116,280,000,000. 120 billion dollars spent every month to support people under the poverty line. That's roughly 1.5 trillion dollars

It's generally considered very poor practice (at best, at worst it's outright deceitful) not to carry all significant figures until your final value. 77.6m * 1500 * 12 = 1.4 trillion. Hey, I just made a hundred billion dollars (and even that's rounded up, but only from 1.3968, which is very close to 1.4)!

Smarkil posted...

Even if you could get rid of the welfare budget (good f***ing luck),

This is the welfare budget. A UBI would replace the welfare system entirely.

Smarkil posted...

where are you going to get 500 billion from?

400, made lower by your initial overestimation of the payout, but even then there are a number of options. Most notably, incorporating UBI as a sort of reverse income tax would allow for fairly dramatic simplification of the tax code and removal of a lot of the breaks in there (since tax wouldn't be able to reduce somebody's income below a certain level). That closes a lot of the loopholes that are used by corporations and the upper class to avoid paying a very sizable amount of taxes. I'm not sure off-hand if the administrative costs of the welfare system are included in that trillion, but that also gets reduced because you don't need nearly as much oversight.

You're also going to get more back in the long run as people end up with better jobs (not having to worry so much about starving makes it a lot more feasible to go to school for something they're actually passionate about), people are healthier (lower stress, reduced incidence of obesity, reduced drug usage), crime rates drop (a lot of crime is born out of desperation)... That's much more of a gamble, but every minimum income experiment that's been conducted has worked out to be a net financial gain, ending with fewer people depending on it than were depending on welfare.
---

adjl posted...

That's where your math really falls apart. It's not simply a matter of giving $1500/month to everyone under the poverty line, it's a matter of giving everyone enough to bring them up to the poverty line on top of what they already have. That dramatically reduces the payout. It should also probably be varied regionally, given that cost of living is nowhere close to constant everywhere, but that gets really freaking complicated and is beyond the scope of this discussion, so we'll assume for now that the numbers more or less balance out overall.

If you're going to prorate it to a sliding scale of up to the poverty line, what possible incentive do I have to push for more money if I'm working a low-wage job? If I can do absolutely nothing and receive 1500 a month, or work for 40 hours a week at 9 bucks an hour for 1500 a month.

Why would I work?

adjl posted...

It's generally considered very poor practice (at best, at worst it's outright deceitful) not to carry all significant figures until your final value. 77.6m * 1500 * 12 = 1.4 trillion. Hey, I just made a hundred billion dollars (and even that's rounded up, but only from 1.3968, which is very close to 1.4)!

I'm not a politician. I don't care about the exact numbers. But you're also not considering administrative costs in there either, the cost of people who most assuredly would rather rely on UBI than work, etc. I'm not going to bother looking up the figures because I'm not at work anymore and I'm definititely not doing research in my down time, but I seem to remember hearing numbers for SNAP being about 5% in administrative costs. 5% in admin costs gets you close to that 100 billion. The point wasn't to give an exact number, which is why I said in my post "The numbers aren't going to be exactly right...this is just a rough idea anyway".

So maybe let's go ahead and stay away from the 'deceitful' comments.

adjl posted...

This is the welfare budget. A UBI would replace the welfare system entirely.

Hey, if you can convert the welfare system into a UBI and I never see another dime come out of my paycheck, more fucking power to you. You go and do that right now. But that's not going to happen. No matter what system you implement, people are always going to complain that it's not enough. Especially when everyone starts buying shit and the cost of goods go up due to the demand.

adjl posted...

400, made lower by your initial overestimation of the payout, but even then there are a number of options. Most notably, incorporating UBI as a sort of reverse income tax would allow for fairly dramatic simplification of the tax code and removal of a lot of the breaks in there (since tax wouldn't be able to reduce somebody's income below a certain level).

Off topic, I'm all for simplification of the tax code because it makes it easier for me not to get screwed. That said, you're not going to get another 400 billion a year out of closing loopholes. As I said earlier, even if you taxed everyone making 1million+ 100%, you'd be getting 700 billion. Kicking them up from 29% - 39% just isn't going to cut it.
---

adjl posted...

You're also going to get more back in the long run as people end up with better jobs (not having to worry so much about starving makes it a lot more feasible to go to school for something they're actually passionate about), people are healthier (lower stress, reduced incidence of obesity, reduced drug usage), crime rates drop (a lot of crime is born out of desperation)... That's much more of a gamble, but every minimum income experiment that's been conducted has worked out to be a net financial gain, ending with fewer people depending on it than were depending on welfare.

And there you go - you've now admitted that there will be more people that will opt not to work if they have the option.

All we have right now, so far as I know, are experiments as to the effects in incredibly small sample sizes. Even then, the results are mixed. I have yet to see any sizable implementation. Besides, why doesn't one of the much more left leaning countries of the world do it? Canada has a tenth of the population of the US. If it's such a good thing for a community, why wouldn't they do it?

Why wouldn't Sweden with it's population of 10 million? Or Switzerland?

We're one of the largest countries in the world. If you want UBI to be a thing, then maybe one of the smaller countries should set an example.
---

beep bep
---