Set the system so that if there is a budget surplus, the minimum salary goes up, which means rich peeps also get to make and keep more money. Incentiveses them to keep improving things. The important thing is that the salary cap will always be tied to the minimum salary to keep a runaway top 1% situation from happening the way it is now.
++++
For a minute I was thinking the minimum income could save businesses money by really reducing what they pay employees who bother to still work.... but then I realized no one would work full time at McD's for $1 per hour when they are already making $15k per year for being alive. I imagine we'd have a more natural minimum wage (beyond the Guaranteed Minimum Salary, hereafter known as the GMS), though. There would be no need to artificially set a limit. People will either flip burgers for $5 hour, or they wont, but at least they'd have their GMS as a "living wage," as the hippies call it.
Edited By GORDON on 1447444767
Posted: Tue Nov 17, 2015 10:34 am
by TPRJones
Read For Us, The Living by Heinlein. Not his best work as an author, but part of it is outlining exactly what you just said but with a solid grounding in economic theory to go with it.
Edited By TPRJones on 1447774525
Posted: Mon Apr 11, 2016 9:40 pm
by GORDON
GORDON wrote:Finland is considering giving all of their citizens a "minimum income," no matter whether or not they currently have a job.
Here's another article about it, they are maybe moving forward with a "negative income tax."
This year, the Finnish government hopes to begin granting every adult citizen a monthly allowance of €800 (roughly $900). Whether rich or poor, each citizen will be free to use the money as he or she sees fit. The idea is that people are responsible for their actions. If someone decides to spend their €800 on vodka, that is their decision, and has nothing to do with the government. In return for the UBI, however, the public accepts the elimination of most welfare services. Currently, the Finnish government offers a variety of income-based assistance programs for everything from housing to children’s education to property insulation. Axing these programs should free up enough public resources to finance the UBI. The bureaucracy that currently governs welfare payments will disappear. There will no longer be any need to ask for government help, nor to fill out forms or wait for the competent authorities to examine each dossier to determine eligibility.
Posted: Mon Apr 11, 2016 9:55 pm
by TheCatt
I kinda like it, but there's gonna be the dumbasses who blow it all and still need help.
And there's people who just aren't capable of helping themselves.
Posted: Mon Apr 11, 2016 10:04 pm
by GORDON
TheCatt wrote:I kinda like it, but there's gonna be the dumbasses who blow it all and still need help.
And there's people who just aren't capable of helping themselves.
More and more I think these people need to just be sloughed off of the skin of civilization. If they can't find a church charity or a sucker of a family member to feed them, then they just gotta be cut loose.
How to keep them from breaking into houses and raiding the fridge because they spent all their money on day 1 on crack? I dunno. One problem at a time.
Posted: Mon Apr 11, 2016 10:41 pm
by Malcolm
How to keep them from breaking into houses and raiding the fridge because they spent all their money on day 1 on crack? I dunno. One problem at a time.
Uh, no. That's a prereq to implementing this shit because doing it ad hoc is rife with shitty compromises. Even if you had something like this, it still wouldn't work. The real bitch is that there are some crackheads worth the effort.
Edited By Malcolm on 1460429153
Posted: Mon Apr 11, 2016 10:53 pm
by GORDON
Ease the restrictions on lethal home defense systems. Let the problem fix itself.
The universe is going to keep creating poor people faster than we can fix them, and eventually we will hit critical mass. Might as well fix the problem while we still have some nice stuff.
Posted: Mon Apr 11, 2016 11:02 pm
by Malcolm
The universe ain't creating shit unless you're talking about hypothetical people somewhere on other planets. People create poor people.
Posted: Mon Apr 11, 2016 11:27 pm
by Alhazad
Malcolm wrote:The universe ain't creating shit unless you're talking about hypothetical people somewhere on other planets. People create poor people.
And interestingly, as education, income, and availability of family planning services rise, they create fewer of them. So a negative tax could be a good breeding disincentive as well.
Macroeconomic research bears out this picture. Fertility starts to drop at an annual income per person of $1,000-2,000 and falls until it hits the replacement level at an income per head of $4,000-10,000 a year (see chart 2). This roughly tracks the passage from poverty to middle-income status and from an agrarian society to a modern one.
Posted: Mon Apr 11, 2016 11:39 pm
by GORDON
Malcolm wrote:The universe ain't creating shit unless you're talking about hypothetical people somewhere on other planets. People create poor people.
Thanks for nailing that down, I honestly didn't know people created p;eople.
o fuck what if they create themselves mind blown
Posted: Mon Apr 11, 2016 11:47 pm
by Malcolm
Thanks for nailing that down...
Obvious as it may sound, it does imply shit like this...
as education, income, and availability of family planning services rise, they create fewer of them [people]
... is important and has a chance of bringing it under control. It's no coincidence the 100 or so countries with the least of the above have the highest fertility rates. Then all the refugees from unpleasant places everyone loves bitching about might not flee in such titanic droves.
Edited By Malcolm on 1460432931
Posted: Mon Apr 11, 2016 11:56 pm
by Alhazad
GORDON wrote:o fuck what if they create themselves mind blown
Hah!
Posted: Sat Feb 18, 2017 9:38 pm
by GORDON
Elon Musk says we're going to need it.
"Minimum Income" for all....
Posted: Sat Feb 18, 2017 9:48 pm
by Malcolm
He's getting more and more Jobsian as time goes on.
"Minimum Income" for all....
Posted: Sun Feb 19, 2017 12:08 pm
by TPRJones
He's struggling not to sound too socialist, but he's correct. In a post-scarcity economy there's no demand for the work-time of most people because those jobs just do not exist. But the economy still needs those people to spend money on food, clothing, and shelter if we are to continue using capitalism; which we should, I think, because it's such a good driver of the very technological innovation that is getting us there. The basic work-time = money equation that is used as the basis for most distribution of value to the masses is going to have to be replaced with something else.
"Minimum Income" for all....
Posted: Sun Feb 19, 2017 1:32 pm
by Malcolm
The basic work-time = money equation that is used as the basis for most distribution of value to the masses is going to have to be replaced with something else.
Not this century.
Posted: Sun Feb 19, 2017 2:27 pm
by GORDON
Malcolm wrote:
The basic work-time = money equation that is used as the basis for most distribution of value to the masses is going to have to be replaced with something else.
Not this century.
I think it is.coming very fast. The real unemployment numbers have been hidden for about 8 years. They won't be , any more.
Posted: Sun Feb 19, 2017 3:31 pm
by TheCatt
GORDON wrote:
Malcolm wrote:
The basic work-time = money equation that is used as the basis for most distribution of value to the masses is going to have to be replaced with something else.
Not this century.
I think it is.coming very fast. The real unemployment numbers have been hidden for about 8 years. They won't be , any more.
They're aren't hidden now either, Trump.
Posted: Sun Feb 19, 2017 3:34 pm
by GORDON
I am not orange, your argument is invalid.
"Minimum Income" for all....
Posted: Sun Feb 19, 2017 4:09 pm
by Vince
I think one of the Scandinavian countries has been trying something like this and it hasn't been working well.