If we really do get to the point where society doesn't need low skilled workers we ought to start giving out a guaranteed minimum income. If we don't care about the potential disemployment effect the case for it becomes a lot stronger.
I saw a post in the past that suggested a minimum income where the amount of assistance reduce as you got paid more. So if the minimum was $40k a year and you made $20k working some job you'd get $20k in subsidies. This help give some incentive to people to get jobs. In some cases if you stay on welfare you'll make more money than if you get a minimum wage job. If you made $60k you'd get no subsidy. We're definitely going to have to change the model we have now once we get to a point where a large number of people don't need to work. I'd say we're close to that now. If everyone in the US wanted to work would we have enough jobs to support that?
> I saw a post in the past that suggested a minimum income where the amount of assistance reduce as you got paid more. So if the minimum was $40k a year and you made $20k working some job you'd get $20k in subsidies. This help give some incentive to people to get jobs.
No, a dollar for dollar reduction in benefits for outside income does not "give some incentive to people to get jobs", its gives a disincentive to people to get jobs. Working has a disutility -- otherwise everyone would do it for free -- so if you have a choice of $X from a minimum guarantee with no work or $Y from work and $min((X-Y),0) in subsidies with work -- you have a net disincentive to work for any Y not greater than X by an amount sufficient to account for the disutility of work.
Benefits that reduce with income are how a lot of current programs work (and have worked for some time), which is why various complicated measures to try to combat the disincentives that structure can create have also been built into them (which further increase the administrative costs), and one of the key motivations for unconditional basic income is eliminating the problems that that causes.
This still has a flaw that it makes low wage jobs pretty unappealing. Why work fulltime for 50k a year when you can make 40k without working? Or even worse, who would ever work fulltime for 40k a year? Perhaps this means that there won't be low wage jobs, but this seems somewhat odd, as the taxation structure would be strange (need to tax enough for basic income, but companies would need to be paying probably 60k or greater on any job just to get someone to fill it).
Better to give a guaranteed income to everyone, and then let wages get as low as they want. The upside is that it changes the incentives so that work that is necessary (but undesirable) becomes more highly compensated, whereas work that is desirable becomes less compensated (and/or working for free becomes something that isn't just the domain of the wealthy).
I kind of agree, but providing a poverty threshold was probably the worst thing to happen to our welfare system. It's a completely exploitable concept and is much less equitable than other (perhaps more invasive) quality standards.
Does the fact that it is exploitable make it bad?
What is worst? Having N people living off society, half of them without having the need to; or let N/2 starve?
> much less equitable than other (perhaps more invasive) quality standards.
