I would agree that the employer is less reliable as a source of social safety net/health care than the government. In terms of who is responsible, I do not agree that other tax payers are more responsible than the employer. Much like the cost of manufacturing should account for pollution, the cost of labor should account for the worker’s basic human needs. An employer who pays so little that the employee gets food stamps is equivalent to a manufacturer who dumps toxic waste in the river, leaving everyone else to bear the cost.
Hmmm…I was under the impression that it works more like “everyone gets $X regardless of whether they work”. ($25k per person would be unworkable, but $25k per household might work) What they earn (minus tax) is on top of $X. So if the pay for a job is too low, no one will bother. Basically everyone works for “extras”, such as a nicer car instead of a beater or a house instead of a small apartment or being able to afford travel.
This doesn’t even remotely answer the question. Who is initiating the force? How does this force manifest itself?
Here’s an example: Management forces the low wage employee to work for $5/hour by threatening to kill them if they do not. In this example, Management is initiating the force, and it is manifested by the threat to kill them. Of course this isn’t happening so I’m curious how anyone is being forced to do anything if minimum wage is eliminated. It’s a pretty straight forward question. I’ll even accept any assumptions you are making for the purpose of addressing the question.
I believe at some point for your statement to make sense you have to assume that employees are owed a job. Correct me if I’m wrong.
Health insurance is not a good proxy for welfare in general, though. Opposition to government guarantee of health insurance doesn’t necessarily indicate opposition to all welfare spending.
I favor small government, oppose tax increases, favor domestic spending cuts, and agree that most can get ahead if they work hard. And yet I advocate for a negative income tax. I can only speculate as to what portion of libertarians oppose all welfare, but it’s not 80+%.
Solution: a 50% subsidy rate. Say, for example, the NIT was set at $40,000, a nice round number I choose purely for this example. Anyone making over $40,000 pays income tax. Anyone making exactly $40,000 neither pays taxes nor receives an NIT payment. Anyone making less than $40,000 gets 50% of the difference between their income and $40,000. So, someone who makes $0 gets a $20,000 NIT payment, someone who makes $20,000 gets a $10,000 NIT payment.
$1/day works out to about $260 a year. Such a person would recieve an NIT payment of $19,870, for total earnings of $20,130.
If Target across the street offers $4/day, or $1,040/year, a worker there gets an NIT payment of $19,480 and total earnings of $20,520.
If McDonald’s offers the princely sum of $4/hour, or $8,320 a year, a worker there gets an NIT payment of $15,840, for total earnings of $24,160.
As you see, the higher wage results in a higher total earnings, so there’s still an incentive to bargain for the highest wage one can get.
Except for the fact that the dumper of toxic waste is breaking the law, and the company offering minimum wage isn’t. If the minimum wage is too low for your tastes, the fault lies with the government that sets the wage, not the business that’s following the law.
I don’t believe the employees are owed a job. What I do believe is that in the absence of a minimum wage, employers would take advantage of the surplus labor market and lower wages to push more people into poverty. The issue of force is a red herring, the real issue is that companies would gladly exploit the current labor market to pay wages that would make their employees’ lives miserable.
I thought we were debating policies, i.e. whether and how high the law should set minimum wage. There is indeed a push to increase minimum wage which would reduce such free-riding by large corporations who don’t pay for the whole cost of labor. And there are also discussions about whether the fine for toxic waste dumping is currently too lenient (cf: recent cases in WV/NC).
It’s difficult to discuss what the laws should be if all we can go by is whether the current laws are being obeyed.
Why? Is healthcare considered something of a luxury instead of necessity? And health insurance is already a private market way of dealing with healthcare provision, so we’re not simply measuring opposition to government run services.
Ah, I see. I misinterpreted you. Sorry.
Because people don’t think of them the same way. Here’s a summary of several polls about welfare, opinion is divided on the requirements and duration, but I don’t see support for just ending it altogether. Conversely, 56% of Americans believe that “it is not the federal government’s responsibility to make sure all Americans have healthcare coverage”. I’m not addressing the logic of their opinion, just pointing out that it exists.
That makes more sense. So a base $X plus earnings. Problem with that is, though, is that basically any amount would overrun the budget. Even a $10,000 default outlay across all citizens would be $3.3T. If you reduce that to just adults, it’s still $2.7T. (The budget for 2013 was $2.9T)
How would that solve the issue? It would also complexify the NIT calculations (50% of 40,000 instead of 100%of 20,000?) for what benefit?
WalMart, being the behemoth anti-negotiator it is, could still pay it’s workers beans and rely on the government to provide the safety net for them. The labor situation in this country is dominated by the employers (even when accounting for unions). Does this help that at all? I don’t see how it would.
By removing any leverage for Wal-Mart to be able to attract workers at $1 per day.
It preserves an incentive to work and to try and increase one’s market value, it prevents $1-per-day shenanigans, and it doesn’t utterly consume the nation’s budget, like a flat universal payment does. Having to perform a single, simple calculation once a month is a pretty low price to pay for all that. It’d certainly be the least complex aspect of the U.S. tax code.
It’s not, and it shouldn’t be, Wal-Mart’s task to provide the safety net in any aspect beyond paying taxes. It’s Wal-Mart’s task to efficiently meet the needs of its customers and shareholders, as a by-product producing wealth that can be taxed and used for public goods. A minimum wage a) does nothing for the unemployed, and b) distorts the market. An NIT provides the benefit of a higher minimum wage, without those drawbacks.
But how would it accomplish this? Why wouldn’t WalMart pay it’s employees $0 with a 10% discount (or something) and simply have the government make up the salary (which is then spent inside WalMart because you get 10% off)? That would be a massive cost savings that would make it’s shareholders happy, after all.
And I would opine that working for 50% of a dollar instead of a dollar seems like less incentive. 
I phrased that poorly. I don’t mean “WalMart providing the safety net” I was referring to WalMart paying workers less than they are worth and encouraging it’s employees to partake in government benefits to help WalMart’s bottom line. Why would we continue allowing businesses to be funded by the government in this manner?
My personal belief is that if you can’t be profitable without government subsidy as a business, you shouldn’t be in business. Thus all government funds outside of direct disaster relief (not ‘my building got eaten by a tornado’, but ‘this critical piece of infrastructure requires repair after a tornado’) or direct payment for services or products rendered shouldn’t go into any business in any way (no tax cuts, no incentives, no welfare subsidy to your employees, nothing). This is where I’m coming from on this issue.
Do you believe they could find enough workers to accept a $0 rate to conduct their business? Each of those individuals will be able to sell their services to another employer who will pay them a different amount, exactly as it works now, sans minimum wage and other transfer payments.
There will be some amount of people who are satisfied with the minimum amount. That’s a policy choice that is made when enacting the NIT. Of course, you’d be able to reduce a lot of overhead in many other areas so on balance I think we’d come out ahead.
You’re thinking of this wrong. WalMart has no ability to pay employees less than they are worth. What an employee is worth is dependent on what someone is willing to pay them. It’s definitional. If you mean to say, what prevents WalMart from paying a rate that is not sufficient to live on and thereby increasing the chance their employees will utilize subsidies - the employees themselves. They have an incentive to work and each dollar earned yields more money. They have an incentive to try to earn as much as they possibly can, as long as it’s above the minimum.
Only people earning below an established amount would receive any benefit.
Would you take that deal? Work at an unpleasant job for a 10% discount + $20,000 instead of staying at home and getting $20,000? Or working somewhere else and getting more than $20,000?
Then we can’t have any direct welfare payments at all*, because they are all predicated on matching payments to wages.
- Except a universal payment, which provides no incentive to work and, as has been noted, costs about $3 trillion at the very lowest level.
[QUOTE=Farin]
I phrased that poorly. I don’t mean “WalMart providing the safety net” I was referring to WalMart paying workers less than they are worth and encouraging it’s employees to partake in government benefits to help WalMart’s bottom line.
[/quote]
What makes you think they are paying them less than they are worth?
Well, I’m proposing an alternative to that in this very thread. What other choice is there, a higher minimum wage? That does nothing for the unemployed, and just encourages more and more automation and fewer and fewer jobs. I’m open to any suggestions you might have, of course.
Think of the implications, though. This means excluding the employed from welfare, which means welfare alone needs to be enough to live on. That means either there’s no reason to work a low-wage job instead of living on welfare.
Meanwhile, a high minimum wage means an incentive to eliminate jobs, and having to do something with the people who simply don’t offer enough value to justify the high wage.
To be clear: an NIT gives the employee more bargaining power, not less, because they can always stay home and take the full NIT payment. No firm is going to be able to convince someone to work 40 hours a week when the net benefit to the worker is $1 a day, or a 10% discount.
We find enough workers, now, to work for a place like WalMart at exactly minimum age and then hit the transfer payments line to supplement it. Why would this behavior change?
Granted. But I’m focusing more on the people who want to work and don’t want to play XBox all day. I really couldn’t care less about them. I’d actually prefer to leave them at home than to try and force them into workin’.
All people are worth the cost to feed, clothe, house, and provide basic amenities for. If not, our prison system should be abolished.
But my problem with this argument is that people, right now, don’t prevent it and I don’t see a slightly different kind of transfer payment changing that power dynamic in any significant way.
But that’s not what s/he said in what I responded to:
That sounds like a flat wage to all comers and those that get employed get more than the flat wage.
While I personally wouldn’t, there are many people that take minimum wage and rely on welfare to get through the month. I don’t see how this would change that.
Well, no. If you pick an NIT of what it costs to live, you would have to provide incentive beyond that to work. Reducing costs at a business (e.g. 10% off at walmart) would stretch that amount of money and be incredibly cheaper than paying NIC + 10% a year for the company. They are directly mooching off of the welfare system.
As I said, above, to Bone: “All people are worth the cost to feed, clothe, house, and provide basic amenities for. If not, our prison system should be abolished.” I fairly strongly disagree with the idea that people are worth the same as goods and services, aka “what someone will pay for them.”
To be honest, a NIC makes sense to me with one rider: Minimum wage. ( 
) Basically, whatever you set the NIC to, that’s the minimum you can hire a person at, with a direct ratio of some sort (e.g., again, 1000 hours of 2000 hours in a year = 50% of NIC as wage) for part time employment.
Okay, I can see that potentially changing the power dynamic fairly well. But it could also come out to do the exact opposite: More automation and less need for workers at all.
The proportions. The part of their total income that comes from working (call it $7.50 an hour, 30 hours a week = $11,700 a year), is much higher in the current system than it would be with Wal-Mart kicking in some trivial amount or a discount, and the government paying in 98.7% ($19,870 of $20,130). Therefore, ceasing to work has a much smaller impact under the hypothetical $40k / 50% NIT than it does under our current system.
The incentive is more money.
You’re proposing that people who were in no danger of going hungry would work full time for a maximum net annual benefit of $2,000, (if the entire NIT was spent at Wal-Mart, and anyway a discount is a form of compensation that could be accounted for). Why would they possibly do that, in lieu of taking a job that actually pays them money?
That’s fine for a moral position, but it’s not “worth” of the kind Wal-Mart is interested in. Like all employers, they want someone who causes them to make more money than they spend. And that’s fine: the business of business is business. Leave the moral calculations to the government and the electorate.
That’s giving away one of the advantages of the NIT for no reason. Again, if you want Wal-Mart to kick in, tax them. Labor’s a small piece of their balance sheet anyway.
A higher minimum wage would absolutely do that, so at worst it’s a wash.
Not what a person is worth, what the value of their labor is. If you believe that all and any labor should have a minimum floor of value, that’s fine but that’s not what this topic or this thread is about. That’s more of a living wage argument and would be inconsistent with the libertarian ideal.
Okay - that’s not a negative income tax.
That’s the only incentive under this system, though, right? I mean, no benefits or similar provided by the employers, it’s all pay as you go for dental, health, etc, isn’t it?
And while I think our oligarchy would continue unabated, I do now concur that there would be a pretty significant rebalancing of power between employer and employees. I’m still not quite convinced this wouldn’t turn right back around and leave us in the same situation we are at now in terms of power balance, though, over the long run.
Because our current culture is based around money. And if that’s the only way to get ahead, then yes.
As an aside, I’m trying to look at this as a system that is started tomorrow plus ten or fifteen years to understand it. Long enough for the regulations to be exploited but not long enough for our culture as a whole to change much. One generation from now, ourselves will be clamoring for the iPhone 20, and we might have to work 1000 hours at Walmart to get it.
There is no separation between “person” and “labor person provides” in my opinion. You can’t expect your car to get 30mpg forever if you don’t take care of it, such as oil changes, air filters, brakes, and so forth. And that’s what pretending to separate the two pieces of a person does. It lets you pretend you are only buying labor and that their maintenance isn’t your responsibility. That’s, simply, poor asset management. Especially if you aren’t paying enough for the labor to perform that maintenance themselves.
Except that’s the same thing, the only difference is that you call it a tax instead of a minimum wage.
Then, outside of the removal of minimum wage, what’s the breakaway benefit of this plan? The reduction of costs associated with welfare payments?
I…never said it was? 
The company can determine the value of their labor. Society can determine the minimum cost of the labor, since society invests in the labor force by educating them when they’re young and taking care of them when they’re disabled, old, or poor. If the minimum cost determined exceeds the value of the labor to the company, the company doesn’t have to buy. This really is no different from toxic wastes. If a company uses a resource to produce goods or services it better pays for all the costs involved in that resource and not leave the rest of us to pay for it.
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Your first link states that, among the general American public, 83% favor work requirements for welfare, 80% agree that “work is the best solution for poverty” and 61% favor government providing jobs instead of welfare payment. A payment (NIT or otherwise) without a work requirement is not supported by a majority of the American public, let alone libertarians who are less supportive of social welfare than the general public.
Furthermore, 64% think too many are dependent on government aid, and 52% say it’s too easy to get food stamps. It seems that anti-welfare sentiments and anti-government-guaranteed-health-insurance sentiments are at similar levels.