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Comment by mcv | Hacker News Reader

I'm pretty left-wing (I consider myself a libertarian socialist), but I agree with Friedman. Once you have a livable basic income, you don't really need a minimum wage and progressive taxation anymore. Those things exist primarily to guarantee livable conditions for the very poorest, but Basic Income would guarantee those livable conditions in a far more simple and effective way.

Two important effects of this would be:

a) the labour market would become a lot more open and free. At the moment, employers wield all the power because employees need a job. It's not a free market if you can't say no to a deal. With basic income, people can say no if the offer is too bad. But if your alternative is starvation, a terrible job for too little pay is still better than nothing. Minimum wage exists to limit the employers' power to exploit people who have no option to say no.

b) It fixes the unemployment trap. For people with unemployment or disability benefits, getting a low-pay part-time job often means they end up with less money (or the same money and more costs) despite them taking the effort to work, because they lose the benefits. This discourages people from working. With Basic Income, you keep that income if you get a job, so you always get ahead by working, even if it's only a little. There's nothing fraudulent anymore about doing little jobs while unemployed.

I'd probably prefer both the basic income and the tax to be a bit higher than Friedman would like them to be, but that's part of the standard political-economic give and take. As long as the Basic Income is at least enough for decent food and rent, I'm happy.

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If you don't have progressive taxation any more, you're either going to be unable to pay for the BI or seriously hurt the middle classes. If the rich pay lower [net] taxes, someone else pays more (assuming you're not on the right hand side of a Laffer curve)

I agree, I don't see the logic in removing progressive taxation.

Progressive taxation is a recognition that there is a disproportionate benefit in living in an ordered and lawful society for those with high income (and assets, though we seem to have lost the plot on taxation of assets). You depend on the efforts of a lot of people, each of whom has benefitted from the state's education and infrastructure. Your products benefit from the state's legal support, your money from the state's stability, and so on. Progressive taxation is a recognition that those benefits don't scale linearly: those at the highest incomes benefit not only from the linear support of their wealth, but the exponential support of society.

Progressive taxation is also a recognition that wealth has declining marginal returns. $1000 in marginal income generates less utility for the billionaire than it does for the poor working single parent.

Progressive taxation is also a recognition that most of anybody's income is enabled by living in a modern, safe, resourceful, co-operative and free society. Without a modern society and without the benefit of all that have come before us, we'd all be subsistence farmers. Bill Gates may have been the most successful subsistence farmer ever, but that wouldn't have made him rich.

Taxation is not theft. Society enabled you to earn that money. In return, it wants a cut.

It's true that most of those who receive the money taken from you in taxes will not have 'earned' it either. Most of those that built the society that you're benefiting from are dead -- the scientists that enabled modern technology, the industrialists who built the economy, the soldiers and politicians who gave us our free society -- the most important work was done by those who came before us.

We are all their heirs.

>Society enabled you to earn that money. In return, it wants a cut.

The "cut" society received is the benefit it gained that made it pay the person enough to make them wealthy.

>Progressive taxation is also a recognition that most of anybody's income is enabled by living in a modern, safe, resourceful, co-operative and free society. Without a modern society and without the benefit of all that have come before us, we'd all be subsistence farmers.

Are the citizens of Singapore, with it's 20% top tax bracket, subsistence farmers? Are all the people in the countries listed at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flat_tax#Countries_that_have_f... subsistence farmers? There may be moral arguments for progressive taxation but they aren't economic ones; non-progressive taxation is perfectly capable of funding a modern society.

>It's true that most of those who receive the money taken from you in taxes will not have 'earned' it either. Most of those that built the society that you're benefiting from are dead -- the scientists that enabled modern technology, the industrialists who built the economy, the soldiers and politicians who gave us our free society -- the most important work was done by those who came before us.

These who came before us chose to do whatever they did. Someone being born didn't choose to be born, so it's not fair to suggest they have some kind of obligation to the previous generation. A contract to which one party did not consent is not a valid contract.

Given that Singapore is a medium-sized city providing financial services for an entire continent, it's probably not a model of fiscal sustainability the rest of the world can readily follow

And yes, virtually all the states on that list are significantly poorer and have drastically worse social services than Western Europe.

I didn't contract with the government to accept their jurisdiction over territory (though every tax I've ever paid has been due to a free and fair decision to do business and make purchases on their terms), but then I didn't contract with wealthy people to agree to their ownership of assets they claim rights to stop me using or charge me for using either...

Contrary to propertarian mythology, both the institutions of property and government are imposed by a mixture of force and the likelihood of society being substantially worse off if they didn't exist.

>And yes, virtually all the states on that list are significantly poorer and have drastically worse social services than Western Europe.

There's a big gap between "significantly poorer" and subsistence farmers. As in, an order of magnitude of GDP in many cases from that list (e.g. Russia).

>Contrary to propertarian mythology, both the institutions of property and government are imposed by a mixture of force and the likelihood of society being substantially worse off if they didn't exist.

The difference is that government necessarily involves force, due to requiring involuntary taxation (an entity funded by voluntary donations isn't generally considered a government, it's considered a charity), while it's possible for a group of people to agree to trade together and respect some notion of property (be it the strong capitalist notion of property or the weak anarchist notion of "possessions") without requiring force.

Russia certainly isn't a subsistence state, but I'd hesitate to call it a "modern society" too. It's also a petro-state that enjoys the luxury of deriving around a third of government revenues from oil and gas. Most of Western Europe has to make up that gap with additional taxes even before it starts to provide its citizens with more support.

You can have a perfectly harmonious society where everyone within it voluntarily respects each others' possessions, but you're still going to need force (or the implied threat of force) to prevent outsiders who aren't part of that particular social contract and don't particularly want to be from making use of that property. The possibility that someone might not voluntarily accept a social contract over the ownership of property is an existential threat to property rights which can only be resolved through [implied] force. Hence de jure and de facto the basis of all property and trade is the coercion that enforces its rules, whether that's by a government institution or a group of friends with big guns.

Not that I'm against progressive taxation, but I never understood how taxation not being theft tells us exactly how much Bill should pay. Theoretically if you have defined objectives you ought to wonder how much is the right amount getting you closest to these objectives. "We're all their heirs" could very well mean that Bill should give everyone in the world $10-20, so an equal share to everyone. This kind of thing does not work very well, however.

No libertarian beliefs that rich people do everything by themselfs without society. Bill Gates used a waste laber market, world trade system and much else.

I hope you agree with me that society does not equal government.

I do not beliefe taxation is theft, but your argument for taxes simple is not good either.

Your argument only makes sense if you assume that:

  government == society

Government is not the same as society, but in a functioning democracy, government should be the tool through which society organizes itself.

If government exists completely separate and independent of society, something is wrong.

Another assumption:

  our government == functioning democracy

Our government's apparent interests and the interests of the population are only loosely correlated in most instances and diametrically opposed to the interests of the population in way too many instances. Consider: copyright and other IP laws, the current voting systems, the power of lobbyists, congressional insider trading, military contract approval, etc.

Additionally, the large majority of society's interactions happen outside of any democratic vote. The whole goal of the Constitution was to narrowly white list the functions of government so that the Civil Society could be left to operate as it saw fit thus maximizing individual liberty.

In general, not maintaining a clean separate abstractions for government and society is like having classes that try to have too many unrelated behaviors. They lead to unneeded coupling of functions and an inability to reason cleanly about the whole system.

Not my assumption. Well, our government doesn't function too badly as a democracy, but the US government is a corrupt mess where voter interests are mostly ignored.

The thing is, the moment you abandon the option of using the government as the tool by which society organizes itself, you abandon democracy. I'm not sure where else you can go from there, other than accept that you're never going to be free.

Progressive taxation is just negative feedback for earning more.

Most taxes are percentage based. Let's assume tax level is 20%. - one earns $1000 he will give $200 in taxes, - one earns $10000 he will give $2000 in taxes.

Richer person already gives more to the society than the poor one, taxing the rich guy with higher taxes is just a way of making them guilty because they made it. Progressive taxation here in Europe actually hits the middle class the most, as most of them are already in the highest tax tier (I'm not talking about the ridiculous French 75%) and as soon as you reach this level you are suddenly hit by a big tax. It makes you wonder, what you did wrong?

"Richer person already gives more to the society than the poor one"

Richer person also received orders of magnitude more from society than the poor one.

"taxing the rich guy with higher taxes is just a way of making them guilty because they made it. "

It is not, at least to a sane person. If you're the type of person that believes that saying "Happy Holidays" is persecuting Christians, then you might think that.

"It makes you wonder, what you did wrong?"

No, it doesn't. Not at all.

In Netherland, you have to be well above average to hit the highest tax bracket, and even then, most of your income will fall in the lower brackets. To have most of your income in the highest bracket, you're well beyond middle class.

Don't know how it's at your end but where I'm from it's the middle class that pays for the taxes. I'm middle class and in the highest tax bracket.

Rich people have money. Making money using money is almost not taxed here. So they escape the taxes.

Part of the problem is that most middle class people don't have excellent accountants and tax attorneys. So they're an easy target. Whereas, if you're truly wealthy, you will optimise your taxes etc more. Most also don't mind going to court to challenge the government on certain bits of the law, if the risk/reward ratio makes sense.

If you are paying 40-50% in tax, they're probably only paying 15-20%

That's why I'm a big fan of VATs (with a displacing BI).

Yes, they are regressive. So are income taxes, the only difference is that people lie (even to themselves) about those.

I think VAT is great, if we can lower overall taxes. For example, I wouldn't mind seeing a high tax on luxury items. But a balance needs to be found within existing tax systems. In general, we shouldn't tax investments and labour as much. Those both create value. If I'm actively investing and getting great returns, I'm helping the economy.

Personally I'm quite a big fan of the Estonian tax system. You pay tax once you take money out of the company (i.e. when you want to spend it)

Woah, Estonia has a Land Value Tax! Baller! Reading about it briefly, I like the simplicity of it. I guess that's what you get when you can start relatively fresh like Estonia did (see also their e-citizenship and e-government efforts).

Where are you from?

If you have flat income tax and BI, the net result is much the same as progressive tax and no BI.

Consider a BI of 100 with flat tax of 45%, and people with before-tax paychecks of 300 and 1000. First guy ends up with 265, second guy with 650. These exactly correspond to BI-less tax rates of 12% and 35% respectively. Second guy's taxes can pay for both their BI and then some. Their paid taxes total 485, just short of 5 BIs worth.

That assumption is probably wrong.

Progressive income tax is no longer a very relevant factor for financing BI, or anything, in Finland. The main purpose of progressive tax in Finland is no longer about collecting revenue; it is about punishing those who are doing too well. That is very apparent from the public discourse.

So yes, Finland is likely somewhere on the right hand side of Laffer curve, particularly for high earners. (For low earners, many countries are; that's where BI system might help).

Your location on Laffer curve is of course hard to prove because the world is such a volatile place -- you cannot experiment with different tax rates and see what happens, because all the other factors impacting revenue are changing all the time so no trial will produce consistent results.

But Finnish income tax progression is just about the tightest in the world. The highest decile (anyone earning more than €50k a year, gross) pays about 43 % of income tax revenue [0]. However, that revenue pales beside revenue from consumption taxes (VAT, which is now 25%, and fuel taxes, and vehicle taxes).

The country's tax revenue is higher than ever, but it is not enough when government spending goes up even faster. Public deficit is about 3.3 % of GDP [1]. Whatever we do with taxes is not going to fix that hole. Some control on the money-flow out will be needed.

Finland also does not spend as much as you would expect on health, schools, military, infrastructure, public security and just about anything you normally think of as the government's role. There is one major thing where Finland spends comparatively more than other developed nations: transfers.

The motto of government seems to be "if it moves, tax it; when it eventually stops moving, subsidize it".

And many people who are about to make a lot of money (e.g. sell the company they've grown) will run to Sweden as a tax refugee. Think about that. Run to Sweden as a tax refugee.

[0] http://tilastokeskus.fi/tup/suoluk/suoluk_tulot.html [1] http://www.findikaattori.fi/fi/44

Consumptions taxes hit poorer people much harder than rich people. A top rate of 43% isn't that high. The top rate in the UK is higher. Granted it kicks in higher but it's still set at 45%.

That's not the top rate. The top rate is a bit over 60 % of gross amount.

43 % is the proportion of tax revenue paid by the top decile. (10 % of taxpayers pays 43 % of revenue.)

The difference being that you don't pay income tax when you sell a business, you pay capital gains. Those are usually taxed at a significant lower rate (or not at all, depending on the country)

For wealthy people, income tax doesn't matter as much as capital gains

Exactly. Competition keeps capital gains taxes reasonable, but that doesn't apply to earned income tax.

CGT is a mildly progressive 30-33 % here. If the government were trying to get 60 % which is my marginal tax rate for earned income, their revenue would likely plummet because there would not be much sense in showing capital gains in this country. Anyone selling a business etc would move to that great tax haven, Sweden, for the year when they sell.

For us workers, the best tax planning option is to switch earnings to non-taxable form like working for ourselves.

E.g. if I want to have a new garden shed, I don't pay someone to build it. I take unpaid leave from work and build it myself. This way, the tax office pays most of my garden shed. This country has probably the most expensive carpenters you can think of...

Indeed. Income earners usually can't escape the income tax. Capitalists very easily can. Or they at least can defer it indefinitely and live off of investment gains (for example, by using holding and investment vehicles)

At the end of the day, it's simple math. Live in country X, pay 33% when sold. Live in country Y, pay 15% when sold. Live in country Z, pay nothing. When we're talking about millions in tax, Monaco/Belgium/Malta/the UK do become very attractive very fast. After all, you can always return a few years later and live like a king.

if running away from this country, why not to say Netherland, Malta, Monaco, Suisse etc. where taxes are not so ridiculous? Is there some bilat agreement for choosing Sweden, already ridiculous place tax-wise?

Sweden is slightly less ridiculous, particularly for the very richest. And it is culturally and geographically close - in case you want to visit that aunt, and want to set up a company, and whatever. The way society, legislation etc. operates in Sweden is familiar. (Some laws passed by the Swedish king in 1734 were valid legislation in Finland until replaced quite recently, 1996.)

But of course people are running elsewhere as well. Recently there has been fuss about wealthy pensioners moving to Portugal where they pay no tax.

If you see Basic Income as a negative tax, it turns a flat tax rate into a smooth progressive curve.

Let's suppose a BI of $1000/month and a 50% flat tax.

Someone without a job gets $1000/month.

Someone with a $1000/month job pays $500, gets $1000, ends up with $1500/month.

Someone with a $2000/month job pays $1000, gets $1000, ends up with $2000/month, paying effectively no taxes.

Someone with a $4000/month job pays $2000, gets $1000, ends up with $3000/month, paying effectively 25% taxes.

Someone with a $10000/month job pays $5000, gets $1000, ends up with $6000/month, paying effectively 40% taxes.

Note that I'm not opposed to keeping progressive taxation on top of the BI. I just think it's not really necessary anymore, and it could be used to convince conservatives to give this a try.

Progressive tax means that the marginal rate increases with income, so, no, BI plus flat tax isn't (even viewing BI as negative tax) a smooth progressive curve, its still just a flat marginal rate.

If BI is also excluded from taxable income in an otherwise "flat" scheme, it's effectively a two-tier progressive tax system (many proposed "flat" taxes without BI also follow this model), with a zero % bracket and one other bracket; still not a smooth progressive curve. A smooth progressive curve is when marginal (not total) tax rate is a continuous, monotonically increasing function of income (probably asymptotically approaching done limit.)

In this example, the marginal rate is indeed flat, but the result on the total income is absolutely progressive, and asymptotically approaches a limit (50%, in the case of my example).

It's absolutely worth comparing this to some progressive tax systems without BI (though that's a lot more work because those systems are a lot more complex), but I suspect BI will do reasonable well in that comparison.

My understanding is that "progressive tax" is more typically defined as a rising average tax rate, which would make "BI plus flat tax" represent a set of smooth progressive curves.

It's very much worth noting, though, that there are plenty of progressive curves - including those currently in use by many jurisdictions - that have no close approximation in that set. And in particular, if what you want is an increasing marginal tax rate, it does not do that.

Not really, the US has a nominally 'progressive' tax rate and there are several bumps when various subsides expire where the marginal rate is much higher than the top tax rate.

EX: The interest on student loans are only tax deductible under a specific income. So, if you pay 2.5k in student loan interest your effective marginal tax rate increases by ~16% from 65k to 80k. The top tax braket in the US is 39.6 which is less than the 25% marginal tax rate from 65k - 80k + 16% (25+16 = 41). On top of that the top marginal tax rate does not include Social Security or Medicare income taxes, but deductions don't apply to SS or Medicare taxes.

> Not really, the US has a nominally 'progressive' tax rate and there are several bumps when various subsides expire where the marginal rate is much higher than the top tax rate.

I'm not sure what the "not really" refers to. Its true that the US system is only progressive if you look at nominal income tax rates, ignore the different treatment of different sources of income, ignore the main tax on income paid by most working people (payroll tax), and ignore, well, lots of other things.

That's kind of irrelevant to the point I was making, which had nothing to do with the status quo US income tax system.

> So, if you pay 2.5k in student loan interest your effective marginal tax rate increases by ~16% from 65k to 80k.

Actually, that's wrong, because deductions are not credits. If you got a credit for 100% of student loan interest paid that phased out over the $65k to $80k range, that would be an effective ~16.7% additional tax over that range with $2.5k of interest paid. But its a deduction (which means it reduces your taxable income), so with the marginal rate in that range of 25%, it only increases tax liability by $625, which is a ~4.2% increase in effective tax rate. (Which still breaks progressivity, since the effective marginal rate of 29.2% is slightly greater than the next bracket of 28%, buts its not greater than the top bracket of 39.6%.)

> deductions are not credits

Good catch, I read "You can reduce your income subject to tax by up to $2,500." as "You can reduce your income tax by up to $2,500."

Thanks.

Thats assuming you get your money from income tax. Thats the wrong assumption. The whole premise is that there will be less and less jobs until there are almost none left. So you need to find other means to pay for it whether thats by giving every employee a share in the automated workforce, taxing money that sit idle and so on.

Luckily the scenario of "employers wield all the power" you describe is so far from reality as to be irrelevant. In theory, employees need a job but they don't need this job. Turning it down is and taking a different job is always an option - that's why virtually no jobs actually pay the minimum wage.

You are somewhat right, however - a BI will give people the ability to turn down all jobs. E.g., in the last BI experiment, work effort was reduced by 13% - more than double the effect of the great recession.

A much better solution is the Basic Job. You get a Basic Income (which pays less than any job in the market economy) but you need to work for it. You spend a lot less money (anyone working in the market economy doesn't get paid by the basic job), you have minimal disincentive for getting a job, and you get some productive output (e.g. parks have less trash).

> that's why virtually no jobs actually pay the minimum wage.

What? Most jobs pay less that minimum wage.

> E.g., in the last BI experiment, work effort was reduced by 13% - more than double the effect of the great recession.

Because 13% didn't feel like being slaves anymore.

> A much better solution is the Basic Job.

That's slavery.

Less than 1% of people in the US earn minimum wage.

http://www.bls.gov/opub/reports/cps/characteristics-of-minim...

I'm going to ignore your blatant misuse of the term "slave".

3.9% of people paid hourly wages earn at or less than minimum wage from that link.

Your figure of 0.9% is for people over 25 who earn exactly minimum wage (1.6% in that line earn less than it)

Edit: Also, if you're not paid hourly (i.e. flat salary), you'll not be included in those tables. So if you're salaried at minimum wage, but work unpaid hours (which seems to be common in the US), you're earning less than the minimum wage, but not "Officially".

There are 3 million Americans earning minimum wage or below / 318 million Americans = 0.94%.

You can change the denominator if you like, that doesn't change the substance. Regardless, 0.94% or 3.9% is far less than "most" (which is what mrottenkolbar claimed).

True, but you do need to change the denominator though, as under 16's and retired people don't earn, so those ~105 million people[0] need to be excluded (otherwise it's mis-representing the facts).

[0] http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=age+histogram+of+the+US...

I said "1% of people" which is correct. You could also say "1.4% of working age people" or "3.9% of hourly wage workers" - these are correct too.

The only incorrect statement anyone has made is "most".

>>Turning it down is and taking a different job is always an option

That's simply not true. There are plenty of regions (many rural places) where the inhabitants have one option of where they can work due to a small number of employers and the individual's skill-set.

Yeah, we should really do something about this ban on internal migration. It's quite unfair that a person born in a rural area requires a difficult to acquire internal visa to shift to a location with better work opportunities.

Meanwhile, outside of China...

But like, how are you supposed to move when you have no car, no job, no computer, are 20 miles from the nearest city with things like libraries in it, and use up enough a fraction of your parents' monthly income (or whatever other source that lets you physically live day-to-day) such that they don't have much in savings to loan you?

As 'successful' people we can see many ways out of these arbitrary situations, even if you tie our hands behind our backs with something like "and no plan that involves your current professional skills like acquiring any old computer and doing software dev". We can also execute on our plans. For us, being poor is a choice, many of us started out that way to begin with and chose to do better than our parents. For a lot of others, it's really a lack of capability in not only seeing ways out but also precisely following instructions someone else gave them to get out. As the saying goes, you can lead a horse to fresh water... All the opportunities in the world are useless to you if you don't have the capacity to see them or execute on them.

So... move?

Are you going to pay their moving bills? Are you going to guarantee them a job when they get there? If not, then quit acting like it's the solution.

And that's why I moved from the rural area I grew in to the city, even though I would have preferred to stay there.

> " that's why virtually no jobs actually pay the minimum wage."

This may be true in some parts of the world but here in the UK the minimum wage has become a standard wage for all kinds of jobs.

This is because we have a tax credit system designed to make up the difference. What's happened over time is employers are gaming the system by offering jobs on minimum wage and the minimum number of hours required for the tax credits to kick in.

Often the hours offered result in someone working part time but on hours, such as 10 - 3, that make it impossible to get another part time job.

Employers that used to pay overtime now employ extra workers instead. So we have a country where unemployment is relatively low but where a lot of people don't have any disposable income.

Efforts by the current Government to address this problem are , predictably, meeting a lot of resistance.

This seems like an excellent system - you are getting productive output from more people than we do. This sort of contradicts the impression I have of the UK, namely council flats full of people who haven't worked in years. (Admittedly, I lived in the UK less than a year and don't know the stats.)

In the US most of our poor folks don't work - do you have stats showing differently in the UK? I'm very curious now.

I find it very difficult to describe that as an "excellent" system...

A GOOD system is the one which helps hard workers to lift themselves from being poor in any meaningful way (less bureaucracy, more help with kids, less taxes, more subsidies etc.) rather than one that prevents an easy improvement. What OP described ain't that good, unless your primary goal is to have nice low stats for unemployment.

This is true. Someone in a low paid job used to be able to work overtime (often at a premium) or get a second job.

The current system disincentives old fashioned hard work as any extra money earned equates to a drop in benefits received.

According to the ONS (May 2015) the 'employment rate' was 73.5%

However, the 'unemployment rate' was 5.5%

http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/lms/labour-market-statistics/m...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10604117

* A person is classed as unemployed if not only out of work, but also actively looking for work and available to start work within a fortnight.

* The unemployment figure is higher than the claimant count as many job seekers do not or cannot claim JSA (Job Seekers Allowance)

Keep in mind that the other ~27% of people who are not "employed" also includes retired persons, students, stay at home parents, disabled people who are not able to work, in addition to people who have just given up on job seeking.

> that's why virtually no jobs actually pay the minimum wage.

I thought this statement might be due to the crazy-low federal minimum wage in the USA, so I looked at statistics here in NZ where the minimum wage is closer to reasonable (although still only 75% of the living wage [1]). 2.4% of people in employment earn minimum wage [2], and 39% earn less than the living wage for their main job [3] (about the same if you look at total income). All statistics and values I've collected are for 2013.

[1] http://www.livingwage.org.nz/about [2] http://employment.govt.nz/er/pay/backgroundpapers/2013/mwr-2... [3] https://d3n8a8pro7vhmx.cloudfront.net/nzlivingwage/pages/129...

Theoretically that may be right. But the goal isn't just to make the math work. Its also to make the most good for the most people. And as automation proceeds, making fake jobs for people is not helping them. You'd have one guy spreading trash, and another picking it up.

Once automation actually replaces all the jobs lets rethink things. At that point a BI will be so cheap to provide that few people will have any objection. (Similarly, a 1900-level BI is already very easy to provide.)

We aren't close to that point yet.

What is unemployment at right now? If we're not there with automation, we're headed there like a freight train.

Meanwhile people without jobs are suffering. Lets fix that right now, with a BI.

Unemployment is currently 5.5%, i.e. it's a solved problem. If it goes significantly lower the fed will need to raise rates to slow things down.

We can also fix the problem of people without jobs by giving people jobs.

"Luckily the scenario of "employers wield all the power" you describe is so far from reality as to be irrelevant. In theory, employees need a job but they don't need this job. Turning it down is and taking a different job is always an option - that's why virtually no jobs actually pay the minimum wage."

Yeah, you've clearly not been going outside the past 5 years.

You probably need progressive tax system to fund a basic income; they aren't alternatives to eachother. Sure, if you can afford a sufficient BI, you can probably do without the minimum wage, though.

It is a nice idea, but it does not work at least not in EU.

It is also a nice idea for personal freedom, but not for the benefit of the society.

Minimum wage is a way much better thing.

For a) The EU has the property, that any citizen has the freedom to choose freely his work place and to choose freely his living place. People are using it and this is good for one and bad for others.

For example here in Germany, we have many people from Poland, Hungary, and other such countries working in jobs for cheap, at least cheaper than a German works for. Jobs are like health care system, construction work, butcher, and even in Amazon Fulfillment centers and alike. For them it is still a lot of money, because their and their families living place are their home countries. It is way cheaper to live in those countries than here in Germany. (I think the same is true for the Netherlands, Belgium and others.) So those people live here in Germany for cheap, because they consume here in Germany few to none services and goods. They bring their goods from their home countries with them. So that they can save money for the family support at home. That leads to the situation, that the money is removed from the circulation within Germany. Little to few services consumed means, no jobs for others, means also no taxes for the country.

That is not changed with BI. It is even more, local people (or people who decided to have their living place in that country) will benefit from BI and decide not to work for that low income. That is not a problem for the companies, because we have lots of those other people, who will work for that money, which will not qualified for BI. So basically, with BI you will introduce an even lower class/society.

Versus with required minimum wage the country, the society can set that to a level, which supports to live in that country. So that people are willing to work for that income. That means, that the money will no be removed from the country by people from abroad. The money will be used within the country to consume services and goods and as such will support other jobs as well. That will lead to an healthy economy.

For b) BI is not for people with disabilities. Do you really think, that people with disabilities should have the same amount of money? People with disabilities have way higher costs of living. They need special support in terms of (medical) device, re-fitted living space, re-fitted mobility requirements, and much more. So that people with disabilities have an equal quality of living, they need more support. But all ideas, I have seen so far, consider also the budget dedicated to people with disabilities as budgets to be usable for BI. That is like a kick in the ass to the people with disabilities.

In a common labour market like the EU, the sensible thing would be to introduce Basic Income in the entire EU. Having completely different economic systems in a union that lets people cherry pick their favourite element from each country, is not going to work. That has nothing to with BI, and everything with needing some degree of homogeneity in a system like that.

The mismatch between forced homogeneity in some areas (like currency) and not in others (fiscal policy) is what contributed to the Greek debt crisis.

For people with disabilities, you can add an additional income on top to reflect their additional costs. And as far as I'm concerned, if they do manage to get a job, even temporarily, they keep the extra income.

I used to know a buy who was seriously spastic. Easily 100% disabled. Nobody would ever expect him to work. But inside that spastic, uncontrollable body, he was actually very smart and good with computers, and he got a job as programmer with an employer willing to accommodate for him. Then the department he worked got downsized, and all his coworkers got unemployment, but he didn't, because he was disabled. So he registered for regular disability pay, but didn't get it because that was for people who got disabled during their working life, and his was a birth condition. There was a separate kind of disability pay for that, which he also didn't quality for, because that's for people who couldn't work at all, and he'd clearly worked.

With BI, that wouldn't have been a problem.

Erm, aren't you contradicting yourself? With minimum wage , it either has to be high enough that local workers are interested, people come and bring their own goods, so money gets removed.But that also happens with the higher minimum wages, since it is even more attractive. Just more competition. And if the minimum wage gets to low, you still have the "problem" of guest workers. Without a minimum wage, but with basic income, companies can now lower the wages such that they no longer are attractivene to people living here and only to the guest workers. However, they are also free to lower them to almost match the guest workers home country, if their primary form of labour comes from their. So the companies benefit, the country with BI benefit from increased consumption, social stability and more people taking risks like entrepreneurship and extended education and the only ones shafted are the guest workers. Which still sucks, from a solidarity point of view.

You will always need progressive taxation because it's "baling out the boat" since money when left alone flows towards the rich. It needs to be constantly clawed back to minimize inequality (which may be more important than absolute income amount). That's assuming you aren't gonna make big changes like phasing out money.

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