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Comment by photojosh | Hacker News Reader

Yep. Basic income means we can do away with minimum wage. Now let's see how much poorly-regarded jobs (like janitorial) end up paying when the free market really does decide.

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My prediction is "not that different from today, perhaps a little less". The chief skills required are reliability and work ethic. People getting UBI of $600-800/mo aren't going to see janitorial work as "beneath them".

It would probably increase the value of such work. If I get $600/mo I am going to want a lot more than that to work full time doing something messy. Anything that was previously paying below the basic income amount would have to increase the wage to get anyone to take it up. This is already an issue in countries with an actual welfare system, you can't really pay below the dole rate and expect anything other than illegal workers who are going to do the absolute minimum.

This isn't a downside of basic income, there is always a floor on the amount you can pay for labour. If you pay below what the market expects you are only going to get the truly inept to do it.

Basic income is financially impossible. Even retirement schemes are barely sustainable and constantly under pressure these days.

Financial impossibility is a strange thing. Is if physically impossible for just %20 of the population to work? We have so much amazing technology, we should be able to attain that. Why let money get in the way of what is physically possible? Its just paper. Its not even paper. Its an integer.

All right, why not give a billion dollars each tomorrow? It's just integers (OK, decimals) in bank accounts. Let's do that and solve our economic problems for good! /s

Monetary supply/demand is a tiny bit more complicated than that.

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