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Comment by masterleep | Hacker News Reader

Wonderful news! Just set the minimum wage to $100/hr, and we'll be in fat city!

The Seattle experiment would have to be repeated for higher levels of minimum wage. I would suggest a basic income instead though, then people won't have to pick fruit to survive :)

Paying the top 1/2 of earners a basic income is hyper regressive and inefficient (you have to turn around and tax it back from them).

The current progressive income tax system paired with a higher income tax credit - instead of a counter productive higher minimum wage - is a vastly superior approach that has already been proven to work very well.

BI is a fantasy at best. At worst, it'll wreck any economy that attempts it - which is also why none has or will. There's no scenario under which BI works out financially.

Why would you have to introduce inefficiencies like taxing the payment from the government, or if you did do that, how is it any different from just increasing the income reported for the year that you get from work already? As for it being hyper regressive, one of the benefits of BI is that you have no means testing at all and can save on all of the bureaucratic overhead. You can still keep a progressive income tax on top of the BI payments.

I'd also like to see actual evidence that BI cant work out financially. You get X tax dollars out of your economy, you Pay out X/population to each person. How does that not work out?

inefficient (you have to turn around and tax it back from them).

Subtracting two lines is hyper inefficient?

That only works is BI is implemented as part of the tax system.

My salary is not even paid by the government, yet it already arrives into my account after discounting taxes.

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