Hacker News Reader

Comment by lesam | Hacker News Reader

If there was an alternative in the form of a guaranteed not-terrible job at minimum wage, wouldn’t that necessarily raise wages (or maybe working conditions) for currently terrible jobs?

Giving people a real choice seems easier than regulating every possible kind of job.

View on HN

Why even bother with a guaranteed not terrible job? Seems simpler to go with universal basic income than wasting resources on uneconomic jobs.

There is a problem right with the motion of "uneconomic". If fixing basic infrastructure or growing food is unprofitable, but building sportscars or yachts is not... that seems to indicate a problem with the economic system of allocation of resources.

If society thinks there are too many sports cars or yachts, then it can increase marginal wealth/income/property/sales taxes. And if society thinks there is insufficient food or infrastructure, then it can pay people to make food and build infrastructure. Either way, if both are competing for the same supply of labor, only the highest bidder will get it.

Society can think whatever it wants, as long as it's only a small elite (truly) calling the shots and the will of the majority is ignored.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-poli...

Especially https://static.cambridge.org/binary/version/id/urn:cambridge...

There are too many sports cars and yachts. We don’t need a single one of them. There are half a million homeless people in the US. The only reason taxes aren’t being raised on those and other luxury goods is because politics isn’t controlled by an algorithm but by a system whose outputs feed back into its inputs: the wealthy are made wealthier through political decisions.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com