Why the world should adopt a basic income

The Minimum Wage is not coercion. It is complicity to keep wages low. But it keeps people poor.

Put the Minimum Wage up to $15 an hour (doubling it) and your BigMac will cost 50 cents more. But it will do wonders for those working at Mcdonalds.

They will actually spend the money, and thus create further jobs.

Wow! Who would have thought of THAT ... ?

 

So the workers get more money to spend, and the employer gets less money to spend. So it's a wash. Spending remains the same.

 

It would seem once again someone does not understand the definition of "coercion".

 

I wouldn't mind having a little UBI show up when my checks are running late.

 

And bollocks to this illegitimate notion. You rewriting the dictionary?

Where the definition of Anarchy is: A state of disorder due to the absence or non-recognition of authority or other controlling systems.

Other controlling systems? Yes, foremost of which are Free Elections without contraptions like Gerrymandering and Electoral Colleges ... !

 

Likely to fall on deaf ears again, but those wages will be set high enough to keep you toiling, but not so high as to be fully compensating you for your productivity.

In either case, you won't really know.

You keep saying people don't understand coercion despite the fact that an in-context definition has been offered, along with examples (from the same paper), which I guess you've just decided to ignore since it's inconvenient for whatever position you hold, which isn't even clear since the posture is purely defensive.

Worse, you've taken it down a rung with this reductio ad absurdum "argument" of paying workers $.01. Just turn on your noodle champ! If everyone's getting paid a penny, they couldn't buy whatever the widget they're making is, no one could anything unless they were sold for a similarly low price and hopefully this walk down reality has illuminated precisely how absurd it is, even in this context.

Having wage setting power does not in anyway mean they could or would even want to reduce wages to zero. But hey, maybe in the fantasy economic world some of you seem to occupy, every worker instantaneously teleports to whichever job will offer them their current wage+$1, it will take them no time to find this position, the move is free and it won't require any skills different from the one's you're currently using.

 

In the zero sum world, that's true. But the evidence doesn't support that overly simplistic view.

Also, even if we accepted that non-existent zero sum scenario. The wage hikes are spread across all the employees, meaning more albeit smaller transactions of goods that aren't likely capital goods, increasing the impact of those dollars spent since they're likely to be spent locally. This is all true, but meaningless. Hikes in the MW haven't been shown to have any significant impact on the price of goods in that geography.

 

You seem to think that, as labour supply isn't perfectly inelastic, you have a point. You don't. Labour supply shows elasticity, with that elasticity guaranteeing monopsonistic power. And that power is definitely coercive. Workers are forced to accept a wage below their worth and mutually beneficial exchange opportunity is destroyed.

 

Workers aren't forced to accept any wage they don't choose to accept.

 

Where I am employed my employer raised starting salaries for my position over $5000.00 per year. They also raised the salaries of every one in my position by the same amount.

When asked why, they commissioned a study of salaries for comparable positions, and determined that in order to attract the quality of employee they were seeking the needed to maintain a more competitive position in the market place (even the restricted market place such as the United States).

I'm other words, the competition in the market place determined my pay, not the firm.

 

It's in this real world due to mathematics. If the employer gives the employee more money, then the employer necessarily has equally less money.

But must necessarily mean a reduction in the purchase of capital goods by employers, thus retarding economic growth.

 

As I pointed out to @Reiver, the employer does not user coercion to force the employee to work for pay. The employer offers a job, and interested people choose whether or not they want that particular job.

 

If there is only exchange, wages would reflect productivity and a minimum wage could not create mutually beneficial exchange opportunity. Your position, as usual, is based on ignoring economic reality.

 

A lot of the free world depends on slave labor.

 

A person's wage should reflect the amount of money to which he and the employer agree.

 

I had an employee years ago, and told him the only thing that prevented me from paying him what he was really worth,
was Minimum wage laws.

 

You're just confirming that you don't understand supply and demand. A firm, assuming it profit maximises, should pay according to demand conditions (ie productivity criteria). It doesn't as It has wage making power, with underpayment subsequently reflected by labour supply criteria.

Given that destroys exchange opportunity and forces wages below an efficient amount, that is certainly coercive.

 

So your argument is that the market has arrived at the wrong price. Good luck with that. Prices are what prices are. You can't argue against the market.

 

My argument? My argument is that your position is hypocritical and constructed from an invalid understanding of supply and demand. I have already proved that. See previous post!

 

Hypocritical in what way? I support the free market and oppose the use of (government) violence to interfere in the ability of people to engage in trade to which they mutually agree.

 

You are in a, Economics Debate Forum.

Prove this statement with statistical evidence.

Or leave it ... !

You who? How? Where?

When will you LEARN how to punch the Reply button and QUOTE the person to whom you are responding!?!

 

MEANING LIVING DECENTLY!

Of course such hikes do have an impact upon the prices of goods/services in a market-economy! The higher costs of man/woman-power must be recuperated by industry that deserves to turn a profit.

But so what? Your BigMac is going to cost 50/60/70-cents more!

What's important is that workers that shifted from $7.25/hour to 12/13/14/15$ per hour are going to SPEND their income thus boosting overall economic performance. They will start buying proper housing instead of living in cheap hovels! Lord be praised, maybe even buy a car or electric-scooter instead of taking the bus to work!

Meaning what? Meaning living decently for the first time in their lives ... !

The difference in Lifestyles Led is enormous!
*Nowadays if you get sick, off you go to the ER and hope to get some relief. Because at $7.25 an hour, you can't afford to see a doctor! Whereas if the US had National Healthcare you might have been able to nip-in-the-bud an illness that will otherwise eventually kill you.
*If the US had free Postsecondary Education, you'd apply for jobs that begin at $50K a year ($25 an hour) and not the Minimum Wage of half that amount. Whereby you'd be able to raise decently a family.

The poor in American are living in a hell of our own making because we won't double the Minimum Wage ... !

 

Source of photo please. (Find me five cops that small/thin in the US!!!!!!!!)

It's a familiar event that happens daily in Brazil! Let's see a photo of the same event happening in the US.

Who do you think you are trying to fool ... !?!

 

We know, given supply and demand, that removing the minimum wage will incresse underpayment and the equilibrium unemployment rate. Demanding the removal of the minimum wage in celebration of 'free market economics' is hypocrisy as that removal harms mutually beneficial exchange.