re: The Real Fear of $15/hr Min Wage

It will only create more self checkout lines at the stores. Walmart is already testing this blaming it on COVID

Try imagining your next Florida vacation when the cheapest hotel is $350 a night

Your next sports ticket is $500

Unintended consequences abound

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How the frick do grocery stores, fast food chains, gas stations, and most (state) government offices stay open, stocked, and/or available at a $15 minimum wage workers? Most states are already between $7-10 and those locations cycle through teens and drug-addicts on a regular basis.

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Because the goal isn't a $15 min. wage, the goal is UBI. They know exactly what the $15 min. wage would do.

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Where is that UBI money going to come from? How can you have more people drawing money, than you have taxpayers paying it in?

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I’m no expert on fiscal policy or UBI. But, there’s a few different ways you can implement UBI and with different focus goals. Someone like Milton Friedman basically wanted to eliminate all welfare and replace it with cash payments and stimulate the economy. Others think that the government ought to provide a decent living standard for everybody in the country and then if people want more they ought to work for it.

There are many ways you can pay for UBI and it also depends on how much you want. If you want like $30k a year you’d basically have to just take heaps of money from the Uber rich and that would be difficult to do and it would likely have negative economic impacts. But for say $1k/month it’s much more feasible. Andrew Yang’s main source of funding for his UBI is adding a 10% VAT and cutting some welfare programs. People would choose between $1k/month and their current welfare program. Economic growth from people spending their money and a few other minor taxes would pay for the program.

Another way to pay for UBI would be a wealth tax. It is estimated that $12k a year to every American would cost $3t. Bernie Sanders says his wealth tax (1% on every dollar earned over $32m and progressively increasing) would raise around $4.5T whilst a Wharton study found that it would raise around $3T. This would easily cover UBI. If What Sanders claims is correct then we'd have $1-1.5T left over this could returned to working and middle class americans through tax cuts.

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As an owner of this exact type of business (and successfully still thriving) in Texas I'm all for 15 per hr.

What folks don't understand is most already pay 15 for quality people.

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Are you incapable of understanding the difference between a company choosing to pay a quality employee $15 and being forced to pay a shitty employee $15 just because the company needs a warm body?

Do you also not understand that you will now need to pay your quality employees $20-25?

You are so beholden to your ideology that you will stick with it even when it is detrimental. I see this with conservatives that support private companies being able to trample the Bill of Rights, too.

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It's weird y'all are so concerned, like why don't you make enough to be content and not care what others make?

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Many small businesses make enough to be content, but forcing them to double wages for unskilled workers will force them out of business. Not every small business makes hundreds of thousands in profit a year. Many business owners make just enough to be comfortable.

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When (not if) automation comes the government should pay everyone over 18 UBI.

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Why should high schoolers living at home get UBI?

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People having more money deters crime

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People having jobs deters crime. People with nothing to do tend to get in trouble.

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it wouldn’t cause much inflation if done properly

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bullshite.

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Plus people working somewhat less is a good thing. People should have more time to do things they enjoy.

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Agreed, but there is a limit. What if what they enjoy is committing crime? Look at the ghettos. Lots of people not working, lots of crime. These people aren't creating masterpiece works of art or writing the great American novel. They aren't even cleaning up the trash in their own neighborhoods with all their free time.

We already have a lot of people not working or barely working because of welfare. UBI will just make it worse.

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It's a tax on net worth not earning.

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This is a truly terrible proposal.

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It's 15 years out. None of these companies are Amazon or equipped to scale in robotics in any similar way. And even if they were, Amazon is still a massive employer of live flesh and blood humans

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Moores
Law

You may be right but these larger retailers have massive leverage and can make anything happen if they have the will. They may not have the will right now but if you apply enough pressure theyll find it. It only took a $1 hike for a lot of them to go to automated checkouts.

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I prefer the employer pay a decent wage so my tax dollars don’t go to food stamps to support them. We pay the price one way or another. Which would you rather have?

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Since the price of everything will rise, so will the level/wage at which food stamps are “needed”. Those 15/hr folks will qualify still, under the new adjusted guidelines.