Non-labor costs are often fixed. There's a reason we make everything out of plastic instead of metal nowadays, and good reason we use cheap-grade plastic instead of high-grade composite, polypropylene, and so on as appropriate. I have a bisphenol-S "BPA-Free" polycarbonate blender on my desk right now, because glass and rigid polypropylene are more expensive than polycarbonate (which is less durable, and also toxic).

I'm doing better research with the BLS now. Will develop new numbers.

OP mentioned voting machines that change peoples' votes.

Alcohol only causes liver damage in high concentration. If your liver can process the alcohol in reasonable effort, it's not harmful. If your liver has to expend excess effort and incur a lot of stress to process alcohol, it's harmful. It's like putting load on your bones: they hold up, until the load is so heavy they crack, then break.

Not on hand. It was something I came across years ago when I was reviewing English alcohol laws. The Pennsylvania government research group that performed the study really did claim you're an alcoholic if you drink 2 drinks in 1 day more than 1 day per week.

Yes, but I'm trying to decouple living from working. I don't care to decouple *income* from working; and I damn sure don't want to decouple living *comfortably* from working. I'm not in the business of supplying entitlements to people--you don't deserve a large house, four kids, two cars, prime rib eye every night, flat panel TVs, Jos. A. Bank suits, and XBoxes just for being alive--but I do believe that homelessness and starvation of single individuals and couples is economically harmful.

You cannot decouple this concept from the concept of your time being worth something, and thus your life. A 40 hour work week means 40 hours each week devoted to earning income; if you can live without that, your life has so much open time for so many pursuits. That's a lot of value. Fortunately, small amounts of money hold large amounts of value when you are poor, so it's not like I'm going to teach the poor that they deserve $35/hr; $5/hr will be a massive step up, and it's up to the people--who have no coercion to work because they will have food to eat and a place to sleep even if they don't work--to decide if that step up is worth 40 hours per week. If it's not... McDonalds may have to pay $6/hr, or $7.50/hr.

Notice that the current minimum wage is $7.25/hr. With UBI as proposed currently totaling out to roughly $5.78/hr minus 10% in taxes (i.e. if your wage were $5.78/hr, you'd get what I propose as UBI), only an extra $1.47/hr brings you to the current minimum wage. But current minimum wage predicates on current market conditions--on housing as small as a 500sqft studio for $500/mo, not a 224sqft sub-studio for $300/mo--and on compensation only if you work, not if you're simply at home. $1.47/hr will not compensate you for 100% of your work, and you have no absolute need for it, and it will not improve your life; nobody will work for that.

That's what I want. Not working, you have a place to sleep, shower, receive mail, prepare and eat food--food which you can afford--and run as far away from when you're not doing these things, because damn that's a tiny shit hole. Working, your employer better compensate you enough to escape that or otherwise buy a better quality of life, or you just quit your job. Work-to-live is not in my interest, nor is it in the nation's: we decided that when we created a dozen welfare systems to support people who aren't working.

You completely ignored this quote:

People have advocated that. We actually had that in Reagan's years.

I did point out that a flat tax may be more viable in my proposed system. I haven't done the full analysis because it's irrelevant (it's fixable later if a flat tax is better, and it has zero impact on the stability and performance of the system I want implemented), so I take little position on graduated versus flat taxes outside of finding a "tax the rich for everything" strategy retarded.

FWIW, a partial analysis indicates that a flat tax *may* be better in my system in general, as it would encourage higher salaries and resist the impact of inflation. The reason I don't argue much for it is because the effect is strongest at the lower end (i.e. the basic labor jobs), and can potentially be of no impact to the middle class (i.e. they get taxed more, but don't get the luxury of higher salaries), while not necessarily causing a reduction in prices or a control on inflation. It could either cause greater inflation or cause lesser inflation--another aspect I haven't worked out a firm disposition on. This lacking information also indicates the same effects may occur in general--that higher taxes on the businesses in particular (rich folk salary and compensation is actually negligible) lead to higher costs, thus evening it out by rolling the taxes over to the consumer. This indicates a possible flaw in the basic graduated tax system theory, which I haven't explored and thus haven't decided if it exists at all.

In short, that particular aspect is complex, and I've done the analysis enough to figure out I don't need to worry about it for the major goals of reforming the welfare system. If it can be improved, it can be improved later, without destabilizing the stuff I'm trying to fix now; I'll worry about actually understanding it when I want to meddle with it.

They're not doing that, but that's what keeps getting raised. People want the rich to "pay their fair share", which I'm all for; but what people want is for us to tax the rich more than the not-rich, ranging from a reasonable step up (which I don't have a strong argument against, as I have no argument against a graduated tax system per se) to just taxing the living fuck out of them in every way (92% income tax above $1M/year, 90% inheritance tax, jack up capital gains tax, charge them property tax on investments, huge property tax on private yachts and jets, etc.). That's what Occupy Wall Street was about, in part. It was about a lot of things.

I don't believe that the rich are the fundamental source of welfare. While I have no argument against a graduated tax system per se, I do argue against a graduated UBI tax, as it becomes sensitive to income distribution and thus becomes less stable. With that in mind, the UBI system I propose has no minimum wage and, due to the dynamic this combination causes, would self-adjust for taxes on the poor by simple matter of value proposition. In short: because $10/hr is now $5/hr due to flat taxes applying higher taxes to your $10/hr wage, you're not going to consider $10/hr worth what it was when the tax system was graduated and $10/hr was $8/hr. You're going to want $16/hr for the same job.

Flat income tax: not essential for my proposal, not even important, not addressed at all. Impact of a flat income tax on the poor is reduced or eliminated; exact impact is not known because I don't care to work it out, because it's irrelevant, as a basic standard of living is established even for those who have zero income, and so the goals of my system are accomplished. The mode of general income tax is not a threat to this system, nor does it have an impact, and so it is a decoupled issue not worth my immediate concern, so I take no position on it.

Wow. So not wanting to elect any of those motherfuckers is not a valid reason.

You want advice? Escalate to force.

There's also the political issues with voting machines. There was a video of a guy exploiting a touch screen vulnerability to show Obama votes getting changed to Romney here. Basically, with some touch screens, the edge of the screen is odd, or using the edge of your finger produces odd results. My phone, for example, will often register a touch in the center-right of the keyboard if I try to hit backspace--which is in the lower-right corner of the fucking screen--if I graze the edge of the screen. SO there was a video of a guy showing it's impossible to vote for Obama, by using the side of his finger (the hard edge that folds over the nail) to poke the edge of the screen at the edge of the Obama checkbox.

My extensive experience with touch screens immediately raised the question: why aren't you poking the checkbox with your fingertip, like a normal person? Why the edge of your finger against the side of the checkbox along the edge of the screen? Why poking in the exact same way in the exact same spot?

They may or may not be accurate. It wasn't a very scientific study, and I can think of a few better ways to do it.

Minimum wage is supposed to provide for a basic standard of living. It is a voluntary system in which employer can find ways to employ fewer employees. Minimum wage also allows employers to highlight that a higher authority has dictated the value of low-skill labor, providing strong negotiating power to keep such wages low regardless of the work involved.

If we eliminate our welfare system--retirement (social security, government pensions), family and food security (food stamps, WIC, HUD housing assistance), unemployment, and a few other low-hanging fruit, but excepting medicare and medicaid (due to complex economic impact)--and replace it with a universal basic income set on a flat tax of 15% of all personal income (welfare currently represents 25% of personal income), everyone would be able to afford very basic housing and access to all basic needs. No one goes homeless, no one goes hungry.

Under such a system, your employment decision is between NOT working and living in a shitty apartment somewhat bigger than an RV (224sqft, with 6x9 bedroom and 10x9 sitting room, is my baseline), or working some hours for some pay. That whole employment thing is a costly impact on quality of life, but a doubling of your income--about $5/hr for a 40 hour week today on the numbers I've given--would bring your quality of life up sharply. The return diminishes as your income grows--$5000/year to $15000/year is big, but $150,000/year to $160,000/year is negligible--so the incentive to work is highest for the unemployed, but so is the power to not work if the terms (wage) are bad.

With no minimum wage, a very basic job is worth your time. Running a cash register in an air conditioned room is comfortable and non-taxing, and not worth much--enough to improve your quality of life considering the time you lose to employment. Manual labor in hazardous, hot, sweaty, dirty, distressing, uncomfortable conditions will not be tolerated without additional wages to offset the misery of your work. Minimum wage would establish that such a job--doable by any odd moron--is worth the same as running the cash machine at McDonalds, or perhaps very little more. Lack of minimum wage gives no reference and no guidance, so employers must convince each individual that the wages are somehow fair without appealing to a higher authority.

Nope. I worked it out long ago by computing the amount of profit businesses make, and then sum-dividing wages from that. So if you make $1,000 of revenue with $910 of expenses (raw materials, services, wages, etc.) and pay $10 in wages, you have $90 of profit. Take that $90 plus $10 in wages and you have $100 as the useful output of workers. That $10 in wages is what you pay the workers, so $10/$100 = 10%.

I went looking up some big business profit numbers (Ford, WalMart, etc. make good studies) and the amount they pay out in wages (on their balance sheets), and then added the wages in and divided them by the whole profit+wages figure. Turns out you keep 9% of what you provide, on average.

In a wealthy economy, this form of economics provides a lot of value. Capitalism gives us freedom of choice, mobility, innovation, and a whole host of other things. It also gives us many problems, but so do other systems; some of those problems are implementation details, and actually easy to correct (if we scrap our current welfare system, I have a much better one I've worked out...). Very poor economies can't deal with capitalism at all, and won't be so hot on a more appropriate system either, but they're better off on something that fits better.

It's kind of like how poor people who have to stretch their money and still frequently go hungry shouldn't be stretching their money on crab and lobster, but rich people can have all the caviar and private yachts and hot captain's deck blow job babes they want. Capitalism is that private yacht full of caviar and endless bikini bjs.

Well what else would you do in the prime of your life? Spend all day drinking and having sex?

Generates, or receives as income?

Capitalism is an inefficient system. It costs a hell of a lot, and affords greater mobility than other systems. Rich economies can handle that, while poorer economies are better off with feudalism.

In feudalism, serfs retain 25%-70% of their productive output--a large variation over history and geography. Barons provide protection for the serfs, as well as other meaningful services; in modern times, a barony would likely include medical research and treatment, so as to protect the baron's investment and allow for higher tithes: if you invest 5% of production to reduce the needs of your serfs by 15%, you can tax them 15% more and make out 10% richer. This represents an increase in wealth, rather than a moving of wealth as with securities investment. Carried out, we would assume the tithes would increase as much as possible without harming the serfs and the productive work they do.

Modern capitalism is different. Your employer provides you roughly 9% of your productive output as a salary. Taxes are taken from this 9% to pay for protection (police, military) and services (roads, etc.). A capitalistic barony would take so much taxes if it didn't harm the serfs, eventually making capitalism a much better option.

The difference is wealth. Poor nations with few natural resources need to pool their efforts to survive, which makes feudalism a more viable system. Wealthy nations are much better off with capitalism. Selecting the wrong system actively reduces human rights. Feudalism in Burkina Faso would improve human access to food, clean water, and shelter, because now the capital value is in the people working the land, and their welfare is critical for profit. By contrast, Feudalism in America would only serve to revoke many of our freedoms without improving our welfare.

Are you sure people only produce $2-$4 million of wealth in their lives?

Capitalism works better without a minimum wage. If you need a minimum wage, your system is broken and not stable, and the minimum wage isn't helping. It's like voluntary health insurance: just hire more employees working half as many hours, and don't pay for that shit. Minimum wage? Automatic burger makers, self-checkouts, and just ride your employees' asses to make them do more work in less time with fewer people.