So medium is now a small?

No, they've regressed to the mean.

How so? Take someone that's being paid, let's say, $5000/month at the moment, and let's take a UBI of $1000/month to have a neat number to work with. With the UBI they'll be getting $6000/mo, but paying back $1000/mo for a net of $5000/mo. That's exactly what they were already getting, so where's the subsidy for the employer?

The $1000 less they have to pay the person to do that job because that component of their worth in the market is being met by the UBI not the employer.

The minimum wage is not the same thing. It is a required minimum amount the employer must pay, not a minimum amount paid by the public.

It's a good point. I quite like the general idea. None of this is going to be viable long term though, because we can automate all of these things too.

Yes. But there needs to be a transitionary step so the people who can't handle the idea of "getting something for nothing" can get their head around it (or die).

They can't just pay $X less and hope to still have people working for them though, unless the resulting wage is high enough that the employee will be paying most or all of their UBI back in taxes, in which case the $X reduction is mostly or completely just a regular pay cut.

That doesn't really address the point ? Even if someone is being paid relatively a lot, the UBI still represents a subsidy to their employer who will be paying them roughly the equivalent of the UBI less than they would be if it didn't exist.

A job guarantee relies on there being jobs available, which as we've established is kind of the problem. I guess you could invent some pointless work for someone to do, but forcing them to spend a significant chunk of their time doing meaningless busy work doesn't strike me as being better than not forcing them to do it.

There is arguably plenty of work that is not so much "pointless" as not particularly profitable. Someone to help little old ladies on and off buses, for example. Or more teachers. Or take back all the jobs around publicly funded services that have been privatised and improve it (eg: cleaning staff).

That is an incredibly convoluted way of saying "reduce the cost to business for employing people". :)

But it doesn't really explain what you're trying to achieve. The last few decades show that reduced costs to business go primarily into CxO bonuses and - maybe - shareholder dividends.

Businesses aren't charities. They won't employ more people without unmet demand. Supply-side economics is bunk.

In that context what really matters is this:

[...] while receiving an extra $269.08 deposit from Social Security every 2 weeks.

Not the reduction in taxes to business (though I agree payroll taxes are bad taxes).

As I said elsewhere, a jobs guarantee is a better and fairer option than a UBI (or similar), at least until we really do have robots that can do anything and current attitudes towards welfare have matured.

Let me put it another way, a UBI of $X is a subsidy of $X to employers who can pay their employees $X less and pocket the difference themselves.

A jobs guarantee (paid employment by Government for anyone who wants it) is a better and fairer solution than a UBI, at least until we really do have robots that can do anything and everything.

And if you don't pay your employees enough, they'll stop working for you[...]

That's OK, there's zillions more employees out there. We already have a massive surplus in workers (hence high unemployment and low wages) and that surplus is only going to keep increasing.

But since people who are working will essentially be giving their UBI back in taxes anyway, I find it hard to see it as a subsidy to businesses.

Employer pays someone a dollar an hour to work 20 hours a week. Worker needs UBI to live.

What scenario are you envisaging where a worker will be paying back their entire UBI in taxes ?

Yes, it is.

The only free market is one without any rules. So no property rights, no contracts, no money, no fraud, no standards, nothing.

Anything else and all you're doing is arguing about the extent of regulation you want in your market.

It shouldn't take long with a history book to conclude where "no rules" inevitably ends up.

Taxes don't need to be raised on the highest income earners; they can be lowered on businesses, notably on payroll (tax taken based on how much wages you pay).

What would this achieve ?

Believe it or not, there are a number of high profile libertarians advocating basic income over the sprawling welfare state we have.

Of course they are. A UBI is a subsidy to business. If the Government is paying their employees a wage, they won't have to, which means more money in their pocket.

What's "a LOT" to you ? Half a percent of the population ? One percent ?

The ironic thing is that this is basic investing, that businesses should be glad to be doing. I don't get why this is not done more often.

Socialise the costs, privatise the profits.

Why would businesses pay for something when they can get everyone else to pay for it instead and take the money they would have spent in CxO bonuses ?

He says. On the internet.

90% of the work we're doing now (and probably closer to 100% of slashdotters' work) doesn't *need* to be done, but we do it anyway.

That's because the alternative is to just give them the things they need to live, which bothers a lot of people who like to take the position that the only moral way to survive is to work.

It has nothing to do with Maslow. If people's time wasn't taken up with bullshit jobs, and they instead were able to do work they found personally fulfilling without having to worry about working to survive, then their esteem and self-actualisation would be taken care of.

>K'Breel was deposed and executed after his repeated failures in repelling the Terran aggressor. We don't speak of him. All hail mighty G'Ranee, Supreme Leader for Life!

LATE-BREAKING NEWS FROM THE COUNCIL: VICTORY! The Council of Elders has confirmed the blueworlders' resumption of aggression upon our noble red sands. K'Breel, Speaker for the Council of Elders, addressed the planet thusly: OKAY. Okay, so I'm K'Breel (even though anyone on Slashdot can assume the mantle merely by declaring themselves Speaker for the Council), and I'm late, but I'm merely chronologically late, not as in the Late Second Adjunctant to the Council Formerly Known As G'Ranee.

But domestic politics is beneath us tonight -- just take a glance at the blue world beneath us for a look at how bad that can get -- and let us focus on what's important: over the past sol or so, our Planetary Defense Force has been so good at pre-emptively distracting the blueworlders with tasks like landing comets, grabbing their prospective mates by their genitals, low-planetary orbit missions, and just general tribal infighting that we haven't had to shoot down any robotic invaders in quite some time. But when the opportunity presents itself, we take advantage of it, and so, we did. Hence the trivial elimination of yet another putative invader from elsewhere. We'd do it every day, except that the blueworlders lack the gelsacular fortitude to send us more targets. Now as to gelsacular fortitude, on to Second Adjunctant G'Ranee...

When a junior reporter pointed out that the destroyed invader was merely a technology demonstrator built on the cheap to see if a landing was possible, and that the blueworlders' actual payload was safely in orbit, K'Breel had the reporter's gelsacs launched into orbit alongside those of G'Ranee for a closer look.

Why would people not be aware of drugs available to them without drug ads on TV ?

Do you not have doctors and pharmacists in your country ?