What are the pros and cons of Guaranteed Minimum Income?

Ideally less homelessness.

Less working people needing government help at the end of their work week to food on the table.
More disposable income in the hands of the lower working class,thus buying more,and putting more people to work,the only downside is the rich won’t be making as big a profit off the backs of the poor,if minimum wage was a living wage instead of the fucking joke it is today.

On the other hand, employers may hire fewer employees and work the ones they have much harder. Not necessarily in all cases, but in stores or business’ where the margin is very thin such as mom and pop grocery stores, restaurants and services. High overhead is really hard on very small business’ and a living wage rate would make it difficult for them to turn a satisfactory profit. Just saying it sounds great for Wal-Mart but very scary for Carl’s carry-out and deli.

@majorrich That is the fear tactic used every time a living wage issue is brought up,and sure it might start out like that but with the overtime those businesses will have to pay,and tired employees being far less productive how long do you think that would go on??

@majorrich I think it will be much more dire than your estimation….they are already developing robots to operate at stores like Wallyworld and Home Depot where the bots will take you to the item you are seeking. In the not so distant future you will be using a kiosk type interface to order your to go food items. The self checkout lanes in stores may seem like a quick exit out of the store….but there is now someone who no longer has a job. IMO…higher minimum wage will mean far less entry level jobs.

@Cruiser Industry is going to use that automation wether minimum wage is 5cents or $50 bucks an hour,and other than late at night I would rather go to the teller at my bank than the ATM.
I refuse to use those auto check outs at the food stores an go to the cashier even if it means waiting 10 minutes.
Look at the auto industry, robots do a great deal of the assembly now on vehicles ,that a few years ago humans did, and those are not entry level jobs.
Look people scream at wanting a smaller Government,than stop making the bottom earners depend on the damn government so much.
I know there will always be different wage scales,depending on education,training ,and who you know,but even those bottom entry jobs,who I know you will say is filled mostly with teenagers,yeah right,I sure see a lot of young to middle aged single mothers in those positions, and shouldn’t they be able to put food on the table after a 40hour work week with out the governments help???

@SQUEEKY2 I respectfully disagree. Most companies….mine included have to make a profit and if my competition is providing a similar product they/I am forced to adjust what we do and how we do it to remain a viable business entity. If a human body at a set wage is what now makes me noncompetitive…I am faced with the decision to replace said human with a robot OR outsource overseas to remain competitive or go out of business. Can you offer any other viable options I and other companies have?

Sadly if the profit margins are that small,and as you said if a human makes you that less competitive ,that you have to automate or off shore to keep the profits,then I guess that is what you have to do.
But then don’t get upset when no one in your country can afford the goods or services you are selling,because they have been put out of a job.
And in turn are needing more Government hand outs just to survive,nice way to keep the government big, and let me ask you who is depending on Government hand outs more,the low end workers that need them to put food on the table,or the employers that don’t pay them a wage they can survive on??

@SQUEEKY2 you answered your own question in that any business that operates on thin margins will either automate or go out of business. Also less you forget the unemployed masses who are living off the Government teat who need places to buy items that sustain them who will then be standing in line at these self serve kiosks that once provided a job for a human I know are in our very near future.

And the gap between the wealthy and poor just keeps getting bigger and bigger.
And you didn’t answer what I asked who is more guilty of sucking off the government tit, the low wage earners that need Government assistance just to put food on the table after a 40hr work week, or the industry that employs them not paying a wage they can live off of??
So what is the answer?? Oh I know a lower minimum wage,that has worked so well,more people will be put to work right??
Would YOU go to work for a wage ,you knew full well wouldn’t pay the bills much less put food on the table??
Why do you expect low wage earners to do just that??
Conservatives have said when there is more demand for these jobs,the wages will go up, that is a bold lie, because when there is a demand, industry tries and hires foreign workers to fill these gaps,they have done it in the transport industry,the mining industry and the hospitality industry, to keep the wages low and their profits high,although finally our Government(Canadian) is starting to slap industry for doing this.
It would be great if a living wage was $5 an hour,but it isn’t and a living wage is complicated,and even the bottom wage earners deserve a roof over their head and food on their table without the governments help,and when that happens you might just get your wish at a smaller Government, but not before then.

Unconditional basic income is a better idea. Every citizen receives X amount of money regardless of their financial standing. Since it’s not means tested there’s less bureaucracy, less money and manpower spent trying to determine if someone is eligible. Since everyone gets it regardless there’s nothing to abuse. Even a guy like Milton Friedman supported the idea.

@Cruiser Robots aren’t cheaper. They require very highly paid robotics/electrical engineers to set up, test, maintain, repair, etc. If you want to make a simple change like “cut the bread on a diagonal,” it could require major (time consuming/expensive) revisions to the system, or you could just tell your employees to “cut the bread on a diagonal.”

For some tasks, robots do make sense, but don’t fool yourself into thinking they’re cheap.

Theoretically, it seems like it is better for the economy if, say, the government pays one person a day’s wages to dig a hole, and another person the same day’s wages to fill it in. That would put taxes on two day’’ labor back into government coffers, put the two days’ wages into the economy. The two workers would spend the money, presumably to feed their families, with vendors (entrepreneurs, businesses) who would purchase more goods to sell, and spend the profit, in turn, to feed their families.

@gorillapaws Of course some robots cost big bucks…that is stating the obvious. Those bots in any price range would not be used if they did not make said job/company more profits over a human employee. The real reality is robots do not require health insurance or vacation or sick days or a living wage or union dues. Any one of those 5 things alone can be debilitating to a companies bottom line that has to be competitive with overseas production.

@Cruiser “Those bots in any price range would not be used if they did not make said job/company more profits over a human employee.”

Or they were purchased by an exec who thought it would save him a ton of cash until he realized it doesn’t and it’s too late to undo his mistake. Generally speaking robots make sense for tasks that are difficult/dangerous for humans to do. Tasks like making a hamburger to order is actually very difficult to program a robot to do (think about the frustration of chips stuck in a vending machine and then multiply it by 10,000). Imagine if you walk into a robotic McDonalds and it serves you a frozen hamburger patty (maybe one of the servos failed). And then you have to call an 800 number and go through a robotic customer service phone tree for half an hour, before connecting you on the line to an outsourced customer service rep. who is “very sorry you had that experience,” and wants you to spend 30 minutes telling him the store number, address of the location, time of the problem, card number you used for your purchase, etc. It’s the recipe for wanting to burn the place to the ground.

Sometimes it’s just cheaper to pay your employees a living wage and raise the prices on a chicken McNugget by like $0.07. I don’t remember what the actual amount was, but it was very low. Intelligent business people realize that the most important asset a company has are it’s people.

@gorillapaws I can’t believe I am actually taking time to reply to your comments. I don’t know what you do for a living and as noble as your statement about employees being a companies most important asset….IMO and my own experience the most important “asset” of a company is it’s product/brand. Most companies I am aware of sell products not people. Give me an example of a company or two where the employee is more critical to it’s success than it’s product or brand?

As far as your hamburger example….
The inventors of the burger device? Momentum Machines, and they’re serious about fast food productivity.

“Our device isn’t meant to make employees more efficient,” cofounder Alexandros Vardakostas has said. “It’s meant to completely obviate them.”

Employers seem to always compare more minimum wage in north america to what people make in some third world country, but not the cost of living in those countries,how about doing that as well,like housing, food,gas, and so on,their wages are so much lower because their cost of living is so much Lower than north america so STOP comparing us to them,unless you do the full comparison.

@Cruiser

Yeah, the “Burger Bot” sounds like an employer’s wet dream in theory. What about once it’s put to real life actual practice? Could it really handle the, say, the traffic of the food court at a place like Chicago’s Union Station during peak hours? What about special orders? Do they upset the robot? We’ve already seen how wonderfully the the self-checkout lanes work Walmart and other retailers. It seems one cannot get through a single order without the machine having some kind of issue requiring the attention of the human attendant.

@Cruiser I work for a small private surgical practice doing marketing, some HR, IT, Admin etc. I’ve read dozens of business books by some of the smartest guys in the industry, I’ve taken business courses and I write iOS/OS X code in my spare time. The books I’ve read have always stressed how critical/valuable employees are to a company’s success. Brands/products are very important, but they change and evolve. People do come/go but good employees are so valuable.

In our surgical practice we work hard to market our brand, but if we don’t have phenomenal providers then word gets out and we stop seeing referrals. If we don’t hire excellent receptionists, then the tens of thousands of dollars we spend on marketing every year is wasted if potential patients have a bad experience when they try to make an appointment. If we don’t hire great ultrasound technologists, then patient with problems we can treat aren’t diagnosed and we loose out on procedures that would solve the patient’s problems as well as bring in thousands of dollars of revenue to the practice. If we don’t have excellent billing staff, then we can loose tens of thousands of dollars to rejected insurance claims.

Sure our brand is valuable, but it’s not worth anything without the right people behind it, and the reason we’re considered the best vein practice in town is because of our people, not the shape of our logo.

If you look at a company like Apple, sure the brand has a lot of value to the company, and the products are really fantastic, but you don’t have that without great employees. A lot of the code in iOS and OS X was written in the early 90’s by very smart people. They laid the foundation that remains to this day. Apple never would have had the value of its brand (or quality of products) without them (many are still there because Steve Jobs recognized how valuable good employees are).

The only real con, and the BIG argument (though you will never catch those violently opposed to such measures stating it as such) is that if you guarantee everyone a minimum standard of living, you will never get anyone to do the dirty but necessary demeaning jobs for shitty wages. In other words, who’s going to do those jobs that “Americans don’t want to do”? THIS is the REAL reason why our government pretends to be busy sealing our Southern border, but somehow just can’t seem to manage. And the solution has proven so successful that jobs which Americans formerly DID want to do no longer pay a living wage.

Fact from fiction, truth from diction, it sounds good like ‘Three Strikes You’re Out’ crime legislation. It could do a world of good in the beginning, especially to those on the marginal end. Listening to the debate as far I can see pluses and minuses, depending on where you start off. It is like “why can’t everyone be rich?” It is a terrible ideal. If everyone was rich who would make the sandwiches, and pump out the portepotties? Would that cure the job shortage? If you have two jobs at $16 bucks an hour and one is bussing tables in an AC restaurant, and the other picking lettuce in the hot sun, where do you think most will try to get hired? Some jobs that are less appealing will come even more unattractive no matter the money. Then to get someone out there to pick that lettuce, green beans, asparagus, etc. you might have to pay them $25 bucks an hour to make them put up with the heat and physical labor of it. What will that eventually do to the cost of a head of lettuce at the grocery store? If the price of lettuce goes way up, where was the change? The person getting the raise might still not be able to afford to eat healthier because the price of healthy has gone up to cover the cost of producing it. That is the reason why many of our goods are made overseas, it isn’t like the US cannot make jeans, but if they were made here; no one would want to pay the price unless it was some popular designer label. Who would want to spend $45 dollars on a pair of non-designer jeans unless all plain jeans cost that much? So long as there is several seller of jeans using foreign labor and getting those plain jeans to market at $18 dollars anyone with US made $45 dollar plain Jane jeans will probably end up closing their doors if they did not have something to subsidize those jeans. It would be great to give people more money so they do not have to use or need state aid, but how do you keep the stuff they buy from going up? If Al the mechanic knows John Q is now getting the minimum guaranteed pay, as well as all the others in John Q’s situation, then Al the mechanic knows he can bump his prices up a bit so he can cover his worker who know gets MGI. Not only is he doing that, but Betty the florist, Larry the sandwich maker, and all the rest could bump their prices up to cover the increase their employees will make. Then somewhere down the road John Q might find himself technically where he started. Not able to buy things he was able to soon after his raise. Businesses with skilled workers that make above that anyhow will not be effected much, they will roll right along as they have been. The small Mom & Pop businesses will feel the pinch more. It sounds good but it is not a one-size-fit-all solution, and most likely never will.

OMG Why do people cry if we impose a living wage ,goods and services will no doubt have to rise just to cover these greedy buggers want for a living wage, REALLY??
These people right now are on the government tit,just to put food on the table that their wages can’t do,maybe if they didn’t need the government for help with food,taxes might go down,deficits might get paid down,and Governments might get down sized.
It hasn’t happened in other countries why will it happen in the states if a living wage is implemented ?
Eample: and this is only one Australia has a lower priced Big Mac than the US has and their minimum wage is over twice what the states is,so how come their minimum wage is so much higher and yet their Big MAC IS CHEAPER,anyone want to explain that for this dumb Canadian?

The thing that is becoming increasingly obvious is that very soon a different model is going to be necessary regarding people and work. Increasingly those “jobs” requiring mule like labor are subsumed by automation and particularly robotics. Moreover, increasing technical expertise and the rise of artificial intelligence dictates that not just blue collar trades and professions are on their way out. Everything from dental hygienist and legal secretary through auto mechanic and fry cook is going the way of the slide rule and it is almost certainly going to come about sooner than the folks with those jobs are prepared to believe.

^^ These people right now are on the government tit,just to put food on the table that their wages can’t do,maybe if they didn’t need the government for help with food,taxes might go down,deficits might get paid down,and Governments might get down sized.
I think it will take more regulation than people are willing to stomach. How much increase a business can raise a quarter etc. would be necessary. If I were a shopkeeper in a blue collar neighborhood and I know everyone is now guaranteed to earn $12—$14—$16 bucks an hour, which means they are getting near double what they were before, they have extra money. Not all of it is going to bills, gas and food. Some of that money will be spent on other things and I want my share of it. If I didn’t, some competitor across town will and they will spend what he ask if that is what they want. So, I would bump my prices up a notch because I know they (John Q) now has extra coin to afford it. If I have other than family working for me, I know I can bump up the price and that will cover my worker who I now have to give more an hour. So long as business can raise prices to meet their expenses, eventually goods might overtake the ”living wage” putting John Q right back where he was.

That’s just it prices didn’t sky rocket in other countries with a higher minimum wage,so why will it in the states??
Or are Yankees just that greedy ,example the Austrialain Big Mac.

@gorillapaws I will concede a little of both is indeed what makes a company succeed. A great product without great employees will sink like a rock and conversely as well. The key to any real success though is vision and leadership something Steve Jobs was expert at. He made his employees excel when excelling was so against the odds. The words…“You can’t do that” or “that’s never been done before is rocket fuel for the true innovators that have made this country so great. Wages and compensation can become secondary when there is a clear path to an end game. 19 years ago I took a leap of faith sold off my two companies to be director of sales for the company I work for all because the then owner had a crystal clear vision of the path this company was on. 14 year later he sold it to me because we shared that same vision and we are continuing on that path of passion and success that each and every employee shares.

Back to the question….I pay my lowest employee $4.00 per hour more than the min wage BUT they get full health care and some very robust bonuses. Push that to $15.00/hr and I have the options of eating that extra expense, raising the price of our products or paying the higher wages and cutting back on their bonuses and then it would be a wash, Where does it make any sense to raise hourly and make the same per year? What was actually accomplished? IMHO Forced higher wages will surely reduce benefits and or invite automation as a more profitable solution.

Higher min wages IMO completely ignores the true purpose of these entry level min wage jobs. Take Wally World as an example…..someone has to train that teen or back to work mom to do that job and that costs money and is an investment in teaching that new hire to do a basic job. In time that employee can become dedicated and get promotions. The attrition rate is horrible in these entry level jobs yes because they suck but also because many of these hires expect more and now.

All that aside I do have 3 employees that despite fabulous pay are always scrounging for money. I can’t give them their paycheck fast enough. I or the Government can only do so much for people who just can’t seem to grasp the concept of being fiscally disciplined with their money.

BTW thanks for taking the time to clue me in…it helps understand your POV on a greater scale

Higher the minimum wage is, higher the lowest life quality people can remain, better the stability of society, yet higher the cost spent on it instead of other aspect of the country, more sloppy the people are.

Robots may be cheaper than manual labor, but the robots don’t purchase products. Let’s take automation to its ultimate end. Suppose there were no or at most a tiny number of workers making goods. Who is going to buy them? Since nearly everyone is out of work, nobody has the cash to pay for anything. At some point the government is going to have to distribute corporate profits so that products can be sold. Conservatives may not like this, but what other choice is there?