There are other levers, such as Basic Income. A suggestion I heard would be to abolish minimum wage altogether, and introduce unconditional basic income.
The hope is that basic income would make part time work sustainable, and give more leverage to workers. Possibly making minimum wage unnecessary.
Society simply isn't ready for such a solution. I floated the idea to my dad last week, and his reaction was instructive. There's just no convincing "Main Street" that paying people to sit around and do nothing could possibly benefit society. It's a political non-starter.
Is that not what we already do through welfare/benefit payments? Plus the administration costs of such a system.
One solution would be a negative income tax, where you take some threshold X and basically cut low income people a cheque for
(X - Income) / Y where Y is something like 2.
That way there is never a financial incentive not to work as every $ you earn will make you at least $0.50 better off than you were before (where Y = 2).
Under a complicated benefits system you often have incentives not to take low paying or casual work in case it disqualifies you for government benefit. In many cases the rules around this can be complicated, so even the effort required to figure this out can be a disincentive.
Is that not what we already do through welfare/benefit payments?
Yep.
The main problem here is that most people don't understand incentives and what motivates them. They think everyone's just out to work as little as possible. Selling a negative income tax or basic income to the public, or any system where you provide anyone with "three hots and a cot," as my father put it, is impossible, regardless of how much we need it. According to them, we'd be irreparably damaging the social fabric.
We have a similar system in the UK, though it is fraught with bureaucracy. There is little (quality) help offered to people seeking jobs which leaves some people just going through the motions. From what I remember they want people to look for work within certain categories which can either be too broad or too narrow.
Comments
There are other levers, such as Basic Income. A suggestion I heard would be to abolish minimum wage altogether, and introduce unconditional basic income.
The hope is that basic income would make part time work sustainable, and give more leverage to workers. Possibly making minimum wage unnecessary.
Society simply isn't ready for such a solution. I floated the idea to my dad last week, and his reaction was instructive. There's just no convincing "Main Street" that paying people to sit around and do nothing could possibly benefit society. It's a political non-starter.
Is that not what we already do through welfare/benefit payments? Plus the administration costs of such a system.
One solution would be a negative income tax, where you take some threshold X and basically cut low income people a cheque for (X - Income) / Y where Y is something like 2.
That way there is never a financial incentive not to work as every $ you earn will make you at least $0.50 better off than you were before (where Y = 2).
Under a complicated benefits system you often have incentives not to take low paying or casual work in case it disqualifies you for government benefit. In many cases the rules around this can be complicated, so even the effort required to figure this out can be a disincentive.
Yep.
The main problem here is that most people don't understand incentives and what motivates them. They think everyone's just out to work as little as possible. Selling a negative income tax or basic income to the public, or any system where you provide anyone with "three hots and a cot," as my father put it, is impossible, regardless of how much we need it. According to them, we'd be irreparably damaging the social fabric.
Not in France. Here, you're supposed to look for a job (and prove it). If you don't, no welfare for you.
I believe few countries have a welfare system that is conditioned on nothing else than near-zero revenue.
We have a similar system in the UK, though it is fraught with bureaucracy. There is little (quality) help offered to people seeking jobs which leaves some people just going through the motions. From what I remember they want people to look for work within certain categories which can either be too broad or too narrow.