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Kind of a self defeating claim; sorta like saying McDonalds burgers are better than Burger King. Both are pretty pretty bad for you.


Unless you don't have any food....in which case either would be pretty welcome.

I tend to agree that if we (society as a whole) determine that there should be a minimum income below which no one is allowed to fall, a UBI-type system is more equitable than a minimum wage increase.

The costs of UBI fall on everyone, while the costs for minimum wage increases fall on the very business owners who tend to employ the young and/or unskilled. It's McDonalds and the local car wash (and their employees!) that take it in the neck with a minimum wage increase, not Google or Goldman Sachs.


Who is 'you?'

Capitalism is a social good to the extent that it solves problems and makes people's lives better. But capitalism only solves the problems of people with money: their cash is THE incentive for others to figure out how to solve their problems. If people with problems have no money, they effectively create no demand.

Add wealth to the bottom tier of society and we'll generate generate demand to solve problems at the bottom, which in turn generates a supply of people to fix those problems. This is effectively what happened after WW2, driving the massive growth of the American middle class and a huge increases in standard of living.

Finally, there are plenty of studies backing up minimum wage increases. The boogeyman of inflation in this context is nothing but FUD.


Using post WW2 times as a basis for any argument is wrong. Post WW2, there was no China as a superpower and no globalization. If businesses are forced to pay more for low-skill labor, they can do so easily by taking the jobs elsewhere, which was not the case (or at least as easily done) after WW2.


Offshoring cheap labor already happened everywhere possible. Domestic "low-skill" labor today is overwhelmingly in restaurants, hotels, and retail. I assure you that Taco Bell is not making bean burritos on-site because it's the cheapest place to do so.


Sometimes I wonder where people come up with the crap like 'minimum wage isn't inflationary'.

Make minimum wage $1,000,000/hr then!


It's pretty clear that minimum wage increases are inflationary. They may not be NET inflationary in some circumstances.

Consider this thought experiment: raise the minimum wage to $2 million/hour. What happens to prices?


What happens to employment?

For 2M/hour employers would be able to maintain sophisticated forms of automation, without the liabilities of humans.

In terms of price inflation, UBI will inject the hot flows which previously stayed in capital markets into everyday consumption.




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