alt Hacker NewsMinimum wage is barely (in many cases not even barely) enough to live on. Raising minimum wage is a herculean task that rarely succeeds. Federal minimum wage hasn't been raised in 16 years. But we'll have not only a livable UBI in 20 years, but one that's enough to "retire to a life of leisure"?
Doubt.
Replies
ben_w • yesterday at 8:40 AM
There's plenty of reasons to doubt, but you could reframe it as "lower pension age to zero".
In optimistic scenarios, if AI can do so much that nobody's even getting paid to make robots, then AI are making robots that also makes the cost of living lower.
In practice, I think that the path from here to there is unstable.
User23 • yesterday at 2:31 AM
We already have UBI. You’re just not in the club.
Minimum wage isn't directly comparable, because that's the government setting a rule on what two private parties can agree to. It's not the government but the employer who pays it.
UBI is distributed by the government directly, so it's basically a question of what gets taxed, how much inflation results, and whether that inflation and taxation proves more unpopular than the UBI is popular.