Keith Evans
Aug 9, 2017 · 2 min read

That is just supply side garbage. What it really boils down to is “who” pays the wage, not how much the wage is. If the employers are allowed to socialize their employee costs to the taxpayer they will do so, but they will never hire a single worker that their operation doesn’t require. Higher wages may drive end prices higher, but that is a formula they know how to do. They don’t start with an end price and structure their business model backward from that. I’ve hired thousands of employees and set production standards for them in my career and this is something I know fairly well.

Every one of you supply siders I’ve argued this with have used the high school kid model. Do we really want to form economic policy around kids bagging groceries? UBI may eventually be a necessity as employers show how much they “care” about America and capitalism destroys the entire concept of employment, again. What it would do is move us closer to the end game of 300 million Americans making cheap products for the developing 2 billion middle class consumers made possible by seeding China and India with the productivity gains stolen from America.

The government would fund UBI with the sovereign currency and employers would use that to drive wages even farther downward until we could compete with third world countries for production work. If you wanted something more than basic subsistence, which would be defined by formulas that look very much like those used to measure cost of living now for Social Security, you would have to compete with every cheap labor source our imperialistic government can develop. A federal job guarantee would serve to set a “living” wage, not a minimum wage that has to be supplemented with welfare, and also set employment standards for working conditions and benefits. It would also preserve, and even elevate, the sense of self worth of the labor pool by giving individuals the choice of performing work that benefits the greater society.

    Keith Evans

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    Meandering to a different drummer.