He means reduce wages by $500/month to account for the existence of the program
It's a valid question I think; I kind of suspect that it doesn't work that way (that the outcome would be more similar to "wah nobody wants to work for $12/hr anymore" and no workers), but I don't know enough to say for sure.
snooggums@midwest.social 5 months ago
Businesses don’t change wages based on tax credits and they don’t give raises based on people’s needs. Did any business cut wages when everyone got any previous rax rebates like the one for covid?
This is such a stupid worry that is just rich people propaganda meant to make people thing that UBI won’t be a positive thing so people don’t push for it. Just like they don’t want single payer healthcare because then they couldn’t use insurance as a way to discourage people from switching to better jobs.
mozz@mbin.grits.dev 5 months ago
Well, they do reduce wages based on anything and everything that they can get away with. If they're already getting away with paying people $10/hr or whatever, I think it's easily plausible that they would realize they can now get away with paying them minimum wage. I don't think it's instantly rich people propaganda or a silly concern. Like for example, Wal-Mart among other places definitely pays less because they've factored in that people can go on government assistance and stay just barely above water even receiving drowning wages.
Like I say, I don't think it'll work out this way in practice (in fact I would expect that it would raise wages because it would reduce people's desperation and give them options beyond just taking whatever they could find for as many hours as they can stay awake) and it seems on the limited test like it doesn't. But it doesn't strike me as automatically a weird question or anything.
meekah@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Not sure why you’re comparing to the covid tax rebate. That was a one time thing and not something permanent
snooggums@midwest.social 5 months ago
I explained it as an example of companies not doing things to cancel out an increase in income across the board already. There is also the overall trend that increased income for large portions of the population means people buying more optional things, not the companies with essentials raising prices to match that increase.
This is like you demanding someone prove that Bigfoot doesn’t exist. All I can give are examples where increased income being directly tied to prices/employee pay could have been proven to be a direct link, but wasn’t. None of them are perfect because we don’t have UBI yet.
meekah@lemmy.world 5 months ago
I’m not asking anything from you. I’m just saying you’re comparing apples to oranges. If there are no apples to compare to, so be it.