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If workers get the same amount of money within the $0->$2000 bracket, what benefit do the employers get in paying them more? This introduces an easy corruption scheme where employers provide minor work benefits to employees who are willing to take a "pay hit" and supplement their income through UBI instead. Why would these jobs even exist, anyway? The employees don't get a benefit from doing them(unless they enjoy the work, but then it's essentially a hobby, because your income does not depend on it). This should drive wages for jobs under the UBI limit up, e.g. why would a janitor agree to be paid $1000 if he can just do nothing and collect the same amount of money? Since the work for these jobs needs to be done, businesses will need to provide some kind of monetary incentive for people to do them - e.g. you would have to pay people $3000 instead of $1000 to realistically entice them to work. The number might even be higher, because of diminishing returns in compensation(e.g. the first $1000 per month you get buys you food and housing, so you value it highly; once you cover the basic costs of living you start getting into luxuries, which people might value less). What about previous jobs which netted $3000, but required qualifications on top of the ones you get for $1000? Why would people pursue these qualifications when they can now do the former $1k job for the same compensation? Would this not mean that you would need to increase wages for those people as well, in order to keep them working? This might have a lesser effect across career paths, but certainly within a single career path the upward pressure of the under-UBI jobs will force the over-UBI jobs to shift up as well - e.g. if you paid your "store worker" $1000 and your "store manager" $3000, the "store manager"'s salary now needs to go up, otherwise why would they take up the extra responsibility? I'm not sure what the effect of this upward pressure on wages will be, but certainly some of it will be eaten up by rising prices - i.e. the supply of goods hasn't gone up but the demand would, with more available wealth in the population. |