Just to be perfectly clear, I believe everyone deserves to have the means to live a comfortable life. I just don’t believe minimum wage accomplishes that goal. I’ve argued that minimum wage is somewhere between ineffective and counter-productive at solving wealth inequality. But instead of focusing on the problems, I want to focus on the solutions.
Basic Income
Minimum wage says every worker deserves to earn enough money to live a comfortable life. What about people who can’t work? Don’t they also deserve a comfortable life?
That’s where basic income comes in. The basic idea is that the government pays every adult resident gets money from the government, just for living in that country. (Of course, this needs to be tuned, so that people with jobs get less basic income, and eventually, it flips around and becomes income tax.)
There are two big reasons for this. The first is that wage slavery exists because people are forced to work in order to make a living. And because unemployment can never be zero, there will always be people desperate for work. Corporations take advantage of these people, treat them badly, and pay them badly. Now in a world with basic income, getting a job is optional, and corporations have to actually treat people well and pay people well.
The second reason is much bigger. Our society has an unhealthy obsession with the idea of work. For some reason, we think everyone should work, and we think it’s bad when not everyone can work. Given all the automation and efficiencies of scale in a modern economy means that 100% employment is neither achievable nor desirable. If we want to progress as a civilization, we can’t keep tying living a comfortable life to the idea of work.
Basic Services
Although basic income is a huge improvement over minimum wage, it still isn’t enough. Giving everyone a bunch of money will drive inflation, and suddenly you’re caught in a vicious cycle of constantly increasing basic income to match inflation.
While avoiding inflation is also impossible, we can combat it by providing basic services. The government should provide basic services like foodstuffs, housing, and health care. We already do this today for education, roads, and public transit. Why not extend it to the essentials? Providing basic services means that no matter how much or how little money people have, they always have access to the basic necessities.
Tax Reform
Basic income and basic services require a lot of government infrastructure and government expense. How will we pay for all of this. The truth is, our nation (and arguably the entire world) has enough wealth and resources to give everyone a comforatble life, and still have enough left over so the rich can enjoy being rich. The problem is in the distribution. The mega-wealthy and the corporations (aka, the 1% from the Occupy Wall Street days) have the vast majority of the wealth, and because of lobbying, special interest groups, and tax loopholes, they pay very little in taxes.
We need to fix our tax system and shift the burden from the middle class to the mega-wealthy and the corporations, the people (and in the case of corporations, “people”) who can afford to pay more than their fair share of the burden, and still have enough left over to live luxurious lifestyles.
Will it be easy? Almost certainly not. These ideas are gaining popularity, but they’re sadly far from popular, not even among liberals. And while a lot of wealthy liberals are in favor of paying more taxes (notably, Bill Gates), a lot of them still aren’t (see for example, income tax in Washington State, or lack thereof.) Most of all, our society is held back by our obsession with work, by the idea that people must somehow work for their right to life.
But I believe it’s inevitable. One day, we will get there. And it will be glorious.