Comments by "Luredreier" (@Luredreier) on "An Honest Discussion About A Universal Basic Income" video.

If you're going to have a minimum wage that's probably a good idea, but collective bargaining is a better mechanism for regulating minimum wage then laws are. As seen here in the nordic countries. Norway doesn't have a minimum wage pr say, but any company paying a certain percentage less then the deal for that industry etc agreed upon is breaking the law. So there is a minimum wage of sorts, but it's different from sector to sector. With hotell workers having a different minimum then teachers who have a different minimum to mechanics etc. And the minimum genuinely can decrease if needed in order to reach a sustainable balance.
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6:24 Basic universal income wouldn't remove the need for other welfare systems and their bureaucracy, but it would allow said bureaucracyto operate with lower funding and fewer rules and still provide something for those that would otherwise fall between the cracks of the system, and it would make getting a application handled less urgent.
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@FirstRisingSouI It is. That said, there are holes in the system making it possible in some very specific corner cases to pay significantly less then normal. That kind of behavior is heavily discouraged though. For instance a eastern European airline tried to establish itself in Norway and practices union busting and paid low wages. Since their employees where based in other countries and citizens there this was technically legal due to EU laws. But Norwegians boycotted them, with even politicians actively voting not to spend public money on them etc, and they where soon forced to leave the country, simply due to a lack of customers, in the country that has the most air hours pr capita of any European nations.
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@chickenpuncher1674 You can attract wealthy people to a country with high taxes too if the other benefits (that the taxes are used for) are high enough to feel like it's still providing value for them. The Norwegian welfare system gives wealthy individuals many benefits and indeed does much to enable the creation of wealth in the first place.
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@KRYPTOS_K5 I live in Norway, we've voted no to joining the EU twice now. And one of the two parties in the current cabinet is from a party all about power and wealth being as close to where people live as it can, in rural areas and not in population centers. So I totally get the urban-rural divide aspect here. But here this ruralist party is allied with the labour party and the main urbanists is the conservative party. The debate about universal services and taxation isn't related to the urban-rural divide here, but rather a separate debate. In terms of how much power the US federal level should have, I'd argue that it's best if larger units like the US federal level, or the EU operated as confederations rather than federations. Power should ultimately come from from below and up, not above and down. But that doesn't justify leaving people without basic rights or needs meet. Universal basic income would ensure that less people fall between the cracks. It would require higher taxes, and that too isn't a problem. But the details can be implemented in many different ways.
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You're assuming that 70% tax only applies above a limit, but that's only true in some countries like the UK. In Norway, if you have above a certain amount of money and get a tax percentage that percentage applies to 100% of your income. We don't split up the taxable wealth of a individual into multiple different tax bracket, we just split the people themselves into brackets depending on the total taxable wealth after deductions. Simplifies things a lot. That also means that everyone pays taxes, even if 100% of their income is welfare.
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@PsRohrbaugh No, 50% is the wrong number. It's when the money you pay in taxes - the value you derive from money spent on services you benefit from directly or indirectly making up more than 50% of the value of your tax that's a problem. Indeed, you could theoretically benefit more than others do from the money you pay even at 100% taxation if you get more in return then you pay. So the balance point is closer to 70% then 50%, and anyone thinking that it's 50% is misunderstanding the math.
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@SamGarcia Another reason why I favour collective bargaining over minimum wages.
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@dashtesla Well, purchasing power has to be removed from the economy on the other side of the balance sheet, for instance through taxes.
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