Minimum wage
Having a minimum wage increases unemployment among the low-skilled. It also makes it more expensive for companies to get low-skill tasks done. But without a minimum wage, our poor would become even more impoverished, and the country would be a pretty terrible place to live. A universal basic income (a policy I support) would alleviate the negative aspects of this associated with poverty, but it wouldn’t really help with the inefficiency concerns. With a UBI, companies would still have to pay more (perhaps 50-100% more) to get low-skill tasks done, because the jobs are generally distasteful, and the marginal utility of the salary to the workers would be much lower. If the UBI were a guarantee, where the government makes up the difference between the basic income line and the person’s salary, the situation for employers would be worse — the guarantee line would form an effective minimum wage higher than itself. If the UBI were independent of the person’s other income, the effective minimum wage would probably be considerably less than the UBI level.
Whether the minimum wage is effective, though a UBI, or actual, it would create incentives for companies to automate, which I think is a Good Thing.
