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I don't understand how you get to "dramatically increasing unemployment" at the end there.

Taking your apple-seller analogy, if you map that onto the labor market, then the apples are job-seekers, and when an apple is purchased, that's somebody getting a job. Unemployment is left-over apples that you don't sell.

I understand that with a bunch more money floating around, the price of your apples will increase. That's basic inflation. But what you're saying is that not only will the price increase, but it will increase so much that you will end up with a lot of leftover apples you can't sell.

But why? The price isn't set by magic, it's set by you. You'll make the most money if you can sell more or less all of your apples, so you'll set a price that results in people buying them all. That price will likely be higher than it would be in the world without a basic income, but you're still going to sell all of your apples. If you don't, you'll lower your price until you do.

I don't see why labor would be any different. Yes, prices (wages) probably get pushed up there. But where's the pressure to push prices up to the extent that a large number of people can't find jobs? Just like the apple-seller, people make more money when they set a price where they actually find work. If a lot of people are out of work at $X/hour, then those people will generally accept wages at $(X-1)/hour, or less, until they all manage to find jobs. The minimum wage puts a floor on this, but I don't see how the basic income does.

I can see an increase in voluntary joblessness, where people's labor can only produce a small amount of value, and they don't see the point in working for that small amount of value when they can stay at home and watch TV and survive on their basic income. But I don't see how there would be an increase in involuntary joblessness a.k.a. unemployment if you created a basic income and simultaneously did away with minimum wage.



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