If you received a monthly stipend (aka a “living wage”), regardless of what you did or how many hours you spent doing it, what would you do?
This concept has been gaining popularity in recent years, but I was surprised to see it going back to at least 1969.
Apparently a group called the “Ad Hoc Committee on the Triple Revolution” proposed the living wage concept to the President of the United States in the mid 1960s.
Sixty-plus years later it seems to be coming to fruition.
Some countries have already experimented with a living wage. And the results seem to be positive.
Americans have already received up to three “stimulus checks” just for making less than an arbitrary revenue number (careful- the last one was an advance on your 2021 income tax return). Now some are receiving tax credits based on the number and age of children they have (also advances on your 2021 income tax return) and are finding it difficult to opt out. There are millions of Americans opting out of the work force because they either have the savings to live without a paycheck for a while or because they make more by not working than they would by being employed.
Here is where it gets interesting: The argument for a living wage is that humans are intrinsically driven to do some kind of work that gives them some sense of fulfillment.
This I can understand. Most of the people I know do what they do because they love it and not just for the paycheck.
But, if this is human nature, why do so many that are already receiving government handouts not incentivized to do something meaningful?
What would happen if even more people were incentivized to do what they want instead of earning a paycheck?
Will we see unemployment numbers rise, then fall back down as people do jobs just for the love of productivity?
Or will we continue to see the “unprecedented” number of unfilled jobs across all sectors? (I use the term in quotations because (1) it has been overused to the point of being a caricature and (2) these numbers have been seen before, but the current culture seems to like the idea of everything being the “first”)
What are your thoughts? Any predictions on how this experiment may turn out?
ps- one thing that I would like to see happen, if this experiment is to be run, would be for *everyone* to receive the same living wage amount and not have it be limited to only those who make less than an arbitrary threshold. But, then again, I am also a proponent of a flat tax…