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We should indeed just get rid of the minimum wage, and replace it with universal basic income guarantee.

Minimum wage + unemployment insurance is basically UBI anyway, except very poorly implemented - with ridiculous overhead, and, most crucially, subsidized through what is, essentially, a regressive tax.

Consider: when you raise minimum wage, the employer will try to put as much as they can into the price of the produced goods. They might be forced to eat some of it by shrinking their profit margin, but ultimately most of it will be passed to the consumer.

Now, who consumes goods and services produced by minimum-wage workers? Everyone, of course - but, generally speaking, the less you earn, the more you have to rely on that. So as the prices on such goods and services go up, poor are the ones that see the biggest increases as a proportion of their overall spending (and hence, their overall income). It's the ultimate con - you get one mark to pay for the other, and the best part is that they don't even notice.

UBI wouldn't have this problem, because the tax would be explicit, applied to income, and (ideally) progressive. So you actually redistribute from the top of the ladder all the way down to the bottom. Better yet if you also tax capital gains for this purpose.

The optimum minimizes the amount of government assistance.

Obviously, everyone not being starved or dead from lack of medical care means everyone gets food and medical care. That is not negotiable at this time.

Some methods of payment for those universal services have extremely low transaction cost like the employer hands money to employee who buys the service or product for cash. Some methods have extremely expensive transaction costs with government departments taxing people and another department full of people paying partial or full payment for people's food and medical care, none of those people work for free and they all need HR and benefits and management and auditors, all very expensive. Of course give/force the employers to hand out too much cash and you get inflation that exceeds the cost of government.

For example everyone at Google eats and has medical care and having the well compensated employees pay for it is extremely low transaction cost. However no one at walmart can eat and obtain medical care so the government provides it at enormous transaction expense. Its believed to be better for the entire economy to slightly tax google employees to pay for government services for walmart employees than just have walmart pay their fair share of the expenses of employees.

At some point in the middle there's a optimum that minimizes the total cost of government programs plus the economic damage wrought by inflation. A lot of people put a lot of time and money into figuring out this optimal ratio, which is probably extremely close to where we are today, and many more in the general public say "eh we should just wing it and +1 one side or the other, because like, what could possibly go wrong?".

There ARE problems such that those highly paid government clerks with fabulous benefits compared to the private sector are not likely to suggest losing their welfare program administrator jobs any time soon, so there are rational human self interest reasons why the minwage is always going to be around the lower bound of optimum. If the general public is not always of the opinion that its somewhat on the low side, then the central regulators and planners are messing up. There should always be this low level of turmoil about it being somewhat too low.

Being part of the gig economy has brought me the best income I've ever had. And a flexible schedule so I get plenty of time with my kid. If I was still forced to look for a 9-5 based on traditional hiring practices I'd be making much less and miserable.

As long as it works... and then when you get ill or something else happens suddenly you find out that all that freedom translates into a complete lack of a safety net. Unless you live somewhere in Europe.

Keep in mind that 'flexible contracts' and 'zero hour contracts' already existed before the Gig economy, and that they still came with all the good stuff that comes with employment.

For the US, where a lot of people were already under the perpetual Sword of Damocles waiting to be told they are no longer required the situation is maybe not all that different. But not all of the world is like that.

The better way to run a life that is free and where you get plenty of time to arrange as you wish is to have a consultancy company where you hire yourself out at a high rate during a few months of the year to take it easy during the remainder.

a complete lack of a safety net

Nearly 2/3rd of the federal budget is for social programs. What do you mean a "complete lack of a safety net"?

Try applying for it when you really need it. Bankruptcy due to medical emergencies is unfortunately pretty common.

I've done my bit of social security for the United States all the way from where I'm sitting, it's that good.

> Nearly 2/3rd of the federal budget is for social programs.

Not all social programs are safety net programs; notably age- and work-related public healthcare isn't, and neither is work-qualified public pension.

And also a lot of the social spending (safety net or not) is the public portion of the US’s stupendously inefficient hybrid public/private health care system, so even the safety net portions of that (mainly Medicaid) give very little safety net for the money.

By the standards of the developed West, the US has a very weak safety net, however much money it might spend on public social programs.

Not all social programs are safety net programs; notably age- and work-related public healthcare isn't, and neither is work-qualified public pension.

Care to source that definition? Social-security, Medicare and Medicaid were all developed as "safety nets".