You don't see a problem when a very profitable franchise tells its employees to ask the government for support because it doesn't want to pay them enough to live off? This is disgusting.
If not, what's the difference between a publicly funded healthcare system and a publicly funded food stamp system?
Food on the other hand, costs a non-variable amount and is relatively inexpensive.
The two examples you give are not at all similar.
Anyone in canada is able to take advantage of the publicly funded doctor. The system is purposely setup to cover every canadian. Only low income Americans are eligible to take advantage of SNAP and Medicaid. The system was originally designed to help people for relatively short periods of time when they are between work that pays them enough to not need the assistance. In fact, part of the reason many people dislike these programs are due to the mythical "welfare queen" that stays on programs like these for years and chooses not to get a better job because that would mean no longer getting the free (to her) assistance.
If every American was eligible to be on food stamps for their entire life, then there wouldn't be a difference. But that's not how food stamps are designed nor how they work.
It's actually a little surprising that the concept is not given more attention, at least in countries with socialised health care. It would be a very hard sell in the US.
Part of the problem with giving a basic income is how much to give people due to variances in the cost of living. Someone in east san jose or oakland will need much more money than someone in East Nowhere, Midwest to acquire the same things.
I'm not saying that can't be solved and then done, but it will be complicated and as you mentioned a very hard sell.
EDIT:
Food stamps could totally be designed to be a long term program that every american is eligible for. One way would be through a tax deduction/refund. It would need to be more than a refund, though, to cover instances where people don't have enough taxes to use the entire deduction. Also, it assumes people would be smart enough to use it for food and not big screen tv's.
I think extending the current program to everyone would do a better job of ensuring everyone has access to food than just giving money. The current program basically gives you a credit card every month that can only be spent on certain food items (eg no alcohol). Sending those to every family once a month (or allowing it to be picked up from a dmv-esque office for people without an address), would ensure that people have access to food (there are already measures in place to prevent someone from selling their foodstamp card for money). heck, if you wanted to get fancy, you could even allow/extend the card to be spent at restaurants.
Social Security, SSDI, Welfare, WIC, EITC, SNAP, section 8, etc
The fact it would result in higher SS payments to old folks would likely make it widely popular as well, as well as the removal of Minimum Wage.
I have no illusions about this: additional revenue will be required. Also many federal employees will be let go if you do this. They handle minutia around all these programs that could be replaced.
>Basic Income would probably decrease SS payments to existing retirees
Some existing retirees, the >3k a month ones perhaps. Many people are retiring far earlier, and in the 1800ish area. Those will likely see increases (remember, this has to replace section 8 as well).
If McDonald's arbitrarily raised wages, could they do that without increasing the costs of their products? Would that then make them less competitive against the horde of other fast food shops, and therefore reduce their sales dramatically in what may (or may not, I really don't know) be a hyper-competitive industry.
These are the types of considerations I'm sure are important.
Revenue US$27.56 billion (2012)
Operating income US$8.60 billion (2012)
Net income US$5.46 billion (2012)
Total assets US$35.39 billion (2012)
Total equity US$15.29 billion (2012)
Employees 1,800,000 (2013)Without raising price, some franchises could eat[1] that extra cost; some would probably have to close shop.
[1] Boom. Zing.
Also, the rise in prices doesn't have to be that large to cover the increase in pay.
"From that humble start as a small restaurant, we're proud to have become one of the world's leading food service retailer in 118 countries, with more than 34,000 restaurants serving nearly 69 million people every day."[1]
So an average store would serve ~2000 people a day. (69,000,000 / 34,000 = 2029.4)
I don't know exactly what the workforce looks like, but it's probably something like 4 cashiers, 2 cooks, 2 helpers, and a manager. If we assume we don't need to pay the manager more then that's 8 employees per store that we want to have a higher pay.
The big mac value meal is $5.69. Let's say the average customer buys that. [2]
2000 customers per day * $5.69 = $11,380 in revenue in a day. I'd bet it's more, but that's a start.
If we have 8 employees working for 16 hours a day (different employees at different times, of course), and we want to raise their wages $3 per hour, how much more do we need to charge?
Well, if we want to keep our profit margin the same then we'd need to earn an extra (8 employees * 16 hours * 3 dollars) $384 a day.
So, we'll need to charge each customer $0.20 more per order. ($384 / 2000 customers per day).[3]
So, really. Is changing the price of the big mac meal to $5.89 really going to change McDonald's market position? Is it going to make eating at mcdonald's that much more expensive that people will stop going? Is there any real impact on anybody but their employees?
I'm sure there's an error in those calculations somewhere, but the general idea is that it doesn't take much of a price increase to cover the pay for employees.[4] This is what drives me crazy about these companies. Walmart moves so much merchandise that if they raised the prices on all of their prices by a nickel they could probably afford to pay everyone a living wage.
[1] - http://www.mcdonalds.com/us/en/our_story.html [2] - in the USA, of course. [3] - there may be some other costs to paying employees more for the business, but I can't think of any off-hand. Also, the amount of tax collected per transaction would be higher as well, so not only does society benefit from having less people on public benefits, but it takes in more money overall that it can use for other things (in places where fast food is taxed, of course (is that everywhere?)). [4] - Another problem with this simple calc is that not all stores are average and many don't do anywhere near 2000 customers a day in business. They probably employ less people, but it's something to keep in mind.