You somewhat address the first point in his plan, thoroughly address the second point, VAT, and then are pretty dismissive of points 3 and 4, which account for substantial revenues, cost savings and massive economic growth - the point of the plan. Yang’s UBI does not cure poverty by handing money to poor people. What it will do is ensure nobody falls below the poverty line (currently $12K and change for a single adult) and provide a massive engine of opportunity for many people currently trapped in the benefits cycle. Given the resistance to awarding “government handouts” to undeserving layabouts as well as the potential social stigma attached to being a recipient of such handouts, Yang figures the best approach is just to give everybody the dividend. It’s opt in, it won’t be forced on anyone who doesn’t want it.
To fund UBI he proposes to use a VAT, which as you have gone to great pains to point out and no one is arguing, is a regressive tax, particularly for people at the extreme ends of the income scale. Yes, the multimillionaire receiving $12K per year won’t need it, but he will also pay back more into the system than he takes out. The overwhelming majority between the extremes will benefit to greater or lesser degree and that will fuel economic growth. The millions of jobs created will produce opportunities, including jobs for people currently disincentivized from looking for work because they have to be below a certain income level to qualify for benefits. For example, there is currently a plague of abuse of the Social Security Disability Insurance System ($143B in 2017) - what started as a small program to help the legitimately disabled mushroomed into a safety net for millions of unemployed people, particularly in the Rust Belt states that lost 4M manufacturing jobs due to automation. Those people could all get the same level of support from a UBI as they currently get from their benefits and they would be freed up to go into the marketplace to find a job. Right now they sit on the sidelines because they would lose their benefits. There are 126 (brutally-efficient, running-like-clockwork, staffed-by-highly-motivated-public-servants and not-at-all-prone-to-fraud-waste-and-abuse ;)) aid programs accounting for hundreds of billions in spending and tens of millions of unemployed or underemployed workers. Get those people off benefits, onto UBI and back in the workforce et voila, suddenly they, too, are in that broad, broad middle chunk of folks benefiting under Yang’s VAT scheme.
And we’ve not even gotten into Yang’s Progressive agenda like Medicare for All and capital gains taxation and human-centered capitalism and…really, it’s all on his website. He could not be more transparent. If you want to poke holes in VAT because it’s regressive, that’s not seeing the whole picture. You’re looking at the Mona Lisa through a keyhole, seeing an eye staring back at you and wondering what all the fuss is about.
I believe UBI will reduce the need for all those aid programs substantially. Maybe they don’t go away, but they shrink organically, along with their associated bureaucracies and costs. In re: the VAT, I just posted a response to DSeid which I would refer you to. You’re both quite invested in this idea that because VAT is regressive (it is, no one is arguing that point) the whole Yang platform is as well. That’s not the case. But it’s all on the Yang2020 website if you’d care to read up on it. He’s an open book - which is a big part of what I find appealing about him.
I’m going to respond a bit out of order. First I am not at all discussing Yang’s whole platform. Just the part that is distinctly different than most others, the UBI and how to pay for it. He’s saying he’s for Medicare for All? The D who isn’t saying that is the bigger news.
The multimillionaire who will pay in more than he pays out. Okay, back to case study of my household (and the woman at about the 28%ile). My wife and I count as a millionaire household … mind most of it is the retirement portfolio which as we turn 60 should be up there … but in practical terms there is also the intergenerational transfer of wealth we’ve already achieved by paying for our kids’ educations. Our kids will be finishing education (likely all graduate education inclusive) with insignificant debt, compared to the debt anchor many/most of their peers have. Not 1%ers but income solidly top decile. Again together we would get that $24K with no loss of extant benefits. Make it simple and consider VAT as being on complete purchase prices. Would we more than contribute that back in VAT? No, we do not consume $240K of goods and services each year. Not sure how many married couples do even in the top decile. I think you have to get even beyond the 1% and into the 0.1% until you start seeing average years looking like that. We would be taking more out than in.
Who would opt out? As much as I think my bracket should not get it, I’ll take it. You really think that any meaningful number of even the 1%ers, heck even the 0.1%ers will opt out of taking free money? Buffet maybe. Not sure about Oprah. Musk would take it. Pretty sure Bezos too. And the Kochs? What do you think?
You are right that I dismiss the magical thinking portions pretty much out of hand and find the arguments for them to be incoherent.
I’m hearing on the one hand that the future is a robo-apocolypse in which there will be few jobs. This plan is to promote the dignity of not working, which is the fate for more and more of us as automation does more and more, displacing more from the middle into the lower and the unemployed.
And OTOH that shuffling money, as you acknowledged is accurate, regressively, will be a stimulus trickling down to create new good jobs that are not automated away, way in excess of the jobs that we have now, enough that the 10% VAT on what they consume with their up to (but usually less if in the lower half of the income spectrum) $12K UBI can fund the program. Perpetual motion machine baby! Think exponentially! Those who don’t have the needed skills for new jobs can use the $12K to get the training they need instead of living off of it and use their time to do that instead of working.
Not sure what the actual argument is supposed to be as it shifts for the needs of the moment.
How about disability? One no, the UBI does not pay as much as disability payments do. Disability is over a thousand more. Two, do you have a cite for how many are sitting on the sidelines not actually disabled, actually able to work a job that they are qualified for, who are only not working because they don’t want to lose their disability benefits? Realize that someone with a High School degree only is not qualified to work as an accountant or many other desk jobs. Back pain when standing or lifting might disable them from being a software programmer but it does from janitorial work, most manual labor, factory work, or even standing at counter sales.
In what ways should the social safety net be expanded, and where will the money come from?
Which of the candidates who will be running for President in 2020, are proposing to increase monetary low-income assistance programs, particularly ones for people who have lost jobs due to displacement by automation, not just for people who already have jobs?
I’m looking forward to hearing the details of the specific ideas to be expressed by the various candidates as the election season progresses and hearing the debates about them.
It’s a hijack away from this thread but sure I’ll share the sorts of things that appeal most to me.
My lean so far is to shoring up Obamacare, which has survived the best attempts to cut its legs from underneath it, and building on it with an opt-in expansion of Medicare to 50 years or older. This is self-funding. Once that proves itself I’d want to see the opt-in available to compete more fully in the marketplace.
Living wage legislation. There currently are jobs, they just pay too little to live off of.
Expansion of SNAP.
To me though the biggest issue is the hollowing out of the middle class and the increasing concentration of wealth and power in the hands of the extremely few, not the 1% but the 0.1%. Paying for expanded safety nets with higher taxes at incomes over a million, and yes slightly greater taxation on capital gains and dividends possibly on a progressive scale. Serious considerations should be given to financial transaction taxes. Those monies can also be redirected in part to expanding EITC.
We need to invest in the green energy sector which can create jobs that pay well.
New technologies are eliminating some jobs and it will create others for those who can learn them. We need to be sure we are creating a large population of workers prepared for them. That means education beyond HS without crippling debt (not necessarily free). Some of HRC’s ideas last cycle were good for that but I am also waiting to hear some serious plans suggested and debated that would encourage expansion of post HS education delivered less expensively.
Per the 2016 data there were a bit north of 10M people receiving disability benefits. The payment breakout is detailed on the site (chart 5) but the headline is disabled men average a bit less than $1300/mo. (below UBI full replacement), disabled women about $1050 (still below but close to UBI replacement), while disabled widows/widowers and disabled adult children all top out well below $800 (below UBI replacement). Under UBI everyone on more than $1K stays as they are while everyone else switches over and comes out ahead, net of increased VAT expense. The question then becomes can the rest of Yang’s agenda find additional cost savings for anyone who may actually be worse off after UBI.
Dare I mention Medicare for All? How about paid family leave, mandated equal pay, reduced mass incarceration, controlling the cost of higher education, increased funding for vocational education, carbon fee and dividend, banking through the post office, increased assistance for single parents, prosperity grants, and all the hundred other things in the Yang platform all centered around the same theme of moving America forward with opportunity for all?
As for how many people are collecting disability payments fraudulently? Great question. Let’s take a poll. Would everyone defrauding the government please raise your hand? Yeah, it’s notoriously difficult to get that kind of data. One interesting (or sad) note: if you look at chart 3 at the link you will see a US map showing disability rates by state. The industrial Midwest and the rural South tend towards higher rates. Are people in Michigan and West Virginia just unlucky? Or did their major industries contract, forcing people to find other ways to survive, including going on disability? No telling. But I think it’s likely.
If we looked at the other 125 aid programs i think we’d find a similar mixed bag. Some will benefit from UBI and others will do better staying put. But no one who wants to work will be forced to stay on subsistence-level benefits.
Do you really think VAT is regressive? Strange that you never mentioned it before.
How about the fact we’ll get the Apples and the Googles and the JP Morgans and all the other megacorporations currently, perfectly legally, skating on their tax obligations to pay their share? Doesn’t that warm your progressive little heart? It does mine.
Look, everyone’s going to be lucky but you’re going to be one of the luckier ones. You won’t turn down a free $1,000/mo. even though you don’t need it. Most people won’t. But I’m guessing you’re not going to turn into Scrooge McDuck and hide all the cash under your mattress, either. You’re a level-headed person so you’re going to invest most of it in a diversified portfolio heavy on low-fee index funds yadda yadda. But maybe, just maybe, you’ll also take your lovely wife out for dinner one more time per month than you do now. And maybe, just maybe, when you visit your favourite restaurant it will be a bit more crowded now because lots of other people also feel well-off enough to eat out a bit more. And maybe the restaurant owner has to hire three more waiters and a prep-chef to keep pace with demand. All of whom now pay taxes and…multiply by the number of clothing stores, hobby shops, vegan cat cafes, bait and tackle shops, etc. and is it really so hard to envision that if you inject a ton of cash into the economy people are going to spend it?
Will some people abuse UBI and sit in their basement and play video games the rest of their lives? I have an ex-son-in-law who will for sure. (He tried to get hired at a local mill in order to injure himself and collect disability - not expecting him to get a MacArthur Foundation grant anytime soon.) But for every one like him there will be ten others who think, “Hey, I could make some money delivering craft beers to video game-playing shut-ins!” Or avocado toast. Or vitamin D tablets. Or whatever.
I think this stuff is inspiring and you my friend see the glass half empty. That’s cool. It takes all kinds. But if it’s all the same to you, I’d like us to unhijack this thread and step back from this laserlike focus on VAT (it’s a regressive tax, have you heard?:)) to allow some oxygen to discuss other aspects of the Yang campaign. For example, he’s at 49/65K donors - he’s defo on track to make the debate. Assuming that during the debate he could explain UBI and how it’s funded to your satisfaction (it’s clear that I cannot and I’m ok with that) are there other objections you have to his candidacy and what might those be?
This is what I find a little difficult to believe, which is that everyone getting UBI eliminates the need for all those aid programs. If those on the income floor are earning $12000, they’re going to need a hell of a lot more to survive than that, especially if everyone else is receiving the exact same benefit. I like a lot of what Yang is thinking about, but I think your earlier analysis was quite correct: some of his ideas need to be worked out.
I cited a couple in my response to DSeid. Disabled widows/widowers and disabled adult children. I’m guessing if we went through the other 125 aid programs we might find a couple more. But, as per my other response, I seem to have found myself in the role of defending VAT/UBI against all comers and that’s not what I came here to do. If you’re opposed to VAT/UBI, go with whatever gods you believe in and blessings upon you.
Well, I’m really only strongly opposed to this kind of pie in the sky version that Yang is proposing. I’ll note that many of the actual government studies cited on his UBI reference page are better termed negative income tax studies. Those are a lot more defensible, since then we don’t have to worry about giving millionaires free money. And to get the funds he’s predicting from his VAT, it would have to be very very aggressive. Almost all other western countries that have a VAT give exemptions or discounts for basic household goods to take a little of the regressive edge off but Yang’s clearly would not.
So imho, people saying he’s so darn data driven and not playing politician are wrong. A VAT is not sticking it to Google and Apple. We’re all just going to pay more for their products. And a thoughtful guaranteed income program isn’t just “free money!”.
My thoughts about his candidacy were pretty complete in my very first post in this thread. He has no path to the nomination and no path to winning a general election. Read further if you want but that really is full stop in my head.
In my mind the differences between the Democratic nominees policy goals are fairly minor and the differences between how far in those directions they would be able to go as president are even less. They are all wanting to pull in the same direction on most issues and will all be limited by … political reality. There is a difference in tactics between some of them - do you try to move the Overton window by discussing much more than is realistic as your plan or do you focus on pragmatic approaches of what can get done? And differences in emphasis. (Yang’s emphasis for example is UBI and the robo-apocalypse.) But in terms of governance in office they’d all be pulling us from the Far Right minority rule into moderation and be able to make only some slight progress on their policy goals. So thinking about candidates I’m thinking about who can best win, who can best pull along others on the coattails, and who can help best build the strength of the party in states they cannot currently win priming for future wins.
Assuming someone with a path I’d prefer someone with experience getting things done politically (both in how to fight and in how to compromise) and with the oratory skills to express a positive vision of our country and the world in a way that inspires people to work together more than we currently do. Even if Yang had a realistic path he does not possess that sort of experience or those sorts of skills.
Assuming someone with a great path, with that sort of experience, and with those skills, I’d prefer someone whose emphasis is where I think the biggest problems are (which is not UBI). But my preference there is far backseat to getting a D in the office.
Still Yang hits on none of those items so um yeah.
Interesting take, and I think at this stage we’re all in the same camp - get a D, any D, in there instead of Trump. I’d written a much longer answer but then I went back and reread what you wrote and mine sounded very similar so I axed it. Except I no longer think in terms of who is electable. That went out the window in 2016. Also, Yang is the only one who has differentiated himself from the pack at this early stage. It will be interesting to see how the other Ds treat him on the debate stage. (Incidentally, Yang was a debater in high school and went to the world championships in 1992 - I think he will be ok in front of the cameras, but we’ll see.)
One thing I wonder about - is 2020 the year of the moderate or do we go full progressive? Will the pendulum snap back from the Far Right all the way to the Far Left? You sound like you want a more gradual approach - e.g. expand Medicare to 50-year-olds, tax the .1% before going after the 1%, etc. I honestly wonder if the moderate message is going take hold or will this be the year of the progressive purists? Good luck to anyone trying to build a centrist coalition as of today…
Fun stuff. Whoever is elected needs to pass a law that says presidential elections must be shorter than two years. This is nuts.
Mine, for the little it is worth, is that a fuller progressive message will be the winning pitch and I think the emphasis that will resonate most in both the primaries and in the general is an economic populist one, hopefully one that attack the systems that are resulting in greater wealth inequality and not a message demonizing the rich per se.
But again once in office governance is going to be by necessity moderate at most and getting anything through, even moderate SCOTUS picks, will require some political skill.
I’m with you. Sorry for the digressions. There’s a lot more to talk about his campaign and his policies. Just one more comment before I join you.
As aesop has noted several times, UBI is not just an economic policy meant to directly redistribute wealth. This is how the New Yorker article cited above puts it:
The visceral reactions to UBI can be seen in this thread. I doubt anyone will be convincing the other to change their reactions to the plan.
The reason that I asked about the candidates who are doing wealth redistribution plans is because I thought I might have missed the platforms of some of the candidates. From what I’ve seen, the only plans I’ve seen to redistribute wealth have been Kamala Harris’ tax credit plan which is half of the freedom dividend amount and only applies to people with a job earning less than $100K. Elizabeth Warren has the ultra-wealth tax but doesn’t show any plans about giving more benefits to the poor except for child care. Bernie Sanders has the $15/hr minimum wage. Corey Booker has “baby bonds”.
Other than that, I haven’t seen any wealth redistribution plans. I’m thinking the reason for that is because it’s not politically easy to do. Moving wealth from the very rich to the very poor is generally going to get pushback.
Howard Schultz is so mad that AOC made an offhand remark about taxing the wealthy that he’s running on the platform of cutting entitlements and not increasing any taxes on the wealthy.
The crowd at Davos (the convention for the ultra wealthy) was incensed that a historian and an economist were talking about increasing taxes on the wealthy at their conference.
Yang’s plan may not be perfect, but it’s a bigger attempt in the right direction than anyone else is doing, IMO. And it’s set up in a way to not stigmatize the rich or the poor.
As an aside, Yang has given roughly the same numbers for the cost of UBI that you found in your CBO analysis in most interviews I’ve seen him do when he’s talking about UBI.
This might interest you. Alisyn Camerota did a focus group with 6 Hillary Clinton supporters recently (3/5/19).
No one was for Biden. (MSM was shocked.) They were vocal about Hillary NOT stumping in 2020. 4 of the 6 felt the country should move in the progressive direction while 2 felt that the direction was pragmatic and centrist.
Back to Yang’s campaign. The Yang subreddit is coming alive. They’re having a lively discussion on the use of memes. (They’re temporarily banned in the campaign sub.) The campaign sub is one of the fastest growing subon reddit. And as you know, donations are up to 50K individuals to the 65K needed to get to the debates.
I am in broad agreement with you although I’m less fussed about getting a professional politician in. I view it as a nice-to-have rather than a core requirement. Any reasonably bright person ought to be able to harness the power of the party machine if he has the votes. And the charisma. (Republicans are going to lament the opportunity they lost with Trump for decades to come. All he had to do was pivot ever so slightly to broaden his appeal, instead he just keeps doubling down on his base. Madness.) Otherwise we should just nominate Biden and be done with it. No one else comes close in terms of politicking chops (and he wouldn’t be a bad choice, but I believe his progressivism would rapidly revert to a more moderate mean in short order - he being a pragmatic professional politician). That said, the core progressive agenda won’t be enough to overcome the inertia of a strong economy. The Independents we need are probably educated, employed and covered by employer healthcare. They’re not fired up by Medicare expansion. They like watching their 401K grow (who doesn’t?). We need a punchy message to capture the national imagination.
If Howard Schultz makes a real go of it, that could actually help peel off Indie’s who are actually Rs but won’t admit it. I don’t see him having broad appeal for the progressives. We already know the opposition game plan. They’re going to hang that socialism label around the D nominee’s neck like a lead albatross. So we have to keep that message from sticking otherwise the list of toss-up states gets a lot longer. And it won’t take much to conflate populism with socialism in the mind of the electorate. Bernie and Yang are particularly vulnerable to that attack in my opinion.
I’m betting on greed. Or perhaps naked self-interest. I think people will flock to Yang’s $1K per month. I did from the moment I heard about it. Thank goodness he thought of it rather some psychopath.
He’s on CBSNews Red and Blue (1 minute clip) with Major Garrett talking about the history of UBI [youtube] Press article.
Yang just hit 100K followers on Twitter. His response.
Kyle Kulinski of Secular Talk (youtube channel) and co-founder of Justice Democrats named Yang as third on his list of candidates after Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren/Tulsi Gabbard (tied for second). Kulinski likes UBI and Medicare for all on Yang’s platform but has reservations about some regulations he doesn’t specify. [youtube starts at around minute 10] Fast Company article on Yang interview.
Yang has a long way to go for name recognition, but he’s working hard at it.
Thanks for that, I was being tongue in cheek. He was a successful CEO - he’s going to have some of those traits. But if you look at his videos you see a man with humility as well, and damned if we couldn’t use a massive dose of that in the Oval Office again.
I had a look at the links you posted in your previous two comments - doesn’t look like it’s a good time to be a moderate. Or over 70 for that matter. Biden may be 2020’s Jen Bush, the safe, obvious choice that never gets any traction. Although should he catch fire, he wouldn’t be a bad challenger to Trump. The progressives would hold their nose a vote for him, and he could get enough of the independents. But that’s 20th century thinking.
The name recognition for Yang is coming. And he’s pretty savvy on Reddit. He, or his team, know the memes. I remember when Bob Dole tripped all over his tongue to get out the name of his website in the 1996 campaign. How times have changed.
Thanks for the upload. I’ve heard of him and knows what he’s about (just the basics) and I think he’s completely correct how this economy doesn’t work, and how automation will continue a downward trend unless radical change takes place.
Let’s say we know he has no chance. Just getting on the stage, or doing more interviews, its getting some different ideas out there. I’m… NO ONE was talking $15/hr minimum wage, Medicare-For-All, and all the other things Bernie Sanders was talking about. He’s been in government a long time, but no one knew him until he ran for President in 2016, where he went from 2%, to almost getting half (despite being cheated in many ways) where now its almost a litmus test, or at least a questionaire for all those running in the DNC.
FDR, JFK, and TR are the only Presidents I like. I don’t think JFK was heartless to strive for peace, and I don’t think FDR (The New Deal) was heartless for rebuilding America when it was on the brink of collapse. I think a lot of the extracurricular negativity we sometimes see is because they were considered traitors to their class.
