Why can i not shake the feeling that something is not right about having billionaires receive an additional $1000/month with the implementation of Yang’s UBI proposal but a low-income disabled person whose income prior to UBI is funded primarily by a $700/month stipend in disability benefits, that person will only see an additional $300/month with the implementation of Yang’s proposal? Are there elements that i am missing? It seems like those that need the most are getting the least.
I think it’s a good idea for this kind of thing not to involve a whole bureaucracy deciding on a case-by-case basis who is eligible.
Keep in mind that the billionaire will be paying much more than $1,000 extra per month to pay for the UBI.
No Ambi you’ve got it. It’s a regressive redistribution funded by a tax that disproportionately impacts the poorest the most. (The regressivity of VAT as a funding source has been covered ad nauseum by now.)
Meanwhile Rasmussen/HarrisX poll with Yang polling at 0% (3/741). He is becoming a more well known entity: the “never heard of” is down to 39%. Unfortunately for him as people form opinions “unfavorable” is catching up on “no opinion”, now 21% unfavorable with 8% “very unfavorable” and 13% “somewhat”, compared to 28% no opinion, and the quite lagging only 13% "favorable’ (10% “somewhat” and 3% very).
Quinnipiac has him overall at 1% - statistically pretty much all men and mostly conservative men.
That idea is a lot more powerful if it removes some of that bureaucracy, rather than run in parallel with it which is Yang’s proposal.
Some billionaires might but it’s a reach for most millionaires. To break even on the VAT, the government needs you to purchase $120,000 in goods and services per year (@$1000/month,10%VAT).
You’ve surprised me (in a good way) several times recently.
You may be right about the ‘like’ button. I’m not a fan of that for a lot of reasons, but if this place had one, I’d add one to your post.
This thread is also selling me on the idea of upvotes.
Why can’t that $1,000/month be regardless of income or source of income? Would it be unsustainable in that scenario? Why can Joe Smith pulling in $500 a month in disability receive a free and clear $1000 on top of that paltry disability-related assistance? It seems like they are being hammered for being unable to work. Why should an assistance program based on disability eligibility eat in to a proposed UBI that makes no income restrictions for literally ANYONE else, including some of the richest people in the world?
Here’s some calculations someone did about the Freedom Dividend on Reddit:
Without the reduction for benefits that are already being paid, there would need to be an additional roughly $1.4T that would need to be accounted for.
But let’s say that were possible. The bank bailout was supposed to have been $4T and that somehow got funded. Maybe funds could be moved from something else.
Let’s say that money wasn’t an issue. I don’t think it would bother me, but wouldn’t some people be concerned that there would be a bunch of people who would apply for more benefits so they could get both? ISTM that there are already a lot of people who are upset that some people are getting benefits at all. Wouldn’t there be even more upset people if some people got two servings of government benefits?
That said, Yang has said that he would help people who might be affected by the regressive nature of the VAT, like those people who opted out of the UBI but are on a fixed income. If they can structure the VAT correctly, taxing the luxury goods over the necessities, that might also help to correct for some of the issues. If they can structure the VAT correctly and help people who might be adversely affected by it, that might alleviate the issue of people on benefits getting less.
Thank you for your detailed response. This gives me a clearer picture of the proposal. I just wanted to comment on this. Are you suggesting that it is politically untenable because if the perception arose that he was helping out those ‘freeloaders’ ‘living high off the hog on the government’s dime’ he would lose critical votes? Its not “two servings” tho. These people include those who literally depend on that disability assistance for subsistence. A program that promises a benefit of $1000/month should not be affected by anything. Ideally, at least. If they weren’t disabled, already at a societal disadvantage, they wouldn’t need that pittance from the government meant to offset that disadvantage (however slight that offset is). The money meant to offset those disadvantages should reset the meter to 0.00 for these folks. After all, by offsetting a disadvantage, you shore up need. And those disabled folk who are currently getting disability benefits and not much else are some of the most in need of that $1000/month. I understand the realities of the matter and why it is designed the way it is. But consider me a definite non-Yang supporter.
I’m not surprised.
But would you be a Yang supporter if the plan was the $1,000/mo above the other government benefits programs?
The cited numbers there are a bit off. Remember we ran them here, with believable sources.
Cost is estimated by most to be $3T at the lowest with most estimating $3.8T, not $2.8T
A broad-based 10% VAT (which would be very regressive in its impact) would raise not $800B but maybe $500B.
Predictions of economic growth and reductions of poverty savings are a bit of handwaving trickledown style magical thinking. Leave it as quite debatable.
The shortfall is much worse than that “someone did” some calculations would suggest. Even with the elimination major benefit programs (such as disability, retirement & social security, welfare, and unemployment benefits) it’s a $1T/yr shortfall.
Narrow the VAT so it is of less severe regressivity and of course the funding side drops down dramatically. Reduce the regressivity of the benefit side, same.
Yang’s proposal includes imposing regressive new consumer taxes on the poorest while keeping their benefits static and giving new benefits, as big as the poorest get for need, to the wealthiest. He presents it as things it clearly is not and that he surely knows is what it is not and he claims the numbers add to what simple math shows they do not.
Look I’d love it if he got up to a few percent of support as I personally would prefer many other choices to Sanders and Yang is more likely to draw from that pool than anywhere else. He won’t. Still the ideas he proposes are bad ideas that are more trickledown repackaged than anything else, trying to sell everyone that there is free money for everyone, or implying incorrectly that Amazon and such will pay for it.
Some of his supporters are just repeating false information that he is selling. When he says those things, knowing better, he is lying. That has to be called out.
Yes. The budgeting shortfall is what I would normally consider standard political bullshittng but pretending his VAT is a tax on big tech companies is over the line.
Last night’s (5/3/19) Seattle rally was amazing. The RSVP on Facebook wasn’t that high the day before, so I wasn’t expecting to see a big crowd. But the reporter who covered it said it was estimated to be 3,000. I’m not good at estimating those things, but it was a crowd that looked almost as large as LA’s rally. The crowd was pumped up more than the LA crowd. I watched (on livestream) as Yang was going through the crowd at the entrance. He didn’t realize how large the crowd was until he got to the stage, so you could tell he wasn’t prepared to see that many people.
The guy who introduced Yang at the rally was Dan Price, the CEO of Gravity Payments, who gave his employees a minimum wage of $70K/yr while cutting his own salary from $1M to $70K to fund it. He got backlash for it. That was back in 2015. He says his company is doing well now. It’s truly amazing how mad some people get when other people get more even if they’re unaffected.
I just looked up the story. At the rally, Price mostly talked about the babies that were being born to employees and how an employee was able to buy a new house in Washington state. His business increased as well, according to wiki.
From reading the articles on what happened, some companies started to change their policies toward more income inequality, but some people were really upset that it was upsetting the status quo.
I can see why Price is supporting Yang and how their efforts have a common bond.
The Boston Globe has an updated New Hampshire front runner list. It’s behind a paywall but the comment on the subreddit says that Yang is 8th on the list.
On the policy side, there’s a recent study that shows that economic policies can reduce the number of suicide deaths. While this isn’t exactly the same as the Freedom Dividend, it might apply equally since people getting more money seems to help.
Can Economic Policies Reduce Deaths of Despair?
On the fun side, yesterday, Yang was setting up the #maythe4th. . . be with you and Star Wars stuff. The icon on his website brandished a laser saber. The guy who created it told me that something even more cool was coming today. He didn’t tell me what it was, so maybe it was this video of Yang with a Star Wars theme.
I really enjoyed Yang’s recent newsletter where he writes a bit about the behind the scenes things that go on in a campaign and his feelings about them. He starts out by talking about the behaviors that are required to create a campaign, like going to TV studios, putting on make-up and saying positive things about the campaign. While those are necessary, there are other parts too.
He talked about how he’s an introvert and how that makes it surprising that someone like him could be running for President.
Yang is in Detroit today doing another rally. He’s joking about doing an 8-mile re-eanactment there.
Whoa. I tuned into a livestream rally several days ago on 5/5. I’m getting addicted to watching these ralliesonline live. I looked at the crowd and thought they were replaying an old video from LA or Seattle. It was a rally in Minneapolis, MN. I was expecting some people in a mall or something. The crowd size rivaled Seattle’s crowd. The crowd enthusiasm matched or beat Seattle’s enthusiasm. It wasn’t until Yang mentioned Minneapolis that I realized I was watching the right crowd. Only 600 people RSVPed for this event. If Seattle’s crowd was in the thousands, this must have been at least as big.
Where are these people coming from? The subReddit has 17K subscribers, twitter has 260K followers. I don’t have Facebook, so maybe they’re from there. But even his online presence wouldn’t make me think that this amount of people would show up for his rallies.
When I see the numbers of people at these rallies, I’m reminded of how the campaign is growing all the time. Here’s a collage of his rallies to date.
I’m also seeing some fun stories from people who have been to these rallies. It’s really heartwarming to see people happy about something. Here’s a guy from the Detroit rally taking a selfie with Yang. Met Yang at the Detroit Rally yesterday. Got to go on stage and everything!
Here’s another story that goes with a picture. Thank you, Andrew, for giving me the opportunity to make the world a better place.
Andanother one with a guy wearing a t-shirt that says, “Born before the internet” with a picture of a dinosaur on it.
Nice article in the Washington Post. The Technology 202: Andrew Yang says Uber, Lyft protests show why it’s urgent Democrats debate future of work. It’s in response to the Uber/Lyft protests.
Considering that Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post and runs Amazon, the company Yang continually talks about in his stump speech, the idea that The Washington Post would write a positive piece on Yang might be considered strange. But the rally in Seattle showed that a lot of people from Amazon back Yang. It’s been written that Amazon employees know they’re working to find ways to work themselves out of a job. Maybe the people at The Washington Post are in the same camp.
An entire piece of Stephen Colbert mocking Yang’s campaign. Doin’ It Donkey Style: Andrew Yang
Another trucker for Yang. “I’m a Staunch Republican… I’m Willing to Give Him a Shot” | Andrew Yang for President
Brett Baier on Fox News did an interview with Yang. It was a nice interview. It gave a chance to answer to the Colbert piece about the Powerpoint! chant. Yang’s rallies have turned into interactive participation. When Yang talks about changing the measurements on which success will be built and measured, the crowd chants Powerpoint. It gives a sense that people who show up to those rallies know what the campaign is about before they show up.
Another Yang newsletter. This one’s cute. It has a picture of Yang and his campaign manager sharing a meal out of a styrofoam container in the front seat of a car. He analogizes his campaign team to a family. His campaign manager is the dad. Even though Yang is a dad, CEO and head of the campaign, within that structure, he considers himself to be playing the role of the baby.
Yang will be in New Hampshire through the weekend with multiple events there. Then they’re hoping for a large rally in New York next week.
Yeah! The latest polling has him surging to 1%!!!
Yang has been in New Hampshire, doing a lot of smaller venues.
He’s had some good press in the last couple days.
This Washington Post article is a nice (and positive) summary of his campaign. Who is that guy? Andrew Yang’s presidential campaign draws crowds, money and an expected spot on the Democratic debate stage.
This article is really positive. Yang’s crowds are diverse in a lot of ways, but not so much in others. The political diversity seems high. Just judging by how people look, the income levels look represented. But race and gender diversity aren’t ideal. . . yet. But it’s nice to see a positive article. And importantly, the article is from Iowa. Hopefully, that helps in Iowa.
The actual rally numbers from Yang’s campaign manager:
Some comments from Nate Silver:
The news in New Hampshire is reporting that his events in NH are moving the needle some. Yang presidential campaign starts to register in NH polls
Another great interview with Tucker Carlson. Yang: Amazon needs to pay their fair share Tucker was positive and promoted Yang’s ideas. The comment section of the video was mostly positive.
I have to admit that I was dismayed by how dismissive Colbert was toward Yang in the monologue a couple nights ago. People are saying that all publicity is good, so it’s all good. But it wasn’t just that he was joking, it was that his jokes missed the point. Happily, Yang’s PR mgr. just announced Yang is now booked on Colbert right before the debates. At least he’ll have a quick chance to make his case.
The YangGang is trying very hard to get Andrew on The Hot Ones. They were trying to get the producers’ attention when they were doing a live AMA on reddit the other day.
I was listening to this interview on New Hampshire Public Radio and thinking about how people calling in seem to think they’re the first person to think of a question that’s been asked dozens, maybe hundreds of times before. It’s sort of like watching a long-running TV show and someone asking a question about it you’re heard so many times before like they’re the first to think of it. I admire Yang’s ability to patiently explain the same thing for the umpteenth time with enough respect for the person like it was the first.
Street artof Yang in Washington, DC.
Just randomly, I was looking at the funding of the 2020 candidates on opensecrets. Just noticed that the candidates who don’t have outside money are also not getting much media. Could be a cause or an effect. The correlation isn’t 100%.
There was some good press from this weekend’s New Hampshire meetings. Yang was joined by Steve Marchand, who is an ex-mayor of a city in New Hampshire and Yang’s senior advisor. From Steve Marchand’s twitter:
From the article he’s referencing:
Another nice article from New Hampshire: Decoding the Vibe: Make America What Again, Andrew Yang?
In the meantime, there are some interesting one-off positive comments. Adam Corolla talked about Yang in his podcast very favorably. It starts at 10:41 on part 2 of the 5/13/19 podcast. Corolla liked the VAT idea that he saw on Tucker Carlson.
On Bill Maher, Matt Lewis mentioned Yang. Maher was asking Lewis who he planned to vote for. Lewis said that he wouldn’t vote for Trump or Biden. He mentioned Yang but then noted he could decide not to vote and still complain about the outcome. Maher mentioned that Yang was on the schedule in June for his show.
The Washington Post also had a podcast about Yang’s campaign from a reporter who has been following him. Starts on minute 8. She was talking about the Chicago rally, which was a couple months ago where there were a bunch of people jammed into a crowded space. She noted the diversity of the crowd and how enthused they were.
There’s a piece in Time magazine: How Andrew Yang’s Online Following Has Turned Into a Real-Life Coalition
Then a quirky piece written by a college student. It was still interesting, I thought. The Catholic Case for Andrew Yang
The Yang Gang is planning a service day over Memorial day weekend.
Yang is speaking at the Blockchain Week NYC and CoinDesk’s Consensus 2019 event
The big event this week is a rally planned in NYC. Then he heads to South Carolina. From Yang’s twitter:
Yang is polling at 2% in South Carolina.
On the technology front.
A company in Sweden just released a self-driving truck on a short stretch of public road. The company plans to apply for permits for larger stretches next year.
A Joe Rogan sound-alike.
Yang’s tweet:
**
On the social media front. **
The Yang Gang have a new offfical tumblr for the more fun stuff of the campaign, as well as graphics heavy stuff. Sounds fun. 
I’ve already seen a graphic of useful stats I like.
A Yang article made the front page of r/politics on Reddit. It got roughly 2K comments and over 9K upvotes. Andrew Yang wants to tax Amazon and Google like oil so every American can get $1,000 a month — no questions asked
On the regular media front.
Yang was on Fox News, this time with Martha MacCallum. She gave Bernie a hard time in the town hall. But when she couldn’t get Yang riled, she asked if he was too nice to beat Trump.
Reuters had a pretty nice article on Yang.
Yang did a presentation at a bitcoin event. 5 articles on Yang from the crypto world.
CNN put up a photo profile of Yang. Baby Yang!
One of Yang’s policies is Democracy Dollars where each citizen would be given $100 to be used to support a candidate for that year only. Seattle is now using a similar method that is gaining some interest. One guy collecting those dollars from the people is overtaking corporate lobbyist money.
Amy Walter (NPR) interviewed Yang on a podcast.
With each passing week, it becomes more evident that the right-wing media is more civil to Yang than the left. Maybe it’s just my bias, but the left-wing media questions exasperate me more than the right. It’s not just the questions. Those are the same ones without fail. It’s the framing, the tone and the lack of imagination.
The most significant media event of the week. He made it to the NYT crossword puzzle!
On the campaign front.
The NYC rally didn’t go as planned. It was planned for weeks, but the day of the rally, it was pouring freezing rain. Still ~2500-3000 people showed up in the freezing rain. It wasn’t the turnout they were hoping for, but considering the circumstances, still a pretty good showing. This is from Yang’s newsletter about the event. (He writes all his own newsletters.)
I wrote to one guy who posted about the rally on the sub. I told him it was great that he showed up in the rain. He was so pumped up about the rally that he didn’t seem to care about the rain.
There’s a picture of a sea of umbrellas as the rain poured on the crowd.
I love this video of drone footage of the Seattle rally a few weeks ago. It’s really well done, shows the size of the crowd and just feels cinematic. The backdrop is beautiful.
Yang is in South Carolina this weekend. There are several hundred people signed up for his events this weekend.
The headlines on a bunch of articles for the last several days seem to be tailor made for Yang’s campaign. Maybe people are looking for them more now, but these are very timely.
In Middle of Trade War, America’s Busiest Port Gets Ready for Robots
A Los Angeles shipping terminal is planning to replace diesel trucks and human workers. May 20, 2019
A.I. Took a Test to Detect Lung Cancer. It Got an A. May 20, 2019
Self-driving trucks begin mail delivery test for U.S. Postal Service May 21, 2019
Yang is moving up in the rankings on several lists.
Yang made it to the top 10 in Business Insider. He moved up from 15th in the last update.
Yang made it to the top 10 in the CNN ranking.
He maintained his number 9 spot in Rolling Stone. This is a live and rolling site, so this is #9 as I’m writing this, but may change.
People are talking about the Freedom Dividend more. Someone is trying to create a UBI calculator that would easily calculate the effects of UBI on the individual or on the society on the whole. He’s trying to crowdfund it. It’s not getting much traction in the sub, and I’m not bought into how it would help.
I recently saw a debate between Yang and a Harvard economics professor on UBI. It was from back in January 2019. It was a bit disappointing. It was a libertarian conference so that was the angle. It wasn’t that helpful for the rest of it. The professor seemed to feel that UBI was fine if it replaced all the entitlements and the VAT was fine if it replaces income taxes. But that was really tangential to Yang’s policy since those ideas aren’t part of Yang’s policy. For the rest, the arguments were the common ones given all the time.
There was a nice article on the VAT. She doesn’t mention Yang in the article, but she also doesn’t mention why she’s writing the article at this time.
She does mention the regressive nature, but these two notes touch on that. And even those two make the assumption of a broad based VAT with 100% pass through which might not be the case in Yang’s proposal.
There’s some very preliminary feedback from the Stockton UBI trial. Stockton woman says guaranteed income program has been life-changing
She plans to save up for a car and go to college later.
A little better press coverage lately.
What If Presidential Hopeful Andrew Yang Is Right? Op-ed in Forbes
Is Andrew Yang for Real? Politico The author tweets
Yang and staff helped her get her ear unplugged from the plane ride.
Nerdiest Presidential Campaign in History NYT
WSJ The Future of Everything Festival video
The South Carolina meeting looked like they went well. Yang met with the mayor of Columbia, SC there and Congressman Jim Clyburn stopped by one of his meetings.
Zach, his campaign manager posted a picture of a packed small bar with the caption -
Some fun stuff. A Yang Ganger who is not in the US wanted to find a way to help publicize Yang, so he creatred a video game. The screen shots of the video game are interesting, but his story of how he became a Yang Ganger is more interesting to me.
Another Yang Ganger created an app. and has a huge ad on a building to advertise it.
Alexis Ohanian, a co-founder of Reddit, retweeted a Yang article on vocational schools. I don’t know what it means but thought it was interesting that he’s reading an article on Yang.
TYT sent out someone from RebelHQ to ask Yang 31 questions while he was on his way to the NYC rally.
Q: When do you laugh the most?
Yang: Unfortunately, watching mainstream news.
Who needs polls when you can judge interest by the honking cars?
Yang and the mayor of Columbia, SC decide if they’re gong to run up the building steps Rocky-style. Nope. (Yang often jokes that there’s nothing to make someone feel young like running for President, considering the other contenders. But apparently in this case, not that young.)
The basic problem Yang’s campaign has now is that it’s becoming an historically over-crowded field of candidates. If the debate commission had anticipated this number of candidates, they might have raised the requirements to polling at 2-5%.
I’d paid very little attention to any Yang details, so thank you, Heffalump and Roo for the summary.
No major new tax, except a regressive VAT tax?? He doesn’t even plan to restore income taxes on the rich to Clinton-era levels??? Cancel my subscription!
And yes, it’s hard to approve of a one-size-fits-all UBI where a disabled person gets no more than a healthy person. And a 17-year old handicapped person gets zero.
A big dent in the $1.4T could come from corporate tax, capital gains taxes, estate taxes, etc.
As for $4T — that ain’t chickenfeed. Net spending by the Feds during the crisis was much less than that; and much of the “spending” was tax cuts.
On a separate matter, sales and VAT taxes impact consumers *and* retailers *and* manufacturers. Because of demand elasticity, vendors will have to cut their profit margins and/or suffer reduced volumes.