How do you feel about Andrew Yang's proposal for a universal basic income?

A 10% VAT tax would generate hundreds of billions beyond a thousand dollars each.

Universal healthcare, free post-secondary education, K-12 education that doesn’t lag behind the rest of the developed world, shorter working hours and/or free childcare, and major investments in infrastructure are all more important and better uses of any surplus wealth that might go toward UBI.

Basic economics 101: What goes around, comes around. If Mr. Businessowner raises his prices or his wages to employees, sooner or later it will affect everyone and then the whole process starts over. Not that I am against the notion, it’s just that the whole idea is a never ending circle.

I think the link provided gives zero details on how he intends to work this. It give pie-in-the-sky views of how great things would be but gives no actual details of the plan. In many of the European countries, this is called a Goods and Services tax. All goods and services are taxed.
Which includes things like groceries, clothing, utilities, gasoline, internet service….the whole kit’n’kaboodle. I think it would impact the poor far more than the rich. Most of the income raised will be on the backs of the poor and middle-class. Remember, his stated plan is that a value added tax would basically drive costs up 10% automatically. So you have poor and middle class people struggling already. Now you are going to drive the cost of living up 10%. Yeah, a rich guy will have to pay an extra 10% for a yacht, but the poor guy is suddenly going to watch his money suck out of his pocket even faster. And the rich guy might decide that buying the yacht isn’t important or that it isn’t worth that extra 10%.
I think my question for Mr. Yang would be very simple: Congress has not shown any fiscal responsibility for the past century. Why should we give them more money and more control over our life with their current level of performance?

If I could avoid the VAT beyond $961 per month, and collect 1000, I would make 4%.
Could be worse.
If I paid the VAT on more than $1000, I lose money.
At that point, I vote no.
Or spend less.
But that would be bad for a consumer based economy.

Personally, I’d rather save the 10% VAT than get $1000/month, and I agree it seems regressive to me.

On one hand, people buying less than $10K worth of stuff per month (= $1K tax) will come out ahead. On the other hand, sellers will be able to raise prices since everyone will have more money. I don’t see a simple path to a good outcome here.

I have mixed feelings. I have sat through three lectures on basic income the last couple of years, and slowly I am coming around to the idea.

It would help me a lot right now.
I do worry about it hurting young people. Working and supporting yourself gives you psychological independence. $1k is t enough for most people to live on, $2k in inexpensive parts of the country they can come very close.

I’m curious to see how it goes for countries implementing it.