What do you think of Yang’s plan for Universal Basic Income in America?

Yeah, good luck trying to get that passed.
You did not even get universal healthcare through the stonewall.

^^I didn’t ask about the likelihood of it happening. I just asked what jellies think about it. If it ever happened in America, I’m sure it wouldnt be any time soon.

“I didn’t ask about the likelihood of it happening. ”
It was implied in the question.

My wife and I could live on 2k a month, we pretty much do already. If that were to happen I would cut back my working hours if not just outright retire at 43 considering we have already been saving for retirement. I’d still work but it would be part-time when I felt like it. Most of the lower paying, high stress jobs would be hard if not impossible to fill.
The bill for this proposal is to the tune of 2.5 trillion every year. I did not see where they are proposing this comes from.

I see now that they are talking about a VAT and eliminating welfare programs. That would be fine IMO. I think they are being naive about how this would affect the economy and workflow. I think prices on things like housing would be driven up. Goods too because of the VAT. Outside of inflation and market bubbles and trickle down taxes if healthcare was paid too then I probably would not have a “job.” That would be the one thing keeping me in the grind.

VAT is a bad idea because it discourages spending. Progressive taxation is a much better solution.

I have mixed feelings about VAT. On one hand it’s just a hidden sales tax on the other it’s fair as it is a “usage” tax. The complexity of the economic situation it would create and what it it would do to the cost of everyday items is hard to quantify.

@ARE_you_kidding_me Let’s say you and many others would choose to retire early, would that be good because it opens up jobs for younger people who need more money? People who have children, who are saving for retirement, or who want more material things. Maybe your mortgage is paid off at this point so your expenses are very low?

I go back and forth in my head about UBI. I liked that Yang had information regarding the efficacy of retraining people. For many people education and retraining did not result in getting a new job as a lot of our manufacturing moved away or closed up.

I do think some prices and costs will go up. It will likely create a new floor so to speak like a new poverty level, but I really like that every American gets it, so the stigma gets removed for receiving government money.

I don’t understand why there needs to be a VAT though. This is where I started to have a problem with it. Yang, and other lectures I’ve been to, spoke about the big winners like Amazon and Apple paying society back, almost like a dividend, for the company’s success. I was unclear if this might be another way of looking at the success of industry and more specifically monopolies and oligopolies.

Elizabeth Warren talks about breaking up the monopolies, Yang seems to be saying, part of our reality is some businesses are extremely successful and own tremendous market share, and maybe that is difficult to break apart for some industries.

I’m not sure how I feel about it. I don’t have any strong opinions, I’m more in the information gathering stage.

I do feel strongly that young people should work fir many reasons. Self esteem, separating from parents both physically and psychologically, there are more reasons, but even if someone doesn’t earn money at a job, volunteering can do some of that too, but I think it’s different.

The UBI would create a shift in the culture. Or, maybe I should say the culture would need to shift to even think about having a UBI.

UBI is simply redistribution of wealth, from the rich to the poor. It’s a pernicious application of socialism, and more importantly, it won’t do what Yang wants it to.

It will ultimately raise the prices of anything and everything, because prices always to the level of affordable disposable income. If people have more money, merchants will raise prices to soak that up.

Something that isn’t included on his policy page – would the UBI be taxable income? If so, it defeats its own purpose.

Another piece of the policy is that it would be illegal to borrow or lend against your dividend. First, how would that be enforced? Second, if it’s my money, why does the government have any say on whether i lend it or not?

Pretty dumbass populist idea.

@elbanditoroso That’s what I was thinking: isn’t it just going to cause inflation? And I’d like to hear how he plans on paying for it in the first place since it’s estimated to cost the government 2 trillion dollars.

@JLeslie At middle age in my business is when people are most productive and working independently on the larger heavy hitting projects. It would not be good across the industry for those people to leave.

It might give people, especially people with low paying jobs that are essential, a lot more leverage to negotiate better salaries.
When you do not have to work in order to live, why settle for exploitatively low pay?

I agree with @elbanditoroso. Makes a good soundbyte though.

Some form of UBI is inevitable, and it’ll be the only thing to save capitalism from its inherent contradictions.

Robots make bad consumers, and there’s only so many people you can shunt into meaningless and pointless service and adminstrative work—and even that’s increasingly automated.

More and more work is effectively unproductive, a simple means to an income for the purpose of consumption. A consumption of economic output that is ever increasingly the product of non-human labour.

We can get rid of a lot of pointless and demoralising “work” through UBI. Of course, the pro-capitalists are wedded to the doctrine that there’s no such thing as pointless work, and it’s all creating “value” even if we’re unaware of what that is exactly. Of course, they’d be wrong and full of shit for thinking that.

@ragingloli He mentioned that when I saw him in an interview. He also talked about a parent who stays home to raise children or do all the domestic work would have some personal income, giving their work some monetary value. Also, that people in bad marriages would have more ability to leave the marriage. Right now getting divorced can wreak havoc on the financial situation of the two people.