The_Walrus wrote:
I like an NIT-style UBI, but Yang's version funded by a form of sales tax doesn't seem like quite such a good idea. Agree with Manny that it isn't as regressive as it first seems, but if you don't mind me saying Manny, I think the tax you have described would raise relatively little revenue and would still disproportionately fall on the poorest (the poor might not spend as much on yachts, but they spend a greater proportion of their income on things like fast food and video games).
I don't like the Federal Jobs Guarantee one bit. The government's role should be to create the conditions in which everyone can access employment, not to create fake jobs so that everyone has work. My flatmate grew up in communist Poland and remembers seeing people just standing around in the places they worked all day because the government was paying them to be there, but wasn't giving them anything to do. I'd much rather just given people the money.
Bernie’s Federal Jobs Guarantee jobs are infrastructure improvement, or doing construction work on roads, tunnels and bridges. He wants millions of people to become construction workers. Bernie is obviously stuck in the 1930’s. No thanks.
Yang’s “Luxury Items VAT” will be not the only source of funding. He will also do something like a transactions tax on the big tech companies, Amazon, Google, Facebook, etc, whenever they obtain or use millions of people’s personal information. Currently billions of people around the world are literally getting nothing back, and he wants to change it in America at least. He calls information the “New Oil” of the 21st century. Plus revenue from every mile of automated trucks in the huge trucking industry will also be taxed. This will increase as Automation rapidly increases. Automation is also a main concern of his. The introduction of UBI itself will also naturally generate revenue. It’s like a massive nationwide inter-circulating continuum of money, to stimulate and grow the whole economy.
Here’s what he says.
The means to pay for the UBI (Freedom Dividend) will come from four sources:
1. Current spending: We currently spend between $500 and $600 billion a year on welfare programs, food stamps, disability and the like. This reduces the cost of the Freedom Dividend because people already receiving benefits would have a choice between keeping their current benefits and the $1,000, and would not receive both.
Additionally, we currently spend over 1 trillion dollars on health care, incarceration, homelessness services and the like. We would save $100 – 200+ billion as people would be able to take better care of themselves and avoid the emergency room, jail, and the street and would generally be more functional. The Freedom Dividend would pay for itself by helping people avoid our institutions, which is when our costs shoot up. Some studies have shown that $1 to a poor parent will result in as much as $7 in cost-savings and economic growth.
2. A VAT: Our economy is now incredibly vast at $19 trillion, up $4 trillion in the last 10 years alone. A VAT at half the European level would generate $800 billion in new revenue A VAT will become more and more important as technology improves because you cannot collect income tax from robots or software.
3. New revenue: Putting money into the hands of American consumers would grow the economy. The Roosevelt Institute projected that the economy will grow by approximately $2.5 trillion and create 4.6 million new jobs. This would generate approximately $800 – 900 billion in new revenue from economic growth.
4. Taxes on top earners and pollution: By removing the Social Security cap, implementing a financial transactions tax, and ending the favorable tax treatment for capital gains/carried interest, we can decrease financial speculation while also funding the Freedom Dividend. We can add to that a carbon fee that will be partially dedicated to funding the Freedom Dividend, making up the remaining balance required to cover the cost of this program.
16 Oct 2019, 5:09 pm
