US universal income proposal

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Andrew Yang has proposed a universal income. While it sounds good for one to think they will receive $1000 a month for free, it really isn't for free. I initially thought it was a good idea, but I did not account for how this will be paid for. Obviously you can't tax everyone for $12,000 a year to give them $12,000 a year. So, the rich would have to be responsible to pay everyone 350,000,000,000 (350 billion) a year. How are we going to tax either the rich or corporations that much money so everyone gets $1000 a year?

If we have to increase taxes for everyone to help the rich pay for the tab then we don't actually receive $1000 a month. Example, say we pay an extra $6000 a year to give everyone 12,000 a year, that would mean we actually only get 6,000 a year because we have to give the other half back at the end of the year. Yet if we put all of it on the rich, what is going to prevent them from saying screw that and moving out of the country taking their business, jobs and wealth with them? This is sounding like a very horrible proposal, how is this suposed to work?

I'm not seeing how this is going to work in a capitalist country.

Eee... I'm going to have to look more into Andrew Yang, I'm watching an American Asian saying that Andrew Yang stated after the New Zealand shooting that Asians in America are one generation away from white people massively discriminating/killing Asians in America, I'm going to watch some more stuff.

This sort of thing was discussed on WP a while ago...
It was discussed for a very short time here in Australia also...
I guess the idea was just too wacky to be sustainable and scuttled away with its tail between its legs...<shrug>
It was proposed by the far, far left, so yeah, wacky...

Schemes like universal income and minimum wage hikes don't work for the following reason:

I make 2200 a month and pay 830 dollars in monthly rent. If I get an additional 1000 dollars a month I now can afford to pay 1830 in rent and keep the same standard of living. So I go and I find a fancier living situation that costs 1830 a month.

My landlord is seeing a lot more of his/her money go to taxes. Their income has decreased while their expenses have remained the same. However, they notice hey a lot of people are asking about renting these apartments now. I got four people trying to rent my one open unit. Let's see who of those four can pay the most. They find someone willing to pay 1200 dollars for the apartment that was being rented for 830. They raise all rents to 1200 dollars. Everyone there can afford it because of the 1000 per month increase. Some try to move because they don't like paying as much for rent, but lo and behold every landlord in the city has raised their prices.

A little time passes. My apartment now rents for 1830 a month.

I oversimplified it a bit, but give everyone extra buying power and prices will raise to account for it. Everyone is back where they started.

They say the same thing in Oz about first-time or low-income(?) property owners being exempt from paying stamp duty...
It simply inflates housing prices...

Well, technically any UBI idea is just a rearrangement of how we do welfare, which is already being done. Part of the argument is that this way we wouldn't need the welfare sector, so ultimately we could end up paying fewer taxes rather than more, assuming of course that such people could find work elsewhere, which I don't see why they couldn't. So the idea that we couldn't possibly support all the poor people by taxing the rich? Well, you probably missed something if you think that doesn't work. It's already being done in the richest countries in the world, because the degree of abundance we have in this world is just that high.

To be fair, to some degree rich people have already moved their businesses overseas to places where they don't have to bother with things like welfaire, worker's rights and minimum wages, so to some extent you have a point. However, two things keep them from doing this all the way. The first is the fact that some work can only be done by educated people, who tend to be in short supply when you don't have welfare. The second is the fact that places without these policies tend to be unpleasant and unstable places to live in.

Of course, if every place had some kind of welfare system, rich people might have to raise the prices of goods or... *shock-horror* reduce their own salaries. Who knows what they'd end up doing; obviously the latter is not their preference, but the former might not be feasible, because people need to be able to afford things in order to buy them. The truth is, many such people probably could reduce their wages substantially and still afford a mansion or two.

A couple things I'd have to point out:

You said 350 billion, that figure doesn't work - ie. we had 325 million people in the US in 2017, we may be projected to have 350 million by 2020 however if you consider that it'll be a payout to anyone over 18 it's about 70% of the population, so closer to 250 million and then it looks like you only gave them $1,000 a year, it would be $12,000 so at that rate it would be 3 trillion dollars. He mentions a figure of 1.8 trillion and it could be that he's just considering working-age people and that it could be a 18 to 65 sort of thing but this is definitely something he'll need to clarify.

He has been clear on how he intends to raise the funds - ie. adding a VAT in the US.The link below is what the CBO suggests could be brought in with a 5% VAT, I believe Andrew was suggesting something closer to 8-10%:

https://www.cbo.gov/budget-options/2016/52285

What this doesn't explain is what will happen with local sales taxes, ie. will they be paid in addition to the VAT and, if not, where will the state and local governments obtain their funds if indeed most of the VAT goes toward UBI. Most places that have a VAT seem to head toward 15-20% and that's what we may have to do in this case.

The state and local taxes probably would remain.

Along with Reparations, the Guaranteed Minimum Wage rears its ugly head whenever Socialists fear that they will not receive enough votes on Election Day.

I see my figures were off, I'm trying to simplify it to show a problem. It's an input output problem. However it comes out in how you tax it to create the funds it doesn't seem to work. To simplify it as everyone who will collect $12,000 will pay $12,000 a year in taxes making it a pointless system. Now, I understand that is not being proposed, I tried to read the article you supplied and I still don't understand what a VAT is, it almost seems like it is a direct tax, like you pay for goods at a store and it has a 8% sales tax. We already have a sales tax, so will this system increase the sales tax? If so it automatically drives the price of goods up by adding more of a tax on it, which would be bad considering it will also give welfare a problem. Some people, like people on SSDI get more than $1000 a month, so they would receive a reduction in funds leading to problems. While others on SSI will receive more funds, I think they get around $725 a month. What happens to Social Security?

I hate the complexity of the proposal because it takes away from the simple input/output of math. I know it requires complexity to make the proposal, but it takes away from, you are either going to pay a lot extra in taxes in some form or another to get that money back or you are going to apply most of the load onto corporations and companies. If you increase their taxes, like when they buy materials, If they pay a larger tax, you will see that in the product when you go to buy something, it will cost more because of the extra tax they had to pay, making the product more expensive, then you will also have to pay the extra taxes on the more expensive product, driving the cost of goods up greatly for people who are already on welfare and now getting less money because there welfare was removed, they get less money and they pay a lot more for goods. Seems that would attack a decent proportion of the less fortunate in a big negative way. One could say you are removing welfare but that is not true, you are putting everyone in the US over 18 on welfare, it expands welfare to people who don't even need welfare. It seems ridiculous when you examine they guy that makes 40 million a year is going to receive welfare, all UBI is, is a fancy name for universal welfare. Rather than helping people in need, it gives everyone money.

I like to simplify it to avoid complexity used to disguise a simple problem, you can't output more than you input of you have a deficit, adding to our already out of control spending and deficit. If you don't draw that money from somewhere you end up with a system that causes more deficit, if you split that cost onto taxing goods(everyone hurts by paying more fore goods in a chain reaction) and taxing corporations you give people who use corporations for profit a reason to leave, to move their business to another country where they pay less taxes, increasing our imports which are already pretty bad. The import/export issue is another problem I have discussed in another topic. It's obvious that if a country greatly imports more than it exports that you are draining the economy of wealth. I like the swimming pool example, you are dripping water into a swimming pool while it has a big hole in it. The input water is not enough to keep up with how muich water is leaking out, thus one day the swimming pool will be empty.

When you look at it as a simple input/output issue it doesn't seem to add up as being worth anything, it's going to cause huge problems for everyone in some way or another. It is definitely going to have a huge negative impact on those who are now on welfare. You either input what you output or you create deficit. You tax everyone equally to pay for dividing the money equally which makes the system pointless or you tax corporations to take the load which encourages them to leave. Any of the tax load that is put right back on the people makes the $1000 a month less valuable(hence, more tax on goods).

new zealand killings and Andrew Yang's victimization
Here is the criticism about some odd comment Andrew Yang made. I don't know about the situation but the guy seems pretty honest.



Here is his video criticizing Andrew Yang's UBI proposal.
Andrew Yang and Universal Basic Income.... Deconstructed!

I could see us in some dystopian near-future having our own Pol Pot style killing fields. We'd be laying down permanently unemployed truck drivers, taxi drivers, radiologists, lawyers, and at least giving them some encouraging last words "It's your mom's fault that we have to kill you. She should have swallowed" before putting the lights out forever.

It's just a messed up situation all around in my opinion, as a whole, we are not mature enough for automation. I believe equal wealth is the ultimate way of life for humanity, the problem is with so much corruption and hate, how do we safely get there, how do we ensure we stay there and not end up enslaved by a minority.

I just don't see how this system would work in a capitalist society, it seems it would only work in a socialist or communist society, which is scary because people are not trust worthy.

It frustrates me, because I don't know what the answer is, it makes me just want to remain in the background not voting and just let the majority do whatever they wish to do and take it as it comes, whether good or bad.

He is doing a test run in a city, I'm not sure what city, I forgot We will see how that goes.

From the sound of things the Finland experiment flopped because they were looking for evidence that this money would stimulate people to back to work and it didn't. If the return is in abstracts or intangibles it'll be likely that most other such experiments will go the same way.

I don't think you're far off, Crim.

Set at the right rates, a Universal Basic Income is functionally identical to a Negative Income Tax. Good explanation here: https://www.adamsmith.org/blog/welfare- ... same-thing

The idea, generally speaking, is that you'd set a threshold at which people would be no better or worse off. Maybe that's, I don't know, $20,000 a year. I can't explain the mathematics off the top of my head, but for every dollar less than a certain amount someone makes, you give them e.g. 50 cents. Above the "break-even threshold", you put up taxes.

Andrew Yang isn't remotely a socialist, and UBI is a completely different idea to the Minimum Wage. Indeed, many of the strongest advocates of a UBI are libertarian types who want to abolish the minimum wage. Milton Friedman supported UBI.

UBI is not an idea by the far, far left. Rather something for the not-all-the-way-left
UBI is also considered capitalism's last line of defense by the really far left. The thinking goes like this: what if 1 percent of mankind owned everything? then capitalism's over. there's nothing to achieve anymore. If you want to produce stuff, someone has to buy it, so you can charge them whatever price you want.
But if there's no customers, only ... well, basically slaves ... what then? - the 99% wouldn't be able to be innovative entrepreneurs - all they could do is offer their services to the 1%.
but in a fictional world of full automation, exactly this might happen. so what would capitalism need to do to survive? - pay people to consume, so they have money to keep the system going.

there's a book called BS jobs by a british (leftie) anthropologist, in which he writes about jobs that aren't actually doing anything- he did some polls, and about a third of people said of themselves that nothing would happen if they were to strike, and that their jobs contribute nothing to society or anything ... they're just there, getting paid.
So... imagine above scenario, the fully automated world in which 1% own everything, but they'd try to keep capitalism going for its innovativeness - would it make sense to create bullshit-jobs so people could keep the economic order afloat? my guess is yes. But my question is: why the BS jobs, and not just give people money? the smart ones would keep working, because they enjoy their work.
the rest could live and consume modestly but peacefully...

the real question is: at what point of automation and economic inequality would you begin with this?