General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Someone is primarying Jerry Nadler (NY-10) [View all]Blue_true
(31,261 posts)the economy, so yes, UBI would help there. I agree with taxing all the streams of rich people's incomes, doing that generates more revenue.
Yang's idea of using pollution taxes for UBI is troublesome to me. My belief is those taxes should be used to reverse the ill effects of pollution, which if left unchecked raised medical expenses and hurts productivity.
The rest has lots of problems.
A VAT impacts everyone, poor, middleclass, rich equally. There are some arguments that it falls heaviest on the poorest.
$1,000 would not be remotely enough to house and feed a person in cities like Seattle, San Francisco, LA, Chicago, Miami, Orlando, Boston, DC, McClean VA, ect. People WILL NOT be able to make an either/or choice about giving up welfare assistance for UBI, if they expect to survive without a struggle.
Yang makes one fundamentally incorrect assumption about healthcare costs under Universal Healthcare, that they will instantly drop. An instant drop presupposes that everyone follows preventative medicine and take care of themselves, we know that is not true. People will have to be educated about how to live a preventative lifestyle as far as preventable illness is concerned, I have no idea how long it would take to get to a point where the vast majority of Americans are practicing preventative lifestyles.
I applaud Yang on taking on UBI, he is the only one that has the foresight to do so. His test group was people that have jobs but could use an extra $1,000 per month. An actual UBI system would have a far more complex mix of people. We could start UBI by giving it to the unemployed and people on welfare, but that opens the program up to criticism that it is wealth distribution in disguise. UBI, like I pointed out, WILL be needed soon, and I find that distressing because no one has figured out how to best make it work, not even Yang (who is head and shoulders ahead of other politicians).