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this post was submitted on 18 Oct 2023
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Yang's issue is he flipped the tax funded UBI and deficit funded UBI's growth numbers. There is almost no growth from UBI unless it is money falling from the sky.
Yang's issue is that he wanted to fund UBI by using it to eradicate welfare. And there were a dozen very solid problems with that he was unwilling or unable to meaningfully address. Some of the families who would need his UBI the most are the same families who would have to opt out because their welfare is valued at more than it.
I used to be all-in for UBI in general, but over the years (thanks in part, but not entirely, to Yang) I walked off that ledge. The government should be guaranteeing housing/food/healthcare the same way they guarantee education. What they should not be doing is cutting a check and shoving fingers in their ears in the welfare equivalent of Privatized Social Security.
What people don't want to accept is that under UBI, there will still be comparable homelessness to what we see now because a leading (perhaps the #1) cause of homelessness is addiction. The government subsidizing rental and home payments without means-testing would allow even addicts to have a place to sleep at night. Even they deserve that. And yes, there's inflation "risks" with incentivizing housing or food, but it's no more or less than with UBI or with just the FCC approving another big merger.
Im the sameI was all in until I did the deeper dive into the literature. Now I see it as realistic as jetpacks.
I think it's realistic. I just think it's not the right solution.
UBI is a massive undertaking, but so is Social Security, Universal Healthcare, or a modern military. The GDP is $23.3T, but the current tax income is only 12-15% of that (approx $4.1T). Yang's UBI would cost a whopping $4T, but here's the missing link. As much as we whine like little bitches about taxes in the US, we are quite literally middle of the pack for taxes as a percent of GDP. UBI is realistic, but it would require a full overhaul of our economy.
I just don't think a full overhaul of our economy is worth the benefit of UBI. $25B could end hunger in the US, and $700B would socialize food entirely at no cost to individuals. Somewhere in the middle, we'd probably get 90% of the benefits of socializing food with a lot less costs. Housing is the same situation (ironically, the estimated cost to end homelessness is also about $25B, though I don't know what "subsidized housing for all" would look like). We could do both AND have some money to incentivize being unemployed to counteract job leverage (the one big win in UBI imo) all together in $1T or less, a much less disruptive overhaul for more return.
And we could throw in universal healthcare for good measure. Yeah, there's a tax cost, but studies show it pays for itself in individual savings and economic growth