US universal income proposal

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I like the idea of a universal basic income, but I don't think $1000 is enough, and I can see it driving up inflation, which would almost defeat the purpose of it.

Then your plan is discriminatory towards poor people with high incomes.

It's the same complaint as the ACA (poor people above a low income threshold don't get subsidies).

A couple with a large house mortgage, auto payments, many kids, living in a high cost of living area, contributing to their retirements, are likely barely getting by on a $150,000 household income.

However, under your plan, they would pay more into UBI, than they would get back.

Your plan would be especially difficult to implement politically, because a "flat tax" hurts the high cost of living "blue states" of California, New York, Illinois, New Jersey the hardest, and favors the Republican low cost of living "red states".

Last edited by LoveNotHate on 27 Apr 2019, 1:05 am, edited 1 time in total.

I like that Andrew Yang has brought this topic to the table, maybe he doesn't have the perfect plan as to how to implement it but it is certainly something to look towards. There are likely a lot of things that would need to be worked out and what not to create a working model.

But I like that the idea is picking up, I mean when I was a highschooler you never heard about UBI, but now discussions are popping up and people actually considering the idea. Granted it makes sense a lot of things would have to be worked out to make it work.

I am terrible with numbers so I can't do any math on how it could work(the neurologist who gave me a diagnoses for my aspergers or technically Developmental Disorder NOS because I don't even exactly fit into aspergers told me its likely I have some form of learning disability in math so I am not just being lazy), but I think its an idea bound to catch on with more people and as more and more jobs are automated it may become necessary anyways.

I'm gonna be honest, I'm sorry but I'm not sympathetic toward people making 6 figures. You got it made in that situation and if cost of living is so high you can either cut back or move elsewhere. If you're not getting by on $150k take note that the minimum wage currently nets you literally 1/10th of that working full time.

I don't think UBI will be enough, it's only a place for us to start re-framing our thinking about how value gets distributed. The two dueling problems with any economic system, at opposite poles of activity seem to be:

1) Innovators and savants being too hampered by their environment to innovate.
2) Massive numbers of people, through no fault of their own, not being able to survive in a healthy or gainful manner.

I don't necessarily know that those two need to be in a zero-sum tug of war, just that with the way we do things currently they effectively are. We may want to start thinking, for reasons like our culture surviving into the next century, what costs are crippling the average person the most (health care and housing might be great examples) and perhaps push ourselves technologically toward significant decreases in those costs. While it's true that there's nothing you can improve without disruption we're forced to ask, at the end of the day, which disruptions will be side-effects on the way to something better in a stable way and which disruptions might seem gainful for the time being but will crush us in the end. The answers aren't easy to get at but we really have to put a lot more effort into them, and I believe people like Andrew Yang, Mark Blyth, etc. are right that a lot of the really ugly politics we're seeing have economic problems at their root.

It will absolutely drive up inflation unless it is solely received by a small proportion of the population. IE 90% of the population pays into UBI, while only the 10 poorest percent actually collect it.

I dont think it will cause inflation assuming:

1) It's revenue neutral and uses taxation to fund it, rather than increasing the money supply

2) markets are competitive enough to make raising prices impossible/difficult

Millions of people recieve aid as it is, they recieve welfare, disability, social security, i'd argue it's fallacious to assume just because everyone recieves a UBI that the prices of everything will be jacked up.

Now, to be fair, the VAT would erode some purchasing power, but all in all, I'd expect the poor to be better off, the middle class to be roughly as well off as they are, and the upper classes (including "upper middle class") to be worse off.

I mean it will greatly improve living situations and honestly, the only industries i legitimately worry about in terms of inflation goes are:

1) Housing

2) Education

3) healthcare

I support sanders style proposals to deal with 2-3. As far as 1, that's the real problem, especially in big cities that arent very competitive in their housing markets. For that you kinda need other solutions. We could try a government housing program to inflate the supply but that still wont help in areas like NYC and stuff, for that we might need to implement like a land value tax to discourage wide ownership of land beyond what you need encourage landowners to be more efficient, alleviating structural issues with housing and bringing prices down.

That said while UBI has issues i think it will help a lot.

Also for those saying $1k a month isnt enough, keep in mind, multiple adults can live in a household, and an average of 2 in a household will net $2k a month.

This STILL might not be enough in high cost of living areas, but again, people can just...move. I mean dont live in NYC if you wanna squeak by on UBI....go to some depressed rust belt town or somewhere in the south. Plenty of places to live in the US.

It’s have to be 2-3k per person to work.
As is I get more then 1,000 from the current system via ssdi, housIng, etc
Our rent alone is 1200 in a poor city.

I could easily live on 12k a year if the government also paid for my healthcare.

The way Andrew Yang talks about it he's suggesting an opt-in system where if your current benefits are better than $1K per month you keep your benefits but don't get UBI on top of it.

This seems like it's built less right now as a 100% income supplement and something more like security for what's increasingly a gig economy, long-term contract rather than hire, etc.. It means that people can function between jobs if necessary rather than losing everything if they go a few months without work. In a lot of ways it's an extension of the concept of unemployment and the like that's meant to reflect what's happening with the labor economy.

Your second assumption is flat wrong. If all the consumers have increased buying power (from UBI) and all the suppliers have increased costs (from taxation, or price increases in other industries) than the suppliers will raise prices to account for their rising costs, and since the buyers have increased income they will be willing to pay those increased prices. The end result will be a brief period of increased buying power for people followed by re-equilibrated prices.

Literally look at the housing costs in ANY high income area in the country and you will know this to be true. Apartments in San Francisco rent for $3500 a month. This is because the average San Franciscoan makes $7000 a month and can afford to spend that much on apartment rent. In my area, apartments rent closer to $900. It isn't harder to maintain an apartment building in San Francisco than where I live (if anything the opposite owing to the weather conditions), it's just people aren't willing to pay as much because they don't make as much.

Now you can argue that not all goods are as pricing volatile as housing, but it doesn't matter. Say I make $2000 a month have a budget of $500 per month for food, $800 for rent, $300 for other essential costs and $400 disposable income. UBI comes along and now I make $1000 a month more but SO DOES EVERYONE ELSE AROUND ME. It doesn't matter if the food industry can't raise its prices. I am willing to spend all but $400 dollars on my living essentials. My housing can raise the rent to $1800 a month without losing me as a tenant provided none of my other costs increase.

The purpose of UBI isn't to make life better for 80-90% of the population. It CAN'T do that. The purpose is to allow people to exist at a subsistence level without a stable paying job.

I’d be homeless. Gov already pays for most my healthcare but I’d suppose that’s stop too under this idea. $1,000 isn’t enough. Someone working about min wage here makes $1800 a month and barely makes by.

Again it depends on the industry. I already pointed out housing in areas like SF likely wouldnt apply to that rule. The problem is lack of competition and intense supply and demand.

That won't apply to the whole economy and if any business tried to raise prices they could just go somewhere else.

This is the same fallacious argument that raising the minimum wage is futile because people will just raise their prices. I mean it's true to some extent depending on exact pressures, but ultimately the program DOES provide a HUGE boon to people overall. All in all the concern is overstated. This isnt to say that certain industries wont be more heavily affected than others though.

All things about this I’ve seen call for getting rid of welfare and replacing it with this, so no social security, no housing,bill assistance, food stamps, medical etc.
Before I worked housing paid $900 a month, I got $760 ssi, $200 food stamps and half our electricity paid. Say that’s $150. So $2,010 a month from government aid. But my mom gets 760 and $200 too so $2970 is what covers our needs, and we’d have to go with $2000 instead and pay for medical insurance.
It won’t work. Honestly social security should be more like $2500 then the 760 it is but they rigged it so it wouldn’t increase with inflation like it should have so they could rob it’s money. $1000 even if they kept the other stuff wouldn’t be enough in my area.
It’s bad enough they don’t take local economic in account with the current system, it’s be worse with this idea.

This is part of why the differences in approach to UBI really need to be highlighted strongly in that, as you put it, it would be a terrible cut to people who are on disability - who *need* ever bit of the benefits they get - to have those slashed to $1K per month and I'd agree with you, that's a terrible idea.

More on why some form of it is a necessary evil though:


I'd really advise looking at UBI not as a panacea or a 'progressive' move, it's more like a tourniquet to stop us from bleeding out when all of these changes properly take hold and when the job availability is below 50% for viable labor force participants.

As of now the maximum disability payment I can get is 750 a month. But I get less than that since I have started working with voc rehab to get a job. For now kinda of seems like the best they may be able to do is getting me a position at an ARC thrift store.

If I had 1000 a month i could easily pay half my rent, me and my boyfriend split it, but my employment is not constant yet, still working with voc rehab to get a more permanent position. But if I had 1000 a month I could actully invest in something because with SSI if you get over 2000 in savings you don't qualify anymore even if the state has determined you have limited working ability. So as it stands now a person on disability cannot save up or they risk losing their disability benefits. At least with SSI maybe it is a bit different for SSDI. But from my perspective with 1000 a month I could get off SSI and EBT...and still get a job to provide more money for me and my small family of me and my boyfriend and eventually a cat.