
Universal Basic Income Can Work, and Here's How: Andrew Yang - partingshots
https://youtube.com/watch?v=HzKwW6-Feog
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chrisco255
$2.4 trillion a year program. Pie-in-the-sky. It would be the biggest
expansion of Federal control over the economy in history. An unprecedented
intervention in capital inflows and outflows, the scale of which has never
been tested. It's dubious and dangerous on many levels.

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zootam
Is there a plan for Universal Rent Control?

I am skeptical of how this may work out in practice.

Given rates of homeownership/rent in metropolitan areas without rent control,
wouldn't this result in a significant portion of renters (younger people
especially) quickly having to pay more in rent?

Thats the scenario I think about, lots of people suddenly have $12k more per
year to spend, why wouldn't landlords just increase rent proportionally?

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gizmo686
Rent control doesn't work long term [0]. If you have a healthy housing market,
then normal market forces will keep rents down. That is not to say that
creating a healthy housing market is easy, but it is a different problem.

At a high level, UBI is a wealth transfer from the rich to the poor [1]. One
extreme is that 100% of the additional wealth received by the poor goes to
rent, another extreme is that 0% does. [2]. The number will probably fall
someplace in the middle, along with inflation on other assets. Regardless of
what asset classes see what inflation, and what the exact amount of inflation
is, the bottom tier of wealth/income people will control a bigger share of
buying power, which should help them in aggregate.

Returning to the housing question, there is reason to think that UBI will
improve the health of housing markets. One of the major issues in housing we
are seeing is economic activity being concentrated in a few wealthy areas,
driving up local housing prices. In addition to being a wealth transfer on an
individual level, UBI is also a wealth transfer on a geographical level, where
money goes from the few rich centers to the less rich areas. On the margins,
this will cause people to move away from the high-demand areas and into the
low-demand areas. I doubt this force will be strong enough to fix all of our
housing markets, but I would expect it to help.

[0] Although it can work as a policy to shift market risks from the renter to
the landlord; which may be worth doing.

[1] Assuming a rational funding system.

[2] Conceivably, the numbers could pass either bound, but I think that
possibility falls clearly in the 'you need more specific justification;
bucket.

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dfeojm-zlib
AY's on the right track and UBI would reduce inequality with a simple and
effective plan, but the problem is he seems to be an one-issue candidate, and
those are rarely perceived to be equipped to lead (i.e., overall strategy,
track-record and stated positions on issues) and don't appeal to enough
voters.

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gizmo686
You are assuming that he is trying to win. Being 1 issue is a great way of
advocating for that issue. If you aren't going to win anyway, it is probably a
more influential approach than trying to advocate a little bit for everything.
He got the idea into the national discourse. Now 4/8/16 years from now, we are
more likely to hear it from more viable candidates. Just look at what happened
with Bernie's policy positions (although his were so popular that he someone
managed to almost win the primary).

As an added bonus to Yang, this could give him name recognition that would be
beneficial for his future political career.

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chillacy
Really interested to see where this goes. I think UBI is the best solution to
a world of automation and Yang is a smart guy well versed in startups.

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SubiculumCode
Perhaps at the next debate, Mr. Yang will get more than two questions and an
allegedly dead mic.

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naveen99
He wants to add a federal vat. What happens to the local sales tax ?

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permatech
If UBI is truly universal will it create inflation? Would there be some upper
bound where taxes > UBI on certain individuals?

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erik_seaberg
There will surely be people who pay a lot more tax than they receive in UBI.
The key thing is not to build an elaborate gameable system to decide who
should be eligible for UBI and what it may be used for.

