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How feasible would getting a federal UBI bill being passed even be? He can want it and push it all day long but if the support from congress isn't there (which

How feasible would getting a federal UBI bill being passed even be? He can want it and push it all day long but if the support from congress isn't there (which it frankly isn't currently), what are the chances it will become reality? Executive orders exist but they have their limits.

Circuits 8y ago
Is anyone really under the assumption that AY would even bother pursuing a UBI if he's elected? I am not, I am under the assumption that this is a campaign strategy meant to get him more votes.
- bbg215 8y ago
  The whole platform is around the major threat and consequences of automation and how UBI can help. He's far too smart to think he's going to pull of a Trump type miracle. The message is the goal. My assumption 1. Yang knows that he little chance to win the nom 2. Yang is running so that his ideas enter mainstream convo (successful already due to JRE's massive influence) and the eventual nominee may incorporate them in their platform in some manner 3. He possibly gains enough early steam that he could be a VP candidate or in the administration which helps accomplish goal #2
systematical 8y ago
Four years ago no one was talking about universal healthcare. You could say the same thing about plenty of other pieces of controversial legislation that ended up passing eventually.
- NoPiece 8y ago
  It was as seriously discussed and considered 40 years ago as today. Maybe more seriously as Medicare and Medicaid had recently been enacted, so there was momentum. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_health_care_reform_in_the_United_States#1970s https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_health_care_reform_...
js2 8y ago
Milton Friedman argued for essentially UBI (he called it "negative income tax") 50 years ago[1]. Unfortunately, selling the American voter on anything "unearned" (I realize the U stands for "universal") that's going to come out of "my taxes" is going to be a long and uphill effort, especially when the mindset of the current administration[2] is in the other direction: > Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue says the administration thinks these people should be able to get jobs, especially now that the nation's unemployment rate is the lowest it has been in years. > "People believe that able-bodied people who can work, should work," Tennessee Republican Rep. Scott Desjarlais told Perdue, "Do you have any idea why there might be so much pushback and concerns on this measure?" > "I have no clue," Perdue responded. I don't see how we get from there to: "Universal Basic Income (UBI) is a form of social security that guarantees a certain amount of money to every citizen within a given governed population, without having to pass a test or fulfill a work requirement."[3] Fox News can't even discuss UBI without dismissing it out of hand with contempt and mockery[4]. We've got a ways to go to get back even to GWB's "compassionate conservatism," much less a serious discussion of UBI. I realize how pessimistic I seem. I'm actually pretty excited by some of the current candidates. I think a couple of the candidates[5] have it right when they argue our first priority has to be to restore democracy to the political process[6] and that the way to sell that to Americans is with the notion of fairness. 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtpgkX588nM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtpgkX588nM 2. https://www.npr.org/2019/04/01/707681965/more-than-750-000-could-lose-food-stamps-under-trump-administration-proposal https://www.npr.org/2019/04/01/707681965/more-than-750-000-c... 3. https://www.yang2020.com/what-is-ubi/ https://www.yang2020.com/what-is-ubi/ 4. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ReYGzsqQ12M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ReYGzsqQ12M 5. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GtNcRLAlmuI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GtNcRLAlmuI 6. https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/1 https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/1
manfredo 8y ago
Near zero. Few are really portraying how expensive this is. $1k a month for every American is just under 4 trillion dollars. For every adult American it would be just under 2.5 trillion. Currently, the entire federal budget is 3.8 trillion dollars. The GDP is 19.5 trillion. We're looking to spend an amount equivalent to the entire federal budget or 10-20% of the whole country's GDP on UBI. Yang's attempt to portraying this as fiscally feasible is based on the assumption that UBI will automagically result in extreme economic growth.
- bargl 8y ago
  He actually does a really good job breaking down where he plans for each dollar to come from. For a candidate to have a dollar by dollar break down to account for his plan is something I don't remember seeing. While I can't say his plan is feasible, I can say at least he has one.
- CompelTechnic 8y ago
  Reminds me of Sanders' assumption that his economic policies would result in 5% GDP growth for 10 years straight... whew!
- systematical 8y ago
  He proposes a value-added tax to raise much of the money. Next, you can't receive both social security and the UBI. Other social welfare programs can't be utilized a long with the UBI either. If for instance you're receiving $400 in food stamps, you only get $600 in UBI. With that said, yes, he is relying on this boosting the economy (tax revenue) to pay for the rest.
  - manfredo 8y ago
    The money comes from somewhere. No matter how you slice it, we're going from ~25% government revenue as a percentage of GDP to mid 30s or as high as 45% of GDP sent to the government. Only 3rd world countries and some small European States have that kind of tax/GDP ratio. For reference, Canada is 31%. So the plan is to pass one of the biggest tax hikes in US history (probably the biggest one during peace time) and then keeping our fingers crossed hoping for rapid, consistent economic growth following said massive tax increase. I think I'll pass.
SubiculumCode 8y ago
As Andrew Yang points out, UBI has been implemented in Alaska for decades. Why it might pass? First UBI is popular with independents. Second, if Yang becomes president, thats some damn strong signaling to Congress to support UBI.
identity-haver 8y ago
If the current president couldn't pass a bill for his signature campaign issue (a $30B wall) when both chambers of the legislature were held by his party, Yang is probably not going to pass a $3T+ per year UBI bill when likely just one (the House) would be held by his party. But it would make for interesting discussion on the campaign trail.
- AnimalMuppet 8y ago
  Well... if I understood correctly, the current president never tried to pass a bill for a wall when both chambers were held by his party. I could have missed something, though. But if I'm right, well, "didn't try" and "couldn't" are rather different animals.
beat 8y ago
Difficult, but not zero. Social Security got passed, for example. A crisis makes radical solutions easier. And if Yang is right about what is going to happen to the economy over the next couple of decades, crisis is what we'll have. And his look to the recent past, rather than the future, isn't speculative - it's fact-based. When he points out that half the laid-off manufacturing workers wind up never returning to the workforce, many on "disability" that is becoming a long-term unemployment system rather than its original intent, he's quoting statistics. To reject his conclusions in a valid manner, one must either challenge his facts, or provide alternative interpretations of the observed facts. (Of course, most won't bother with a valid rejection, and instead just wave their hands around and shout louder about how we're going to train 50 year old truck drivers to be software engineers or whatever.) Even where Yang is speculating, his speculation seems pretty reasonable. Making trucks drive themselves rather than needing a human for the steering and brakes and situational awareness isn't exactly an NP-hard problem. The odds that Amazon etc will continue to eat into retail seems reasonable to me. These things add up to millions of jobs lost, with no equal-paying replacements in the pipeline for those workers. And it's not just "blue collar" work... what happens to paralegals, for example? There are a lot of jobs that people go to college for, taking on tens of thousands in debt, that might just disappear in the course of a few years. What the hell are we going to do about that? Tell them to get their lazy asses back to work? Because that's the current solution.
AnimalMuppet 8y ago
It seems to me that, for a UBI to pass, it has to address immigration. You cannot have a UBI and an open border... unless you restrict the UBI to citizens. If you said to Democrats that they could have UBI, but only for citizens, would they go for that? Is someone who is a legal resident to be left to starve (or work 80 hour weeks to survive) just because they aren't a citizen? How about if they're an illegal alien? If you said to Democrats that they could have UBI, including for non-citizen residents, but at the price of genuinely securing the border, would they go for that? But the flip side might also be interesting. If you told Republicans that they could have a genuinely secure border, at the price of UBI, would they go for it?
dragonwriter 8y ago
> How feasible would getting a federal UBI bill being passed even be? A federal UBI bill? An outside possibility, if the right person was President and pushing for it. Yang’s UBI concept specifically, zero, and anyone making it a centerpiece of their campaign would get roasted as soon as any opposing candidate (or interest group) took it seriously enough to bother looking for holes to poke in it. The big kicker in a Democratic primary: not only is it a huge budget busting expenditure, but it's a huge budget busting expenditure even after accounting all existing welfare as an available funding source, and yet it is often worse for poor families than existing welfare. In a number of states, the benefit level proposed a household with a single adult with two kids would be less than TANF + SNAP (not even counting housing subsidies and other available benefits) are now. (Yang does say current beneficiaries would have a choice with UBI, but the cost and funding doesn't seem to reflect that; if you do that, the cost goes up even more, for the retained welfare benefits and administrative bureaucracy.) > He can want it and push it all day long but if the support from congress isn't there (which it frankly isn't currently), what are the chances it will become reality? To be fair, 100% of the House and 1/3 of the Senate will be elected along with the next President; if a President making UBI a campaign centerpiece is elected (a big “if”), there's a reasonable chance a more favorable Congress will be, too.

Circuits 8y ago

Is anyone really under the assumption that AY would even bother pursuing a UBI if he's elected? I am not, I am under the assumption that this is a campaign strategy meant to get him more votes.

bbg215 8y ago
The whole platform is around the major threat and consequences of automation and how UBI can help. He's far too smart to think he's going to pull of a Trump type miracle. The message is the goal. My assumption 1. Yang knows that he little chance to win the nom 2. Yang is running so that his ideas enter mainstream convo (successful already due to JRE's massive influence) and the eventual nominee may incorporate them in their platform in some manner 3. He possibly gains enough early steam that he could be a VP candidate or in the administration which helps accomplish goal #2

systematical 8y ago

Four years ago no one was talking about universal healthcare. You could say the same thing about plenty of other pieces of controversial legislation that ended up passing eventually.

NoPiece 8y ago
It was as seriously discussed and considered 40 years ago as today. Maybe more seriously as Medicare and Medicaid had recently been enacted, so there was momentum. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_health_care_reform_in_the_United_States#1970s https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_health_care_reform_...

js2 8y ago

Milton Friedman argued for essentially UBI (he called it "negative income tax") 50 years ago[1]. Unfortunately, selling the American voter on anything "unearned" (I realize the U stands for "universal") that's going to come out of "my taxes" is going to be a long and uphill effort, especially when the mindset of the current administration[2] is in the other direction: > Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue says the administration thinks these people should be able to get jobs, especially now that the nation's unemployment rate is the lowest it has been in years. > "People believe that able-bodied people who can work, should work," Tennessee Republican Rep. Scott Desjarlais told Perdue, "Do you have any idea why there might be so much pushback and concerns on this measure?" > "I have no clue," Perdue responded. I don't see how we get from there to: "Universal Basic Income (UBI) is a form of social security that guarantees a certain amount of money to every citizen within a given governed population, without having to pass a test or fulfill a work requirement."[3] Fox News can't even discuss UBI without dismissing it out of hand with contempt and mockery[4]. We've got a ways to go to get back even to GWB's "compassionate conservatism," much less a serious discussion of UBI. I realize how pessimistic I seem. I'm actually pretty excited by some of the current candidates. I think a couple of the candidates[5] have it right when they argue our first priority has to be to restore democracy to the political process[6] and that the way to sell that to Americans is with the notion of fairness. 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtpgkX588nM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtpgkX588nM 2. https://www.npr.org/2019/04/01/707681965/more-than-750-000-could-lose-food-stamps-under-trump-administration-proposal https://www.npr.org/2019/04/01/707681965/more-than-750-000-c... 3. https://www.yang2020.com/what-is-ubi/ https://www.yang2020.com/what-is-ubi/ 4. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ReYGzsqQ12M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ReYGzsqQ12M 5. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GtNcRLAlmuI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GtNcRLAlmuI 6. https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/1 https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/1

manfredo 8y ago

Near zero. Few are really portraying how expensive this is. $1k a month for every American is just under 4 trillion dollars. For every adult American it would be just under 2.5 trillion. Currently, the entire federal budget is 3.8 trillion dollars. The GDP is 19.5 trillion. We're looking to spend an amount equivalent to the entire federal budget or 10-20% of the whole country's GDP on UBI. Yang's attempt to portraying this as fiscally feasible is based on the assumption that UBI will automagically result in extreme economic growth.

bargl 8y ago
He actually does a really good job breaking down where he plans for each dollar to come from. For a candidate to have a dollar by dollar break down to account for his plan is something I don't remember seeing. While I can't say his plan is feasible, I can say at least he has one.
CompelTechnic 8y ago
Reminds me of Sanders' assumption that his economic policies would result in 5% GDP growth for 10 years straight... whew!
systematical 8y ago
He proposes a value-added tax to raise much of the money. Next, you can't receive both social security and the UBI. Other social welfare programs can't be utilized a long with the UBI either. If for instance you're receiving $400 in food stamps, you only get $600 in UBI. With that said, yes, he is relying on this boosting the economy (tax revenue) to pay for the rest.
- manfredo 8y ago
  The money comes from somewhere. No matter how you slice it, we're going from ~25% government revenue as a percentage of GDP to mid 30s or as high as 45% of GDP sent to the government. Only 3rd world countries and some small European States have that kind of tax/GDP ratio. For reference, Canada is 31%. So the plan is to pass one of the biggest tax hikes in US history (probably the biggest one during peace time) and then keeping our fingers crossed hoping for rapid, consistent economic growth following said massive tax increase. I think I'll pass.

SubiculumCode 8y ago

As Andrew Yang points out, UBI has been implemented in Alaska for decades. Why it might pass? First UBI is popular with independents. Second, if Yang becomes president, thats some damn strong signaling to Congress to support UBI.

identity-haver 8y ago

If the current president couldn't pass a bill for his signature campaign issue (a $30B wall) when both chambers of the legislature were held by his party, Yang is probably not going to pass a $3T+ per year UBI bill when likely just one (the House) would be held by his party. But it would make for interesting discussion on the campaign trail.

AnimalMuppet 8y ago
Well... if I understood correctly, the current president never tried to pass a bill for a wall when both chambers were held by his party. I could have missed something, though. But if I'm right, well, "didn't try" and "couldn't" are rather different animals.

beat 8y ago

Difficult, but not zero. Social Security got passed, for example. A crisis makes radical solutions easier. And if Yang is right about what is going to happen to the economy over the next couple of decades, crisis is what we'll have. And his look to the recent past, rather than the future, isn't speculative - it's fact-based. When he points out that half the laid-off manufacturing workers wind up never returning to the workforce, many on "disability" that is becoming a long-term unemployment system rather than its original intent, he's quoting statistics. To reject his conclusions in a valid manner, one must either challenge his facts, or provide alternative interpretations of the observed facts. (Of course, most won't bother with a valid rejection, and instead just wave their hands around and shout louder about how we're going to train 50 year old truck drivers to be software engineers or whatever.) Even where Yang is speculating, his speculation seems pretty reasonable. Making trucks drive themselves rather than needing a human for the steering and brakes and situational awareness isn't exactly an NP-hard problem. The odds that Amazon etc will continue to eat into retail seems reasonable to me. These things add up to millions of jobs lost, with no equal-paying replacements in the pipeline for those workers. And it's not just "blue collar" work... what happens to paralegals, for example? There are a lot of jobs that people go to college for, taking on tens of thousands in debt, that might just disappear in the course of a few years. What the hell are we going to do about that? Tell them to get their lazy asses back to work? Because that's the current solution.

AnimalMuppet 8y ago

It seems to me that, for a UBI to pass, it has to address immigration. You cannot have a UBI and an open border... unless you restrict the UBI to citizens. If you said to Democrats that they could have UBI, but only for citizens, would they go for that? Is someone who is a legal resident to be left to starve (or work 80 hour weeks to survive) just because they aren't a citizen? How about if they're an illegal alien? If you said to Democrats that they could have UBI, including for non-citizen residents, but at the price of genuinely securing the border, would they go for that? But the flip side might also be interesting. If you told Republicans that they could have a genuinely secure border, at the price of UBI, would they go for it?

dragonwriter 8y ago

> How feasible would getting a federal UBI bill being passed even be? A federal UBI bill? An outside possibility, if the right person was President and pushing for it. Yang’s UBI concept specifically, zero, and anyone making it a centerpiece of their campaign would get roasted as soon as any opposing candidate (or interest group) took it seriously enough to bother looking for holes to poke in it. The big kicker in a Democratic primary: not only is it a huge budget busting expenditure, but it's a huge budget busting expenditure even after accounting all existing welfare as an available funding source, and yet it is often worse for poor families than existing welfare. In a number of states, the benefit level proposed a household with a single adult with two kids would be less than TANF + SNAP (not even counting housing subsidies and other available benefits) are now. (Yang does say current beneficiaries would have a choice with UBI, but the cost and funding doesn't seem to reflect that; if you do that, the cost goes up even more, for the retained welfare benefits and administrative bureaucracy.) > He can want it and push it all day long but if the support from congress isn't there (which it frankly isn't currently), what are the chances it will become reality? To be fair, 100% of the House and 1/3 of the Senate will be elected along with the next President; if a President making UBI a campaign centerpiece is elected (a big “if”), there's a reasonable chance a more favorable Congress will be, too.