If you're a Democrat thinking about who to support in the upcoming primary, let me suggest a name that might not be on your radar: Andrew Yang. There's still lots of time before voting starts and I'm not sure who I'll end up voting for myself... but for now I like Yang because he's campaigning on a great idea that no one else is even talking about: Universal Basic Income (UBI). Yang's plan is for every single adult American citizen to receive $1000 every month, no strings attached. The free market still reigns, we just don't start at "0". We "raise the floor," to essentially the poverty line, meaning everyone will have enough to at least technically not be in poverty.
The general idea of UBI is not new. It has been championed by Milton Friedman, MLK and even (going way back) Thomas Paine. There's nothing in the law that prevents it. Richard Nixon proposed a UBI which even passed the House before he was talked out of it by one of his advisors. Hillary Clinton considered running on some form of UBI in 2016 but decided against it in part because it was too "hard for people to grasp." Most people are still unfamiliar with the idea, but it has pockets of support on both the left and the right of the political spectrum.
The general idea of UBI is not new. It has been championed by Milton Friedman, MLK and even (going way back) Thomas Paine. There's nothing in the law that prevents it. Richard Nixon proposed a UBI which even passed the House before he was talked out of it by one of his advisors. Hillary Clinton considered running on some form of UBI in 2016 but decided against it in part because it was too "hard for people to grasp." Most people are still unfamiliar with the idea, but it has pockets of support on both the left and the right of the political spectrum.
To be clear, this is not a matter of just 'printing money' and giving it away... Yang suggests we pay for it in large part with a 10% Value Added Tax (VAT) to be levied at each stage of the production and distribution of goods. The nice thing about a VAT system is the taxes are difficult for corporations to evade with fancy accounting. The disadvantage traditionally is since the companies will pass them down to consumers in the form of higher prices it tends to be regressive... BUT, that regressiveness would be more than offset by the progressiveness of UBI. Unless you're spending many thousands of dollars a month on consumer goods (not including food, medical expenses, rent/mortgage) you will come out ahead in this scenario. And all that extra spending money everyone will suddenly have would, uh... get spent! It would turbocharge the economy while dramatically reducing poverty.
I think it's a good idea under any conditions, but it's especially relevant now as automation transforms our economy. As Yang likes to ask his audiences, malls are closing all across the country... why? We know the answer: Amazon. Is Amazon hiring tons of people to make up for all the jobs lost from these mall/store closings? No. Look at footage of their giant shipping centers and you will see robots packing things and moving boxes around, with just a few humans overseeing the whole thing. It's a triumph of efficiency, but it means lots of jobs are simply.... gone. Poof. A hundred years ago people were predicting that by now robots would be doing all the work and we'd all be living lives of leisure. Only half that prediction is coming true: Robots are starting to do the work, but major companies are reaping all the rewards, leaving everyone else scrambling. Cars are already being built by machines. Soon shipping trucks will be self-driving. Trump blames job loss on Mexicans and China, but robots may be the real culprit. (Hence Yang's slogan: "Humanity First")
Not everyone agrees automation is about to cause major job losses. This article argues automation will create as many jobs as it destroys, and the new jobs will require more human ingenuity and less drudgery. I'm not sure that helps an unskilled laborer who has recently been automated out of a job though. As Yang points out, teaching coal miners to code is not the answer. The current Dem party line is we need more infrastructure spending to create jobs, which is certainly true! But that alone, even on a large scale, is not going to be enough to address the challenges we're facing.
There is one more MAJOR potential advantage I see to UBI: It could finally get us out of this political stalemate we've been stuck in. Can we all at least agree that our current politics suck?? The trouble with government programs that help people with this or that is many people perceive that the government is taking their money and giving it to 'other' people. There's a lot of baggage attached to that idea... you could write books on it. But with UBI we can side-step that whole bitter argument. In this case every single person... whether you live on a farm, in the suburbs, in a penthouse, or on the curb... EVERYONE gets $1000, every month. Currently we have smorgasbord of different programs targeting different communities, trying to solve different problems, each with their own bureaucracies and regulations... but dividing people up like that, even if effective from a policy standpoint, is bound to create resentments that can be exploited by those who would rather just let the rich get richer at the expense of everyone else. Fox News is incredibly good at turning people against their own self-interest, but will they be able to convince people to be against receiving $1000 a month? It would be fun to see them try!
"So, if UBI's so great, why hasn't it happened?," you might ask. "There's got to be a catch." Well, this Mother Jones article mentions one possible sticking point:
to receive UBI, citizens would have to choose between the $1,000 or any existing welfare benefits—potentially including Social Security, disability insurance, food stamps, and housing assistance. And it’s unclear whether Yang’s UBI would be worth that trade-off for many low-income families, instead leaving the program as a boost to middle- and upper-income people.
while a “generous UBI” could replace the need for most welfare programs, it could also run the risk of redistributing funds away from the lowest-income families.Current welfare recipients would receive either their current benefits or the UBI, whichever's greater... So UBI could potentially be less helpful for the most needy and more of a boon for the middle class. I understand the concern, but I think this might be the price of getting everyone onboard.
Paul Krugman, who is right about most things, says he's "not a UBI guy," arguing that UBI is very costly and would require massive new taxes to pay for, making it a very big lift politically. He points out that universal health care (expand the ACA, allow people to buy into Medicare) and universal child care would cost a fraction of UBI and would provide more bang for your buck, so we should just do those. I'm sure he's right as far as it goes, but if those things are "easier" to do, why haven't we done them? Because they're not that easy! They should be no-brainers, but evidently they're not... Again, I think that's because Fox News can convince people that even something like universal health care, a service everyone will need sooner or later, ultimately amounts to the government taking your money to give to 'those people.' (do we need to pretend we don't know who 'those people' are?)
I think of UBI as a kind of 'shoot the moon' strategy. A plan "so crazy it just might work." Yes, it amounts to a pretty major restructuring of our economy, with large new taxes funding a redistribution of wealth to all citizens... But it's hard to pit people against each other when everyone gets the same amount of money. And while it's a big price tag, legislatively at least it's no more complicated to enact than passing a tax cut, and it doesn't require creating a large bureaucracy to implement. (The IRS could handle it.) If the political will is there, it's do-able!
So, join the Yang Gang and "secure the bag!" I will concede Andrew Yang is unlikely to be our next president... I'll likely end up voting for whoever I think has the best shot at beating Trump (and enthusiastically supporting whoever wins the nom). But I'm hoping Yang will at least attract enough attention to get this idea into mainstream discussion, in the way that Bernie managed to reframe the conversation last time around. Yang's already made it into the first Democratic debate... keep an eye out for him and hear him out!
Here's a general overview of UBI:
And here's libertarian hero Milton Friedman making the case for UBI:
