https://quillette.com/2019/03/06/in-defense-of-andrew-yangs-freedom-dividend/
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We are in the third inning of what Yang calls "The Great Displacement." Between 2000 and 2015, America automated away 4 million manufacturing jobs (four times the amount lost to globalization), many of which were in swing states Donald Trump won in the 2016 election. Many more jobs are projected to disappear in the transportation, retail, call center, food service, and even clerical and administrative sectors due to the ongoing advances in autonomous technologies. The wave is coming. A report published during Obama's final days in office predicted that 83 percent of jobs where people make less than $20 an hour will be subject to automation or replacement in the near future, and between 2.2 and 3.1 million driving jobs in the US will be eliminated by the advent of self-driving vehicles.
https://www.bls.gov/careeroutlook/2014/article/manufacturing.htm
https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/sites/whitehouse.gov/files/documents/Artificial-Intelligence-Automation-Economy.PDF
To make matters worse, the projections for job loss due to automation are pretty consistent across the board—coalescing at about 20–30 percent of jobs being subject to automation by 2030 among various research and financial institutions (Bain Capital, McKinsey, MIT)—which means the projections are probably accurate. All the while, GDP has risen over 3 trillion dollars in the last few years amidst these vast technological developments. En masse, America is the richest country in the world.
https://www.bain.com/insights/labor-2030-the-collision-of-demographics-automation-and-inequality/
https://www.mckinsey.com/~/media/mckinsey/featured%20insights/future%20of%20organizations/what%20the%20future%20of%20work%20will%20mean%20for%20jobs%20skills%20and%20wages/mgi-jobs-lost-jobs-gained-report-december-6-2017.ashx
https://economics.mit.edu/files/14641
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.CD
To add insult to injury, the American economy is less dynamic than ever before. The job participation rate is at 62.9 percent today, below nearly all other industrialized economies. People are less and less inclined to start a business, with 100,000 fewer businesses sprouting up per year than was the rate just 12 years ago. Furthermore, 59 percent of American counties watched more businesses close than open between 2010 and 2014. Americans move from state to state and change jobs at lower rates than at any point in the last few decades.
A Bankrate survey conducted in 2017 found that 57 percent of Americans don't have enough savings to pay an unexpected bill of 500 dollars. Meanwhile, drug overdoses have risen above car accidents as the most likely accidental cause of death for Americans, and suicide has risen so sharply that it has actually lowered the national life expectancy rate. The decay and despair is palpable to anyone who walks around an American city not handsomely nestled in a coastal bubble.
https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/labor-force-participation-rate
https://money.cnn.com/2016/09/08/news/economy/us-startups-near-40-year-low/index.html
https://www.bankrate.com/finance/consumer-index/money-pulse-0117.aspx
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/01/15/americans-more-likely-to-die-from-opioid-overdose-than-car-accident.html
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/11/28/us-life-expectancy-drops-as-opioid-deaths-and-suicide-rates-rise.html
So why is basic income the answer to these problems? The Freedom Dividend is not Yang's only proposed solution, in fact he has 75 other policy initiatives listed on his website including remodulating our measurements of GDP and instituting digital social credits as a local currency. But UBI is central to his campaign, proposed with the intention of giving American citizens much needed fiscal breathing room and making the requisite adjustments to the massive technological and economic transformation on the horizon. One thing is clear: We cannot continue on our present course without addressing "The Great Displacement" in some shape or form through public policy, and there is little evidence to suggest the market will spontaneously adjust to these immense changes.
https://www.yang2020.com/policies/
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To provide 1000 dollars a month to every American citizen today, the headline cost would be about $2.4 trillion a year. The federal budget is around $4 trillion a year, distributed between mandatory spending (i.e. Social Security and Medicare—about $2.4 trillion), discretionary spending (i.e. military programs—about $1.11 trillion), and interest on federal debt (about $364 billion). With that in mind, $2.4 trillion sounds pretty steep.
https://www.nationalpriorities.org/budget-basics/federal-budget-101/spending/
But there are other avenues through which UBI could be paid for. If the gains from artificial intelligence and new technologies were harnessed, there would be a surplus of wealth to invest into the economy. Yang has proposed instituting a value added tax on all goods and services, at every level of production and distribution, putting the onus on large companies who benefit most from automation.
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/v/valueaddedtax.asp
This is estimated to generate almost $1 trillion in national revenue, and when we take into account the $800 billion spent on welfare that would decrease in the wake of UBI, along with the tax revenue generated from the extra $1000 a month circulating back into the economy and the 100s of billions that would be saved in healthcare, incarceration, and homelessness services, the Freedom Dividend could end up paying for itself. That is not to mention the potential value gains from having a population with higher rates of education, health, nutrition, and productivity that are estimated to improve with UBI according to a number of studies on already existent trial runs. (The state of Alaska, the leading example, instituted a dividend for its citizens over 30 years ago primarily funded by oil money, and Yang is quick to note that technology is the oil of the twenty-first century.)
https://www.businessinsider.com/alaska-universal-basic-income-employment-2018-10
That is optimistic. Allocating funds from the myriad social programs already in place into a UBI could prove to be a dicey process, and taxing powerful corporations has never been child's play. Another issue often brought up against a UBI platform is the prospect of inflation. If more wealth is being distributed across the population, won't that make for increased prices and lead to a decrease in the value of money?
According to Yang, inflation has been low for years because globalization and technology have been helping reduce the cost of goods and services, and there is no good reason to believe that trend wont continue. Even after the 2008 financial crisis, when the U.S. government printed $4 trillion, we have not seen a meaningful rise in inflation. If the Freedom Dividend were indeed able to pay for itself through a value added tax, the liquidation of other social services, and a general stimulation of the economy (the Roosevelt Institute estimates economic growth of about 13 percent and an increase in the labor force by about 4.5 million people), the money supply circulating in society would not increase substantially. This would produce little to no inflation. Yang also points out that the central areas of inflation tend to fall into the protected dysfunctional markets of housing, health care, and education rather than consumer goods where prices are actually falling.
https://www.stlouisfed.org/publications/regional-economist/first-quarter-2018/why-inflation-so-low
http://rooseveltinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/Modeling-the-Macroeconomic-Effects-Report-Brief.pdf
Finally, one of the most common and reflexive arguments leveled against UBI is that it mirrors the fundamental flaw of the Welfare State: the absence of a stable incentive structure. If every American citizen is going to receive free money with not a single qualification or requirement, won't we all just become more lazy?
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Of course, there are always going to be lazy people who will take advantage of a free lunch, but that is entirely on them. $1000 a month is not enough to incentivize people to leave their jobs. Human beings are more forward thinking and goal-oriented when there is hope for a better future, and that is harder to come by when we are drowning in bills and stress. People who are uncertain of the future and insecure in the present are not going to be the ones starting a business. A number of studies have shown how the prospect of an unpaid bill can lower IQ and shorten our cognitive bandwidth. It is generally those people who are already financially secure who are more inclined to take an entrepreneurial risk. So, there is more reason to believe a UBI will create a positive incentive structure than a negative one. At the very least, it should not have much effect on incentive at all and will largely reflect things as they already are.
https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/sendhil/files/scientificamericanmind0114-58.pdf
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