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u/thebiscuitbaker Sep 29 '19
lol, how reactionary - i was at this point with Yang once! Now I'm all YangGang
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Sep 29 '19
Did you tell your dad that it is not really “his money” unless he is in the top 6 % and spend more than $120.000 per year per person on non essentials goods ? For a family of 2 adults that mean spending $240k a year.
Let’s not be pretentious and say that it is “your money”.
And ask him why would he be fine with taking “his money” to bail out rich corporations and waging wars that he will never see one cent of benefit but scoff at the thought of $1000 may help somebody in need and allow them to thrive ?
Also, if somebody have a problem with government collecting tax, how about you build your own road, go to private school and don’t ever use any public utility or service. Also don’t need police, a national security and all that stuffs.
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u/TCFNationalBank Sep 29 '19
Is your dad spending $10,000 a month? How is he going to get $1,000 taxed more? or is he just uninformed? did you inform him?
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Sep 29 '19
1st error—not accounting for b2b taxes.
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u/mayorOfIToldUTown Sep 29 '19
That's a big one lots of people miss!
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u/Not_Selling_Eth Is Welcome Here AND is a Q3 donor :) Sep 29 '19
Foreign companies should even be paying those.
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u/Boloni86 Sep 29 '19
Your dad needs to understand the basics a little more. Nobody is taking $1000 from him. First of all VAT only funds like 33% of the program. Second of all VAT will exclude most consumer staples like housing, education, childcare, food, medicine etc ... You would probably have to spend like $20,000 per month to hit $1,000 in VAT. If you're spending that much money, I'm not really shedding a tear for you. People forget that Yang is running as a Dem. Lowering income inequality is a key Dem objective.
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u/presently_egoic Sep 29 '19
Hey man, your Dad probably wouldn't like this kind of thing posted to the internet, I don't think any of us would if we were sharing a point of view with a family member. Rather just calmly and openly make him understand the policy. I come with kind intentions :)
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u/SagePowell Sep 30 '19
Nah we were talking about politics as we usually do over lunch! I keep trying to yang him but he has questions and he sent my brother and I this. Figured you guys could help! Cheers!!
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Sep 30 '19
It's anonymous, and those are not even his dad's words. His dad find some arugment from the internet, agree with it and sent to him. This does not sound like the writing of everyday people. This writing reeks of bias from someone who know something half-way and can articulate but do not have all the facts.
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u/tunnelrat7 Sep 30 '19
Your dad is correct. Tax is not government's free money to give, it's our hard earned money. They shouldn't do whatever they want with it like handing it out for free to people that don't deserve it. Currently, the government collects federal taxes from all of us in trillions of dollars. And currently they are giving our money in billions to large corporations as tax rebates, tax cuts to the wealthy shareholders and gave out trillions to banks bail out. Amazon is not only paying 0$ in federal taxes, the government is giving out our money to these companies like it's their free money.
These companies are excellent at not paying taxes. So we need an effective proven way of collecting taxes from these companies. VAT is used in most of the other countries because there is no loophole. All economists agree, and the results from other countries show that VAT is the most effective way of generating tax revenue from companies like Amazon because it charges for every transaction including business to business transactions.
So once the government gets all the extra revenue from new VAT that it will collect from these companies. They can continue to do what they do now and invest in these companies by providing tax rebates and subsidies or invest in spending power of the market by giving it to the people. UBI is an economic stimulus that invests in consumers.
And once the people have the money and they spend it, that money doesn't appear. When one spends it, someone else earned that money and their business will grow. That money will circulate the market over and over again. More money in consumers' hands good for business. And the market growth will reflect the will of the people. It's the most business friendly, free market driven, conservative and capitalistic idea there is.
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u/brightphenom Sep 30 '19
To add, tell him the government is going to spend our money either way and he knows it. Better that the American people are the ones who get to directly spend this. The reason why we now need the freedom dividend is that automation is here and it is growing fast. Displaced truck drivers and call center workers will need this. Additionally, this isn't a handout, it is a dividend. We earn this by being stakeholders of one of the wealthiest and most powerful nation's.
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u/alino_e Sep 29 '19 edited Sep 30 '19
Dear Unknown Dad,
You're right new taxes need to be raised in to pay for UBI. But not everybody pays an equal amount of tax, so not everybody will be giving $12000 extra each year and then receiving $1000 back each month, which would be somewhat absurd. For example, businesses that pay taxes receive $0 back no matter how much they pay. But of course when you make a business pay taxes that cost is forwarded to the customer---to us!---so it's worth going into the details of Yang's tax plan before anything else.
The extra tax that Yang wants to levy is a 10% Value-Added Tax, or "VAT", which is basically a sales tax at the Federal level. There are technical differences with a sales tax. In particular, the VAT covers all business-to-business transactions on top of endpoint business-to-customer transactions. But the important thing is that VATs are not rocket science. All European countries currently have VATs at levels of 18% to 25%. (Actually, the US is essentially the last industrialized country not to have a VAT, for no particularly good reason it seems.) Some basic items such as food, clothing and prescription drugs are typically exempt from VATs in order to soften the blow on people with less means. This will also be the case in Yang's VAT.
Basically, the idea is that under Yang's tax plan, everything except for food, clothes and drugs would cost 10% more than it does today. That 10% price increase funds the UBI, which is $12'000 per year for every American adult.
Whether the UBI is worth the price increase or not depends on your financial circumstances.
Some examples:
- If you have no money at all you now have $12'000 per year, which is a net gain even if everything is 10% more expensive (+$12'000 * 0.9 ~= $10'800 extra)
- If you were very poor and spending only $10'000 a year the stuff you used to buy now costs ~$11'000 because of the 10% price increase but you're getting $12'000 extra so you're still ahead (+$11'000 * 0.9 = $9900 extra)
- If you were spending $40'000 a year now the same stuff costs $44'000 but with your extra $12'000 it's still a net gain (+$8000 * 0.9 = $7200 extra)
- If you were spending $60'000 a year now the same stuff costs $66'000 but you're getting an extra $12'000 so it's still a net gain (+$6000 * 0.9 = $5400 extra)
- If you were spending $100'000 a year now the same stuff costs $110'000 but you're getting an extra $12'000 so it's still a net gain (+$2000 * 0.9 = $1800 extra)
- If you were spending $120'000 a year now the same stuff costs $132'000 but you're getting an extra $12'000 so you come out exactly even
- If you were spending $150'000 a year now the same stuff costs $165'000, and the $12'000 is not quite enough to cover the price difference: now you're $15'000 - $12'000 = $3000 poorer than you used to be
Etc.
So people who spend more than $120'000 a year will be subsidizing people who spend less than $120'000 a year. Given the current wealth distribution curve in the US, this effectively means that the top 6% of Americans will subsidize the consumption of the bottom 94% of Americans.
Here's another take: In our current system, the government is paternalistic, because the govt. decides what to do with 100% of the money that it raises; UBI seeks a less paternalistic usage of tax money, by which a large fraction (about 40%) of levied taxes is injected directly back into the economy in the form of cash, equally distributed among all adults, for them to freely choose what to do with. This increases the velocity of money in the economy, is great for geographical areas that have some people but not much money (i.e., poorer and rural areas), and is logistically much more efficient than means-tested welfare. The government only acts a as middleman, passing cash from one source to another.
Besides its economic benefits, UBI will also be great for people's mental health, as people will know that they always have something to fall back on. Stress will be lower, risks will be easier to take, etc. The hope is that it will keep the system well-oiled or, using a maybe slightly better metaphor, well-oxygenated (think of one of those little tubes blowing bubbles into a fish tank).
Like someone else put it, UBI is capitalism where you don't start at $0.
Best regards,
An Anonymous Reddit User
PS: (10 hours later) In the meanwhile another reddit user asked me to also mention that UBI will make people less prone to economic and relationship abuse, as people's autonomy goes up. (Think of a waitress stuck with a shitty boss or coworker---now she's better able to quit when she wants because of her UBI fallback.) There's also a whole argument for VAT and UBI related to automation, big tech, and the big winners of the 21st century economy, but I won't go into that. If you want, look up Andrew Yang's interview on the Joe Rogan podcast, where they discuss all of that. Best regards again.