Name: Andrew Yang: Universal Basic Income Can Work, and Here's How
Uploaded: 2019-06-27
Duration: 6 min 12 s
Description: 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang discusses the economic and social effects of his proposed Universal Basic Income initiative.

I am not a career politician. I'm a serial entrepreneur. I'm a guy who likes numbers. I'm a problem solver. How many of you know a lot about universal basic income? Raise your hand if you know a lot. We have to have our own vision and have the courage to say if we invest in ourselves, then we will all win. I'm Andrew Yang. I'm running for president as a Democrat in 2020. Your. Central platform is on universal basic income. And I think this is a concept that sounds interesting if you just hear the term, universal basic income, right? Can you explain what exactly it is that that means? So universal basic income would be a $ 1, 000 dividend For every American adult citizen every month under my plan, the Freedom Dividend .>> What do you think the American economy would actually look like under that? How do you think would change from what the economy looks like right now ?>> Well, the great thing is the economy would start working better for us. Because if you look at what happens in practical terms with an extra thousand dollars a month. People's nutrition improves. Kid's ability to learn goes up. And, graduation rates go up over time. Stress levels improve. Mental health improves. It would create over two million new jobs, directly in the economy. Because, the money would circulate through local businesses. And then, each of those businesses would then have to turn around, and hire an extra worker or two. And so it's very pro work. And the great thing is that it would allow Americans to all participate in the consumer economy and keep businesses strong because what's really bad for businesses is when people don't have money to spend or participate. So there's a lot of critics of this who say that this kind of amounts to a pipe dream But something that sounds beautiful but it's never going to work out in practicality. They cite the cost of the program, what would you say to your detractors? So one of the key ways we pay for this freedom dividend is you look up and say okay, 30 % of American malls and stores are closing in the next four years. Because Amazon is sucking up $ 20 billion in e commerce every year, and then you say, Okay, well how much is Amazon paying in federal taxes? And you find that number is zero. So then you say, Okay, so how do we make it so that a trillion dollar tech company doesn't get away with zero taxes because it's not their fault. It's our fault. We just must have designed a very, very faulty system that allows that to happen. And so the big change we have to make, is we have to join every other advanced economy in the world. And have a value added tax which would then give the American public a tiny slice of every Amazon sale, every Google search, every Facebook ad, every robot truck mile. And because our economy now is so massive at $ 20 trillion up $ 5 trillion in the last 12 years. Value Added taxes even half the European level would generate 800 billion in new revenue, which combined with current spending, economic growth, cost savings and the value gains from having a stronger healthier, more educated population would pay for $ 1, 000 dividend for every adult What would you say to people who say, well, that could actually lead to inflation that gets passed on to consumers? There would likely be some mild price increase associated with the VAT. But you have to keep in mind you're taking every dollar from the VAT and then some and putting it into the hands of American consumers. You could also structure the VAT so that it falls more heavily on luxury goods and consumer staples as one example. And so there are ways to tailor the VAT so that it ends up again getting you some of the gains from all this incredible innovation without falling disproportionately Working class Americans. This is obviously part of a broader set of changes to social programs that you'd want to make. How would you be I work against existing social programs that there are now like, would this come at the expense of costs to save welfare or food stamps or or Medicare or Medicaid or is it part of a more comprehensive package? The last thing I wanna do is deprive Americans from programs that they need or are using to really get by and pay their bills on a monthly basis. And so my plan is to make this Freedom dividends opt in. But if you opt in then you are choosing your for benefits from pre existing profit programs. So if you are currently getting more than a $ 1, 000 in benefits and you say no thanks. And then you are life is much as it is now. Though you will have a benefit if you have children. Now when that child turns 18 then here is she is gonna start getting a $ 1, 000 a month and that will be a game changer. For your family. If you're not currently in a program and you opt in, then you get the $ 1000. So what this does is it does bring down the price tag for the freedom dividend very quickly. Mm- hm. Because many people would not opt to join or if they did opt in it would cost much less than $ 1000 a month it would cost the difference between what they're getting now. Spend thousand dollars a month. So there are a number of cities that have actually started UBI programs sort of pilot programs, but those are more kind of structured like welfare programs. They're not this straight thousand dollar, you know, kind of cash to every single person. Do you worry that maybe that sort of muddies your message about what exactly this freedom dividend Yes. Well, I love the trials. I'm friend with many of the people that are behind the trials but I agree with you that most of them are not actual universal based game [ UNKNOWN ]. They're designed or scale. And that's a limitation that happens when you have private philanthropist essentially saying here's a few million bucks. And then you have limitations on what you can do with that Set of money. So if you want genuine trials you have to go bigger. And this is something that the government actually did and led, It's almost unimaginable now. But imagine the US government saying, hey, we're gonna start giving lots of people cash. We should try that out in a bunch of places and see how it goes. That's exactly what we did in the 60s And the results were very positive on many levels. It's just now that's unfathomable where now, our government doesn't have its act together enough to do that. So we're relying upon private philanthropy in many cases. But I'm positive about the trials because the more people waking up to the reality that cash actually improves people's lives, the better [ MUSIC ] [ BLANK- AUDIO ]

Andrew Yang: Universal Basic Income Can Work, and Here's How

Politics

2020 Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang discusses the economic and social effects of his proposed Universal Basic Income initiative.