An Honorary TSAP Candidate, Andrew Yang 2020

Imagine if you were to indefinitely receive $1000 per month, with no strings attached.  That is a whopping $12,000 per year.  Not enough to live large on by itself, but most Americans can certainly use the help these days.  And the only catch?  It would be funded by a certain type of business tax of 10% on most goods and services, that would predictably be passed onto the consumer and thus result in an overall 10% increase in prices.  Clearly, most if not nearly all people would come out way ahead.  Would you take it?

If the answer is yes, then Andrew Yang is your man.  The 43 year old entrepreneur plans to run for President of the United States in 2020, and is promising something than Hillary, Trump, and even Bernie did not--a Universal Basic Income (UBI) Guarantee for all, which the TSAP has also advocated.  And the tax he is proposing is a value-added tax (VAT) that most other countries have, similar to a sales tax but collected a bit differently and built into the price of the affected goods and services.  He believes that robotics and automation will eventually take so many jobs that our collective hand will be forced to come up with a UBI, and his VAT idea for a funding source would theoretically be the best way to capture the gains that businesses make from robotics and automation (and thus internalize the externalities that the resulting losses impose on society).  

Granted, the TSAP proposal is a bit different than his in two ways . First, we do not consider a VAT to be our preferred funding source (though we do not oppose it), as we prefer either the Universal Exchange Tax (UET), progressive income taxes, land value and severance taxes on natural resources, carbon taxes, luxury taxes, money creation, or some combination of these.  Secondly, our proposal would have it for all ages, not just 18-64 like he wants, and under our proposal those old enough to receive Social Security can choose either the UBI or Social Security, whichever is higher (but not both).  And those under 18 would receive at least half the adult amount if not the full amount, with it going to the parent(s) or guardian(s) by default (or to the young person directly, if emancipated earlier than 18).  But otherwise, Yang's bold-yet-modest proposal is right up our alley.  It is high enough to eliminate absolute poverty completely and give workers much more bargaining power, while still being low enough for society to afford as well as low enough to alleviate the largely overblown fear of disincentivizing work (since it is highly unlikely that anyone can live comfortably on only $12,000 per year for very long).  And since there are no means tests or discrimination, and it is strictly individualized, that also means that there are no perverse incentives, welfare traps, or gaming the system either.  And it would be like a giant, permanent B-12 shot for our currently secularly stagnating economy.  It's a win-win-win situation for everyone but the oligarchs, in other words. 

Thus, the TSAP hereby considers Andrew Yang as an honorary candidate for 2020.  We are not sure how he stands on other issues--though we do know he's a Democrat--but unless his stance on other issues proves us wrong, we will nonetheless wholeheartedly endorse him in the meantime.

UPDATE:  Looks like his stance on other issues is also generally within the bounds of what the TSAP supports as well, including (but not limited to) single-payer healthcare for all.  Thus, we hereby endorse him as our honorary presidential candidate for 2020 unless he does an about-face and proves us wrong.