I've been meaning to do a writeup on UBI, Yang, and now especially because the Indian opposition party has promised a substantial cash handout for 20% of the population.
In the western context:
Yang's UBI is explicitly about automation. His scenario sees machines and computers taking away jobs, leaving many people (eventually a majority) jobless. I think many UBI theories in the west are motivated by the same concern. (There are also older UBI proposals and negative income tax, from the likes of Milton Freidman).
The UBI he proposes is $1000/month. If you, as a welfare recepient, opt for this, it will be delivered instead of your welfare.
Quoting from his website:
Andrew proposes funding UBI by consolidating some welfare programs and implementing a Value-Added Tax (VAT) of 10%. Current welfare and social program beneficiaries would be given a choice between their current benefits or $1,000 cash unconditionally
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We currently spend between $500 and $600 billion a year on welfare programs, food stamps, disability and the like. This reduces the cost of Universal Basic Income because people already receiving benefits would have a choice but would be ineligible to receive the full $1,000 in addition to current benefits.
People living in England know better than me what happens to disabled people when their welfare payments are lumped in with others (wasn't that a big part of the Conservative universal credit?)
Anyway, the important part is - 12k/year. It is not a lot in the US context. You can easily lose half of that in rent - and there's no guarantee rents won't rise taking the UBI into account.
Again, he is imagining a world with fewer and fewer jobs, especially full-time jobs. 12k is exactly the poverty line. Thus, he is imagining a world where
vast numbers of people in developed countries will be on the poverty line.
This will be made worse for disabled people, and people with kids, who will no longer receive the extra cheques they get nowadays. I do not think it is a desirable outcome.
The post-work scenario which he is imagining is drastically different from today, and unlike any part of human history. I think imagining that automated, post-work future, requires us to look at sci-fi more than today's conditions. And there are 2 examples that stand out: 15 million merits in the 1st season of Black Mirror, and the brief glimpses of Earth in The Expanse.
15 million merits shows a society where your only value as labour is as an entertainer or performer. That is certainly plausible in his post-work universe. The Expanse shows the flip-side of post-work - glittering enclaves for the powerful and wealthy, shanty-towns and drugs for everyone else.
I think by setting the UBI where he has, Yang's plan will lead in the same dismal direction.
And this proposal isn't new, especially coming from a Silicon Valley guy like Yang. A few years back Mark Zuckerburg was thinking of a presidential run, and one of his big policy ideas was centred around the Alaska Permanent Fund, which gives every resident $1200/
year taken from state oil revenues. And there have been a series of proposals in Canada and some European countries. Finland's "UBI" was focused on unemployed people and found that it didn't lead to significant changes in their occupation status - no shit, I don't know why they were looking for that. The Canadian ones, like Yang's also involved replacing welfare with a fairly modest UBI.
I think it makes sense that Silicon Valley supports UBI. They do need their population to be - alive, with minimal disposable income, preferably trained in coding at govt expense - for their profits to continue. What they don't care about is if this population - their customers - are happy, have any ways to develop themselves apart from coding, and have any power to affect things. The UBI provides what they need at minimal cost and hence minimum disruption to their future profits. And the way Yang wants to pay for it (VAT) is also very good for them (more on this later).
When thought through in the context of the future they're supposed to be designed for, Yang's proposals are dystopian.
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In the Indian context, the opposition's proposal isn't really a UBI - it is based on income, and it provides 6k rupees/month, for the poorest 20% of families in the country (240 million people approx). This will work as a negative income tax - the govt will make up whatever shortfall these familes have below 144k/year, by giving a maximum of 6k/month. The party has also said other benefit schemes, like maternity benefits and scholarships, will be "rationalised".
I don't support this. There are massive issues determining income for most Indians, since large parts of the economy are informal. Getting into the coveted bottom 20% will become a very corrupt process. There have been small pilot experiments showing that replacing (extremely corrupt, filled with leakages) public food distribution with a monthly lump-sum hasn't been a success at all. There are *large* infrastructure issues still in India, and an existing program, called NREGA, which is supposed to provide guaranteed employment at the minimum wage to anyone willing to work and unable to find it. Increasing NREGA allotment and directing its funds to improve roads, afforestation, and building protections against drought should be where the govt spends its money.
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Going back to the western context:
Is there a better way to prepare for automation? I think so. And it has partly to do with the taxation that I mentioned before.
Instead of VAT, the govt can levy a wealth tax on large estates, increase corporate income taxes, or (and this is just my idea) buy company stock as a form of corporate tax. After all, we expect companies to be profitable, especially the ones involved in automation. So the govt can hold private stock and get a return on it.
If the predictions about automation are true, the govt can use these revenues to fund a more generous welfare state to a. guarantee a decent standard of life (childcare, healthcare, housing, education, public transport) b. fund higher education more generously. People need the UBI cash to buy the basics - I think it's better if the govt focused on de-commodifying and providing those basics. And for the second point - if people have nothing to do, give them a chance to learn more.
