Andrew Yang - Your thoughts?

I am a supporter of Andrew's. I think UBI is a great idea but it's not the only reason I support him. He is very much a common sense candidate and a majority of his policies kind of make you wonder why they haven't been implemented sooner. Getting rid of the penny, Setting term limits for members of congress and supreme court justices and so on so forth.

Anyways, I made this post because I would like to hear from you all about him. What are your pros and cons for him as a candidate?

@redviperofdorne: I like him, his platform is detailed, and he seems like a genuine guy, I'm not completely sold on UBI but I like how he calls it trickle up economics, as in even hard working people have debt they are trying to pay off. So that money has a better chance of boosting the economy, where something like welfare that only goes to the poor, just goes into things like food stamps for people having a hard time finding work.

I dont know if it would work but he atleast has put alot of thought into it, and its something that goes to both the lower and middle class so tax payers dont feel completely screwed by it.

DNC will never let him win, yang said his mic was turned off while trying to respond durring the first debates. Both yang and Tulsi are my favorite canidates running for the democratic ticket, they are the only 2 I would consider voting for.

Most likely the DNC will run either Biden, Harris, or Warren and in that case i will be voting trump.

@jeezers: Not just that but NBC was also kind enough to exclude his photo from promos for the debate and instead include people not even in the debate. So seeing Andrew get his mic cut off and get the lowest speaking time out of the 20 candidates did not surprise me. Especially when his entire platform is about bucking the system and shaping it to benefit all Americans rather than a select few.

@redviperofdorne: I was a big Ron Paul supporter and the GOP did the same thing to him back in the day. Sadly its not surprising, both sides have thier own establishment and play by thier own rules when it comes to outsiders. Just look at how pissed the GOP acted when trump first announced running, it's not surprising. The establishment hates everyone outside thier clubs.

I dont understand why so many democrats would support a biden/warren over yang, but I feel the same about conservatives who support a Bush/ Romney over Trump, gotta stop eating the crap the establishment keeps stuffing down your throat eventually.

I have friends that support him. UBI seems logical and will probably be necessary down the road, but I don't think many in the country will support it on principle.

How does this guy stack up vs bernie sanders? I haven't seen any of the debates yet so don't know his positions that well.

Yang is one of those who you know is only doing this to get a nationwide PR boost for whatever he has planned to make himself even richer.

And as to UBI, recent attempts in Europe has shown the cost is way too much and the gain is nothing positive and the attempts were ended and did not end with a positive result.

But I get some people who are on low income might benefit from it, but that is not something the government should care about at all.

He isn't the worst.

@Jacanuk: "But I get some people who are on low income might benefit from it, but that is not something the government should care about at all."

Agreed 100%. The government should only care about rich people.

I like him.

Why not? Yang has got a point when he claims there could be mass unemployment due to increased automation, and it will hurt the working class the most. Even just a temporary UBI to allow Americans to prepare for it may not be a bad idea.

The one big flaw is how the money will actually be used. Politicians and candidates can't really talk about the fact that lots of people tend to suck with money. A good portion of it would probably be wasted on consumer purchases, rather than put into savings, or paying off personal debt.

@vl4d_l3nin: thats my only concern with UBI, I get what yang means by paying back debt, credit cards, student loans, medical bills, if it was going towards the right things it could be good, problem is alot of people are gonna go buy a big TV and a fat bag of weed..

I dont know if it would work, but I like it more than just giving more welfare to those who dont work, at least everyone would get UBI

I kinda like him, but...

Honestly, rather than a UBI, I would rather we fix our increasingly-decrepit infrastructure first. And fixing it on the scale necessary is going to require a lot of workers with a very wide range of skills.

does anyone seriously think free money is actually going to work? where do you get the trillions a year thats going to cost?.. from working people? so do working people get $1,000 a month as well? because all the money they get out they'll have to have at least that much taken out of their taxes.. the whole idea offsets the concept of income, eliminates incentive to work, puts an ever growing burden on the working class who can no longer afford to pay their own bill because of the taxes..

seriously, do any of you people ever think any of this through or do you shut your brains off after the word "free".. and buying votes is illegal, and that's exactly what it is

I like his UBI idea as well but he has little chance right now to win the nomination. I think Warren or Harris would either win the nomination.

What I like about him is his strong ambition to drive the economy. He doesn't focus much of his attention on forgien polices and actually is for America first interests.

Why not? UBI? because it´s a disregard for personal responsibility and no one needs to go on vacation every year or buy clothes every month or get the newest phone. And no job in America "legal jobs" pay so bad that you won´t have enough for a roof over your head and food on the table.

And Yang is trying to make the exact same point as people did when cars began to outperform Horse carriages or when the industry moved into assembly line work. And we all saw how they were proven wrong again and again.

Sure automation will remove jobs but other jobs will be "invented" and will take the place of those that are lost, it´s a natural evolution.

Automation actually creates more jobs than it eliminates so it's irrelevant.

Any links to back this up?

@baelnergal: He plans to take a portion of the military budget and put that towards fixing our infrastructure.

@ProtossRushX Check out www.yang2020.com There are over 100 policies on there to read about.

@jeezers I get the concern but let's face it, That's the whole point of it. It's to do with it, should you opt into it, as you please. The moment the government tries to regulate what we should spend it on is the moment we should put an end to it.

@burntbyhellfire Yang's form of UBI is opt in or out. If you opt-in, You get no government assistance at all. You'll have to work. A majority of it will be funded by a Value Added Tax of 10%, A few other fees and dividends, Taking money not used on government assistance programs as well as the new tax revenue that will be created. Now imagine, Everyone in your town is given $1000 a month to spend. Imagine all the local businesses now thriving due to new revenue pumped into it, The new demand will help create jobs and in turn make more taxes. The money handed out will circle right back through. And while yes, It will not help every single American and some will choose not to opt into it, It will help a majority of Americans a heck of a lot more than the current system will.

@n64dd There seem to be conflicting reports. Some say it can create jobs, Other say they could automate away a large bulk of jobs if they wanted to. It just depends on how these companies choose to implement it. Warehouse work is being largely automated away. They're testing self-driving trucks and I believe they said it was about 5-6 years away from being implemented. It's really hard to say.

@redviperofdorne Unless our military budget somehow grows to the point $4.5 trillion is only a "portion" of it, that pretty much a waste of effort. Because that is the price tag to fix our infrastructure.

To put it in perspective, this year's proposed total budget is $4.8 trillion. Tax revenue isn't even a full $4 trillion.

We could throw the entire military budget at this and barely make a dent. That's why I propose putting people to work on it instead.

@baelnergal: Yes, Let's force people to work difficult and increasingly modernized construction jobs and see how it works out. There is a reason why we don't force people to work or have one of those silly job guarantees, It would never gain enough traction to pass. The moment the choice is ripped out of the hands of the people is the moment it becomes a bad idea and people start to rally against it.

https://www.yang2020.com/policies/rebuild-america/

@redviperofdorne Apparently, you never heard of a program known as the New Deal. One of the items of the New Deal was offering guaranteed jobs in construction and such, and they built a lot of infrastructure during it. I basically outright copied that idea.

What are they teaching instead of history in schools these days? Interpretative yoga?

Well, our options are "have a lot of people work in construction or such" or "have giving them money not matter because infrastructure will fall below the usability point where money matters." So, going by your stance, our options are failure or failure. So there's no reason to even bother with BUI because by the time that passes, the money will be literally worthless for most of the people it could have benefited.

Sometimes, you have only bad options. You can either pick the bad option that actually fixes some of the most immediate problems so you can have good options, or the bad option that doesn't fix anything. Fixing infrastructure is the first.

@baelnergal: And I am saying, realistically, in this day and age do you think that is a viable option? No, It is not.

@redviperofdorne We don't have a choice. We let our infrastructure in the United States degrade that much. It either has to be viable, or the poor are going to have far worse problems than lack of money in the years to come.

i don't see how the numbers work either but from what i've read part of it is not more taxes on working people, it's more taxes on the removal of working people.

one of the main motivators to UBI is how will an economic system work when people are displaced at scale by automation and can not quickly retrain for new jobs ( or those jobs simply are not available ). revenue for ubi can be thought of as an "automation tax". for example suppose UPS devises a way to fully automate their drivers in a decade or two and in turn lays off 350,000 people, the taxes they had been paying for those employees would still be paid, just without the employee being there.

opt in or out? do the people who decide to work get to opt out of taking care of the people who refuse to?.. and how do any of you thinking its a good idea plan to come up with trillions more revenue to pay for it with even less of an incentive to work and contribute? and there isnt enough money even if you taxed "the rich: 100% to pay a tiny fraction of that

And forcing companies to pay for employees they laid off already exists, its called unemployment benefits.. theyre not without limits, nor should it be.. if you try pushing stupid taxes telling business they cant automate, then they simply move production overseas, then nobody works.. i cannot understand why people are so hellbent to stay in the last century, automation isn't new.. im sure if you go back to the early days of the model T you'd find people pissing and moaning about that whole production line doohickey

i am still wondering where people plan to get the money to pay for it, because the rich arent going to do it, neither are the corporations, and you dont have anymore boogiemen left

@burntbyhellfire: Aren't those the standard fears that come with a UBI system?

From the dozens of tests they ran around the world and Alaska actually doing it, it seems that unemployment won't increase or decrease by much at all. It also seems that paying for it is not that hard. You do end up saving money on a lot of fronts. If you consider that the richer people (25000+ per year) will pay back their UBI and then some as they get richer, for the whole of the USA to be covered it would be around 600 billion or 3-4% of the GDP to solve. That is without taking into account any of the savings you'll make on healthcare/less bureaucracy/less unnecessary jobs created and such, or of course the part of the UBI that will roll back into the economy, or the fact that it's an or/or choice for anyone already receiving government benefits. Neither does it take into account that a UBI functions halfway as subsidiary for employers. So they can be taxed. On crimes it seems to have only minuscule effects both up and down.

It just doesn't seem to do much of anything dramatically bad. But it does decrease the amount of bureaucracy, raise healthier children who perform better at school, help poor people/narrow the rich-poor divide (a critical situation in the USA for which there are very few solutions), provide a possible solution to automation in the future, and give everyone some peace of mind resulting in better mental health. I consider it like exercise for the body. A hundred little ways in which it helps and almost everyone agrees that some exercise is good. It's not 100% free, but I do think a UBI would be a boon to almost any nation in the world.

riiiiiiiiiiight, rich people have this unlimited amount of money thats just there for you to steal from so you dont have to work.. 25,000 a year aint rich, thats lower middle class at best, those are families with very real expenses that the new taxation, which isnt going to elevate people out of poverty, will certainly drag people into it

yang, as is common with the left, plays on your own sense of greed and entitlement to promise you the property of others if you agree to grant him the power to take it from them

for somebody to receive something they didnt work for, somebody has to work for something they didnt receive, and UBI is a violation of the rights of the people who work hard in this country to give you the opportunities you have today.. guaranteed the amount of money you would have to tax them would put a lot of companies out of business as well, less jobs, less people paying taxes, less tax revenue, more people taking from the system, and you run into a feedback loop that tanks your economy harder than venezuelas

if you want to make lives better for everyone, make it easier to pay expenses, survive, we need to stop politicians like yang who think they have some divine right to take from the people, lower taxes, lower regulations.. we need less government, not more

and lastly, if UBI would be a boon to any nation in the world, how come it wasnt a boon for any of the nations that tried it?

@burntbyhellfire: Less incentive to work or contribute? I disagree. In the few, small studies done on UBI, It hasn't been shown to make people lazier or make them not want to work. If anything the current system gives people less incentive to work because you lose benefits the moment you start earning more money. Now if I was getting a ton in government assistance every month, I wouldn't be pushing to work full-time or getting a better paying job knowing any additional income I earn simply goes to replace what I lost once the assistance is taken from me.

Secondly, Those tests were done mostly in very small groups, most of them tend to be unemployed either in the short or long term for various reasons. We are talking about giving every single citizen from 18 years of age up an option to take UBI, Not just a select handful of people. And, take the Finland UBI experiment, for example, most of these studies are doomed to fail because there is no real support for it to begin with.

@burntbyhellfire: Few people work as hard as the poor. And few live in poverty by choice. Don't forget that if you have a job, that money is still received on top of the UBI.

With people having an easier time of saying no to their boss, higher wages or better conditions can be negotiated for the jobs that truly matter: the jobs that would become a problem if they stopped being done. So we would see a narrowing of salaries between positions. But it doesn't mean that work in general would be unrewarding.

You seem to be under the impression that people who are very rich in the USA somehow earned that money. I don't believe that it's an argument you can defend. I can understand a man earning 10 times that of a fellow man if he is incredibly gifted and special, and hardworking. To be worth 10 ordinary men in terms of societal significance is an amazing accomplishment and there wouldn't be many of those people walking on this planet. But to have people earn 2000 times that of a man, or 20000 times... Especially through capital. There is simply no way to justify for someone to take so much more money, and consequently put so much financial strain on the ordinary people.

Let alone for people to inherit their wealth. They didn't do anything to earn that. They just happen to be born in the right place at the right time.

I guess you can call it stealing from the rich, much like any tax is a form of theft I suppose. But I could never be more in favor of it. If we want to talk ethics, then not having a UBI means letting good willing Americans starve, live without certainty, stuck in our poverty traps. That isn't OK either.

Plus, with the accumulation and the increase in the concentration of wealth, your power to vote is being rendered obsolete. Your system of governance is not sustainable with the current economy. What does it matter what a candidate stands for when it's always the same few who can make it rain money whenever the important decisions are made? Your country is broken, and only something that narrows the gap between the rich and the poor can save it.

I do think it's good for you to have concerns. Because it would mean a big change. And getting it wrong could turn the USA into a China 2 or Cuba 2 and we don't want that. So it's important to have concerns and I am sadly not qualified, at all, to give you any good in-depth answers. All I can do is say 'hey look at things this way or that way, maybe it's different.' There are a few good discussions on UBI between economists online. But I think there should be more public discussion about it. Because whether you are in favor of UBI or against it, it is an increasingly popular idea.

always so concerned if somebody else has more than you, arent you?.. how dare somebody earn more just because they committed themselves, worked hard, educated themselves, and took risks while you smoked weed and played hackey sack getting your degree in art history

be thankful for what you has, because nobody owes you more than what you have earned and worked for

No I'm not against rich people or anything like that. I love rich people in general (and where I live, in general rich people love me for just speaking up about it) and I think most rich people would agree with what I wrote there. (Especially, the issue of an ever smaller group of people wielding ever more financial power is something that greatly concerns any of the rich people just as much as it should concern the average American, because they themselves are likely not going to be part of that group.)

What I see in the USA (and in my country too) is a problem getting out of hand, one that cannot be ignored forever. And it's not the fault of the rich but it's always the few who mess it up for everyone else. Just like with GG, the women's march, liberals, activists, every single political controversy that we talk about. It's never the whole group but it's always a couple of people who are lost on ethics. I think generally speaking the rich people have the exact same morality and intentions as everyone else. It's just that the game is rigged. And that can cause a dangerous situation, for anyone including the richest.

If you're very poor in the USA, there is no way in hell that you'll get out of poverty because it's so expensive to be poor and their options are so limited. Even if they can work multiple jobs, it's not going to happen. Because the jobs you get based on not being able to pay for education, don't pay enough to live on. If you're an average middle class family in the USA there's no way in hell that you'll ever catch up to the upper class, because you don't have any capital. And it's easier to make money with capital than through labor. So you can work all you want but unless you get real lucky there is just no way. The disparities between the layers of USA society are becoming so great and so divided by these increasingly impossible obstacles that there is hardly a way for people to get anywhere financially.

And over time, whatever the numbers may say officially, the middle class is getting squeezed for all they're worth. And I'm concerned that the middle class will become the new lower class. Because they are losing their position of power, and they don't have the right to complain because they are never working hard enough (husband and wife working to keep their head above water is now considered a normal thing, and soon they'll be on Adderall), or there are others to point to who have it worse. Who benefited most with the 2008 rebalancing and bailouts? It wasn't supposed to.

the US has a lower poverty rate, higher average rate of income, and lower taxes than practically any european country, and those who do live in the US under that mean still live have more money to do what they want than in europe.. you dont need UBI if the government stops taking everyones damn money for their half-baked socialist ideologue pet projects and left americans the hell alone

Here's a relatively new article from NPR. It's going to impact urban/rural and college/non-college educated people differently. Automation creates different fields that are required to create, maintain, and repair any type of robotics program.

I've seen it first hand in my own company. I worked closely with our RPA team in the last year or two on automating daily reporting through macro creation. White collar processing jobs are being eliminated at a fast pace but I don't really think it's a bad thing. Repeating a set of 'clicks' with your mouse isn't very cost effective and a lot of these jobs are already outsourced overseas anyways. By creating these macro programs you're enabling the growth of analyst positions along side them to maintain and develop new ones for process changes down the line. I'm a huge proponent of evolving these positions into ones that require more critical thinking instead of punching the same pattern over and over on a keyboard.

With all of that being said, people need to be open to change and willing to learn new things. If not, they'll be left in the dust. Honestly, I don't have much sympathy for people who are too stubborn to branch out and take the time to evolve with the world and jobs industry.

@HoolaHoopMan: My father has worked extensively in the field of automation around the world. And he did echo what you're saying here. He told me that automation is typically not so much a matter of many jobs being lost, it's mostly a matter of production going up, and a shift of production jobs to maintenance/repairs, installation, designers, drawings, programmers etc.

It is true... until we start to automate parts of the automation process itself. Once we start automating the design process, transportation, installation, diagnostics, repairs, etc. And that may take some time.

Though, there is a big chunk of the population that is not intelligent enough to do higher level jobs. That could be a potential problem. Those people may be left in the dust as you say.

automation has been going on over 150 years... what about wagon drivers when the train came along?.. how about the construction industry with power tools meaning contractors didnt have to employ as many people to finish the job as quickly?.. the production line? cotton gin?.. as technology advances, we produce things quicker, cheaper, and thats reflected in the cost of those products.. case and point, before the production line, few people could ever afford a car, after it, almost every family had one.. its made american lives better because its made things more attainable, more affordable, its why people whine and complain that theres this great income inequality.. so? your lives are considerably better being the lowest class in america, than it is being the highest class in a country with real income equality like venezuela

dont let fear of the future to drive you to support an ideology from two centuries ago promoted as something new and fascinating by people just looking for political gains.. socialism is a failed ideology

Which is why we need to have plans in place to provide jobs training in the event it happens. Trying to prop up dying industries is only delaying the inevitable. Protectionist nonsense is going to get us no where.

We need 'thinkers' and the ability to solve problems. This means higher education is a prerequisite, less we fall behind to all other competitors.

why? if a factory needs someone trained to repair and maintain machines, 99/100 times they'll pay to train the person if someone doesn't apply who is already trained, its a complete non issue

Zero chance so any attention is a waste of time.

Trump 2020.