This article [1] is one of the few to have taken Andrew Yang's UBI policies seriously and on their merits (unlike most others that summarily dismiss them), thought through some of their implications, found shortcomings, but still ended up still largely acknowledging that they could work.
I think a well-designed UBI could work. The tricky part is that UBI is one of those experiments that has to be done on the large, and pulling back if it doesn't work out is challenging. Any errors in implementation and design are potentially very expensive.
I think some are advocating for a value added tax with certain categorical exemptions. My limited understanding is this would make necessity purchases more secure while making discretionary “luxury” purchases more expensive
> which, like it or not, is the engine that drives our economy
no it doesnt. the US consumes a lot, but you are mistaking an accounting identity with something causal. if people decided to consume less, that means they are putting off current consumption for future consumption and saving those resources for investment to allow that to happen. don't worry - they'll consume at some point when they feel it is in their best interest (and if they don't, they basically just gave us a bunch of free labor).
all economies everywhere are driven by production. human desire is pretty much endless - you rarely have to incentive consumption. when people have the resource (ie, they produced), they will naturally consume.
the only way that long term standards of living improve is by increasing productivity (this is something virtually every economist agrees to). that is done by increasing capital stocks, machinery, technology. those are all production oriented activity.
It's easy to structure taxes such that the UBI is extremely meaningful—it helps the people at the low end a lot, the people in the middle a little, and the people at the upper end end up paying more. But guess what? They weren't using that money anyway (except to make more money for themselves).
The people at the top don't have much money (as a percentage of their holdings), they have "wealth", where wealth means productive enterprises like e.g. toilet paper factories. The people at the bottom work in toilet paper factories and are given money which they use to buy toilet paper from the people at the top, and thus there is a productive equilibrium between the wiping masses and the owner of the means of wiping.
When the people at the top make less money, they invest less money into new toilet paper R&D and new factories. When the people at the bottom make less money, they spend less on toilet paper, and the people at the top make less money. The balance is fragile, and if your end goal is that your citizens have access to the finest and most luxurious bathroom experience they can, then you must take care to balance the engine of capital with great precision.
> When the people at the top make less money, they invest less money into new toilet paper R&D and new factories.
This (and its inverse, "when the people at the top make more money, they invest it so it does good for the whole economy") is the foundation of trickle-down economics.
It's been empirically proven not to work over the past 40 years.
No, trickle-down economics is the idea that you should reduce taxes on the people at the top because they'll invest more, which only works if the balance is skewed too far towards the people at the bottom, which is clearly wrong right now.
If you had a dial labelled "wealth redistribution percentage", trickle-down economics says you that if you move it towards "0%" everything will get better. What I am saying is that if you start moving it towards "100%", everything will get better, but if you keep moving it for a long time, everything will get worse again. It is not clear to me that this has been empirically proven to be false.
But the main point is 99% of people are already spending more than $1000 a month to survive, so we can afford it without spending more. It's just about how the books are balanced.
For high earners it means $1000+ in taxes. For the poorest it replaces conditional welfare.
You either have debt hyperinflation, or you have taxes high enough that the universal basic income is meaningless.