Comments by "" (@thehumanity0) on "Andrew Yang: "Medicare For All Is Not The Name Of A Bill" (Yes It Is)" video.
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@DaHanG I'm not arguing it wouldn't help poor people. It would help the poor just like Warren's "funding proposal" for Medicare for All would overall help most people when you couple a regressive head tax with giving people free healthcare at the point of service. The problem is that it helps people a lot less than simply just doing your program without the added negative of a regressive tax.
In the case of Yang's UBI, it is still regressive in terms of income inequality because it would literally benefit the rich more than the poor when you implement his Freedom Dividend. When you fund it through a VAT tax on goods, you're just making the working class pay for their own dividends they get back. Problem with that idea is that the poor and many in the middle class would end up using ever penny of their $1,000, while the rich and higher income earners would either save it or use considerably less. In this scenario, you have a working class individual (around the 70% of the country that lives paycheck to paycheck) buying products and paying close to 90-100% of their money on that regressive tax (taxed at a certain rate) aside from groceries and basic food items which would be exempt according to Yang. And before you respond, yes, of course a wealthy person is going to pay more money when they buy more expensive items, but is it going to be the same percentage of their total income or wealth as the working class person who is using ALL their money and having to pay a greater portion of a regressive VAT tax? The answer is no, it will be a far less percentage and lower ratio compared to their total income. Rich people sit on a huge portion of their wealth, accumulating interest, while working class people spend their entire paycheck and pay sales taxes. If you add MORE regressive taxes, the tax burden on the working class will only become larger.
See, this is the problem. The Freedom Dividend, coupled with UBI is going to end up shifting wealth even more towards the wealthy and powerful given the difference in the percentage they pay back into the system through the regressive VAT tax. You could simply fix this by just funding UBI through a progressive payroll tax, but Yang won't do that because he knows it would actually fund UBI in a way that benefits the working class, places more of the tax burden on the wealthy than on the working class, and would actually increase taxes on the rich.
I'm also not even mentioning how it would cut social programs and some of the poorest and most desperate Americans wouldn't even get a full $1,000 due to already receiving SSI (only SSDI stacks), food stamps, child assistance, housing assistance, income tax credit, and so on. Some distinctive older or disabled people already receiving $1,000 in assistance wouldn't even get any benefit from the Freedom Dividend, yet they would still have to pay for the VAT tax (or any inflation or rent increase that occurs), making it a a net negative for some of the poorest people.
You can argue that his Freedom Dividend is an overall benefit to most people, but it has far too many added portions that diminish the entire purpose of having a ubi. I actually support the concept of a basic income and have for a long time, but Yang's version is a pale imitation of what a progressive UBI would look like, and based on his specifics, it would only end up worsening wealth inequality, something I massively disagree with him on.
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