You're full of misconceptions: Andrew Yang's not rich, his net worth, contrary to the hate propaganda prompted being wrongly lumped in with billionaires, is estimated to be ~$600k to $2.2 million.
You don't apply the same VAT rate to every product/service, e.g. staples that say poor people (rather that we all depend on) could gave lower tax rate; likewise if adding a certain VAT on everything while also giving everyone $12,000 per year means that you have to spend $200,000 on non-staple items before you're paying more into the UBI system than you're getting from it - and if you're sitting spending $200k per year on things you're not hurting.
And if you're making assumptions about Yang, could it not be you're making wrong assumptions elsewhere as your foundation for your conclusions? You clearly just hear some small shallow snippets from clearly untrustworthy sources that lack integrity/truth. Maybe instead research Yang and his policies thoroughly.
The author makes a reasonable argument against using an income tax to pay for UBI, but Andrew Yang’s platform was to establish a Value-Added Tax, not an income tax.
I don’t think that the same negative substitution incentive occurs with a VAT: purchases become more expensive, but individuals are taxed in proportion to how much they purchase rather than how much income they make, so saving/investing is incentivized.
I’m not an expert and I’m interested in seeing how I might be wrong, but that’s my initial thoughts on his argument.
Andrew Yang is too early with the UBI, which in this case means he’s wrong. We still need humans to make things and the future. A negative income tax would work better now and would be a better segue to UBI.
1) Bill Gates knows damn well that it wouldn't be paying 100 billion dollars in the Warren tax plan; he's not an idiot. He's trying to poison the well.
2) Sure, I'm glad Bill Gates is willing to double that amount. Fun fact, Mr Gates, you don't have to wait until a tax is implemented, if you really think that way, you can donate money straight to the government: [0]
3) Taxes, at least in my lifetime, have always been a tax rate, not a number-of-dollars paid thing. If Jeff Bezos made 20 billion dollars last year, and paid only 1 billion in taxes, that would be a 5% tax rate. Living in NY, depending on my expenses and deductions, I pay upwards of 40% of my income in taxes. Yes, in one year, Bezos would have paid more to the tax pool than I ever would have, but it seems incredibly unfair that a person who has so much would be forced to give comparatively so little, especially since wealth hoarders could also afford to give a substantially higher percentage of their income without an appreciable quality of life change.
Granted, I know Bill Gates is, by wealth-hoarder standards, not too bad a guy. I don't think anyone here is arguing that he is, but come on; even if his dishonest framing of "being taxed 100 billion dollars" was true, which it isn't, it's not like his life would even change that much; he'd still be worth billions, he'd still have more money than he knows what to do with, he'd still be able to live a life of luxury on bank interest. Forgive me for not crying over his plight.
EDIT: The 20 billion Bezos thing is a contrived example. I do not know the tax rate for billionaires in NY; it was more a direct response to the "paid more in taxes than I'll ever pay" comment.
It is not inflammatory or false. VAT taxes are regressive consumption-based taxes, and poorer people disproportionately bear the costs compared to the wealthy. It's very well established among economists https://www.quora.com/Why-is-value-added-tax-regressive
> I doubt you've lived through any sort of poverty or have felt like the walls were closing in on your life, but people live that everyday. For those that have been through it, it hardly feels like a "weird 10x play"
The poor and working class of this country clearly have a candidate they stand by, and it's Bernie Sanders, who is about to set a record for the largest number of small dollar contributions in US history. You won't find them at $5600 a plate dinners at Sam Altman's mansion in California. To their great credit, the working poor in this country seem much more interested in an agenda that proposes real change to systemic inequality and poverty, rather than just pouring some regressively funded UBI candy coating over the existing broken system and expecting it to not get much, much worse.
I feel like the quote you pulled out of Youtube is slightly unfair in the extent to which he endorses the idea. In my opinion, it sounds like he full-throat endorses the general method and aim of the idea just not the exact transfer amounts and the method to raise revenue (sales/VAT tax vs carbon tax). Here is the quote in more context:
"The plan is just a version of the negative income tax. Milton Freedom first proposed it...and as a student 40 years ago I thought it was a pretty good idea. And it turns out I wasn't alone in that judgement...In 1968 a 1000 economists endorsed a negative income tax along these lines. What Andrew Yang is proposing is a version of what these 1000 economists endorsed back in 1968. Could 1000 economists all be wrong? Laughs Well yes they could. But I don't think in this case they are. My own view is that a universal income financed by an efficient tax, something like a value added tax, might well be worth considering. And I'm one of the signatories...of a plan to do something similar with a carbon tax."
My quick read of the NYT piece is a comparison of Yang's plan and Warren's plan, and it concludes that Warren's is unworkable (e.g., how do you value the present value of Rihanna's future royalties? This has to be determined for Warren's wealth tax, but not Yang's VAT tax).
It does not read like an endorsement — just an assessment that Yang's plan is better than a plan he describes as unworkable (Warren's).
In the Youtube, he says: "My own view is that a universal income financed by an efficient tax, something like a value added tax, might well be worth considering" — hardly a full-throated endorsement.
Has he said anything else that is more positive? Or more specific with regard to the amount of UBI that he thinks would be appropriate/efficient? I wouldn't call either of these things an endorsement.
Yeah, you're right. Another person mentioned that I should edit the post to say that rich people can afford to be unbiased which was more inline with what I was trying to convey.
So a bit of a rewording here to make my point more clear:
"In this specific context, I believe what Bill Gates is saying about income tax is unbiased because he is so rich, he can afford to be unbiased."
Another rich guy trying to persuade average folk that all our problems would be solved if people like him were taxed more. Never mind that the Buffet-rule (minimum 35%) would net $31 Billion over the next 11 years versus $7 Trillion in estimated deficits. (http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0312/74232.html)
Another reason this idea is so wrong-headed is that there can never be enough superrich Americans to power a great economy. The annual earnings of people like me are hundreds, if not thousands, of times greater than those of the median American, but we don't buy hundreds or thousands of times more stuff. My family owns three cars, not 3,000. I buy a few pairs of pants and a few shirts a year, just like most American men. Like everyone else, we go out to eat with friends and family only occasionally.
I can't buy enough of anything to make up for the fact that millions of unemployed and underemployed Americans can't buy any new clothes or cars or enjoy any meals out.
But you can invest... Your money isn't stuffed under your mattress, is it??
That's why taxing the rich to pay for investments that benefit all is a great deal for both the middle class and the rich.
Are they really investments or are they just political favors that over-cost and under-deliver? (See the Department of Education, TARP, Medicare, war, etc.)
What silicon valley millionaire is advocating against taxing the rich? The only one I know of that has an opinion is Gates, and it's exactly the opposite of what you're implying.
I've always looked at Yang as "typical mind fallacy" in action. Coming from SV culture, he assumes if you give everyone 10k/year, we all create startups, learn violin or a second language, volunteer in their communities, etc.
Policies that may work for a small, highly-motivated segment of our country do not necessarily scale.
This is silly. Bill Gates thinks his taxes should be higher, because he thinks all people earning money in the way he does should pay higher taxes. If he wrote a check to double his own personal tax payment it wouldn't make a dent in the US budget. But if you doubled the taxes every billionaire pays, it would make a huge dent.
So he's saying, his class of wealth should pay more. If it's just him who does it, it doesn't solve the government's problems, and he's better off spending the money himself directly on the things he cares about. But if everyone at his scale paid more, that _would_ help.
The author is playing the typical Rich man's game. Oh woe is me, look at these poor people who this tax will destroy!
The fact that so many people here are defending them, is maddening and disheartening. Arguing that anyone with a value of over 50mm can't pay a higher tax rate on those funds is disengenous at best.
That's not what he's saying on taxes (he's saying that people who make their money from dividends and capital gains should be taxed at a higher rate), and he's given his money to the Gates Foundation (which will no doubt use it better than the US government), it's not like he's giving it to his heirs to form a dynasty, and voluntary taxes are never going to work so that's a strawman...
Where did you read that? Tax policy is ludicrously complex by design. Simply saying "we should pay higher taxes" is broad enough to be meaningless. Increasing income tax for example would barely make a dent in their take-home, because the majority of their wealth comes through capital gains tax.
Not to mention the numerous documented loopholes in the tax system that allow people in Dalio/Buffet's position to move money around the world at a moment's notice and pay nothing in federal tax.
The loopholes are there, but they never get fixed, thanks to lobbying from the big 4 audit firms that depend on blue chip clients like him to fatten their paycheques.
Just because Dalio has an arms-length connection to the dysfunctional tax system doesn't mean he;s ignorant as to why the system is the way it is.
I'm not in Bill Gates' bracket, but I believe that there are limits to how much you can deduct - the alternative minimum tax, if nothing else.
Why would he pay additional taxes on top of that? If he were one of the ones advocating for higher taxes on the wealthy (he's not, so far as I can tell from the article), then he should so that his actions match his words. Otherwise, why should anybody listen to his words?
I'm not criticizing Bill Gates. He has done an admirable job of putting his money where his mouth is. (So, in retrospect, me choosing him as an example in the post that is grandparent to this was an error.)
For a guy who's always railing about the value of honest, rational discourse, he's unbelievably misleading and political in this post. He ignores asset growth and the fact that all the wealth tax proposals have a very high floor for the tax.
Saying the government will take 45% of your wealth above $100M is very different than saying the government will take 45% of your wealth.
Because these are the same talking points billionaires use to scare people with maybe twenty five dollars in cash accounts and no savings and people who have a couple million dollars into believing misinformation about taxes.
Our taxes (in the US) are pretty low by any standard.
Saying a billion dollars is "a few million" is disingenous.
Nobody is arguing for higher taxes on everyone.
Normally, I would believe someone is just a useful idiot (like I am most of the time) but you seemed too knowledgeable to be ignorant.
You don't apply the same VAT rate to every product/service, e.g. staples that say poor people (rather that we all depend on) could gave lower tax rate; likewise if adding a certain VAT on everything while also giving everyone $12,000 per year means that you have to spend $200,000 on non-staple items before you're paying more into the UBI system than you're getting from it - and if you're sitting spending $200k per year on things you're not hurting.
And if you're making assumptions about Yang, could it not be you're making wrong assumptions elsewhere as your foundation for your conclusions? You clearly just hear some small shallow snippets from clearly untrustworthy sources that lack integrity/truth. Maybe instead research Yang and his policies thoroughly.
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