You have to give Andrew Yang credit for being willing to put forward "UBI" -- a $1,000 a month "stipend" that he foolishly calls a "Freedom Dividend" -- with of course a boat-load of fraudulent claims of how he's going to pay for it.
Chief among these is a 10% VAT -- which sounds good, but it's problematic for a whole host of reasons, not the least of which is that it won't raise enough money.
Remember that a VAT exempts government spending, since that's just taxing yourself. Yang recognizes this and pegs the revenue from a VAT at $800 billion as he also removes groceries, clothing and apparently some other things from it.
He also says he's going to "consolidate" (get rid of) many other welfare programs. The problem is that the only ones that matter from a budget perspective are health care related.
At the same time Yang wants to expand Medicare to everyone. The problem is that these two programs are in direct opposition to each other. He says he'll be able to bring costs under control but Medicare and Medicaid have utterly failed to do so.
In other words Yang is a pie-in-the-sky Democrat protecting and in fact expanding the medical monopolists.
Look folks -- CMS -- Medicare and Medicaid Services, have spent $1.465 trillion through August which is 35% of the federal spending all-in. The federal budget deficit during that time was $1.067 trillion.
In other words that spending was 137% of the deficit.
If you killed all the medical monopolists and took the "low hanging fruit" as I described in that post you would erase the entire federal deficit, plus some and not one person would be denied medical care.
Further, you'd take roughly another trillion and a half off private forced spending on this alleged "service" since the "service" is 500% overpriced.
This would instantly resolve both the federal debt and all the state and local pension problems -- at once. It would also eliminate the destruction of personal purchasing power and that of saved funds.
20% of the people in the country -- those who are involved in and require this scheme to make a living -- would hate you.
EVERYONE ELSE WOULD VOTE FOR YOU.
In short this is one of those nearly-impossible to find 80% issues among the electorate. That's exactly what Trump exploited (a claimed 80% issue that he never actually addressed) to get elected himself -- illegal immigration and displacement of American workers.
He was lying, as we now all know in that instead of resolving any of these problems he has dripped out half-measures where, as the head of the Executive he could have resolved several of them immediately but that sales job is why he's President today.
Yang seems to think that socialism will somehow "work" in health care. It never has -- in health care or anywhere else. NHS in Britain is falling apart. So are the other socialist health care systems. They're falling apart even though they exist almost-entirely on the back of the 500% overcharge Americans pay in that we effectively fund the R&D and in many cases the reproduction cost of everything they use. Even with that sort of outrageous transfer and theft they're still fiscally underwater.
Yang could have -- and perhaps, for a very short period of time forward still can -- become a credible candidate. He needs an 80% issue -- indeed, anyone who intends to try to take on Warren, Bernie or Biden does, just as I've argued for decades that if you want to try to run as a third-party candidate you need to as well.
Remember Ross Perot? He took up an 80% issue -- the giant sucking sound of "tariff free" trade with Mexico. Had he not folded his tent he would have likely won too.
There are so many other crackpot ideas on Yang's plate that frankly, I can't take him seriously. The "vote at 16" idea is one of them. Representation comes with responsibility, or at least it's supposed to. Yang is nothing more than pandering with this bullshit -- if my kid can vote at 16 I can eject him or her at 16 and they can go fend for themselves.
There are acts that should define you as an adult in all respects. Reproduction and Felonious conduct are two of them. Voting is a third. Today we refuse to recognize that exercising the most-profound power a human can have -- to reproduce or not -- does not come with the responsibility commensurate with that power. This must change and since slavery is immoral (never mind illegal) there's only one direction it can that is consistent: Pregnancy, for both sexes, is an automatic and irrevocably emancipating event. So is a felony conviction.
Further, Andrew is a pie-in-the-sky economic bullshitter. "Saving for retirement", which is one of his planks, is impossible in a nation where the federal government runs a 25%+ fiscal deficit and thus destroys the value of all saved capital. This has to be stopped -- or those who both promote policies that allow and expand that practice must be removed from the public square by any means necessary.
Fortunately for Andrew there is a way to stop the deficit spending and get the 80% issue and greatly improve health care delivery while slashing cost by 80% or more.
But he hasn't taken it -- just like the rest haven't either.
That's because he doesn't really believe in any of it, just as neither do the others -- including our current President.
Sadly they're all bullshitters and con artists.
