[calecon323]

All these points have serious problems though.

1. The $500 billion spent on welfare and other income support programs is usually significantly more generous than what a recipient would receive through Yang's proposed UBI. The fact you don't have to cover some people who already receive even more generous benefits doesn't "save you money" in any real sense. There is no real reason someone would choose a UBI over these programs except paperwork.

2. A VAT only gets you $800 billon a year when you need at least something like $3 trillion. This policy is also a little hard to understand if you are left leaning; don't you want to spend new tax revenue on something like universal healthcare, reducing the cost of college or renewable energy expansion? If you raise taxes to pay for a UBI it just becomes harder to raise tax revenue for any other priorities.

3. The roosevelt institute study assumed that the economy was almost completely constrained by demand to the point where even if the UBI was funded entirely through debt the net result would be an economy 13% larger after eight years. Leaving aside whether you agree with their simulation(I don't); this is an incredibly risking bet, if you are wrong that the economy is constrained by demand you have dramatically increased the federal deficit and probably caused a fiscal crisis in the process which would, of course, dramatically shrink the economy. It's interesting to note that the Roosevelt study doesn't actually model Yang's proposal of financing essentially the cost of a UBI through taxes/ spending cuts with the rest through deficit spending and it's hard to see how he came up with the numbers here.

4. So assuming you can save $100-200 billion on other government programs and you get everyone who uses welfare assistance to sign up for a UBI instead you aren't even halfway to the $3.6 trillion dollar price tag.