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Comment by loceng | Hacker News Reader

I think you should take your analysis a bit further. Freeing up human time by using machines is amazing, the issue is distributing resources - which is what Presidential candidate Andrew Yang's #1 policy of UBI ("Freedom Dividend" as he's branded it) will do - and paid for via a 10% VAT tax, so companies like Amazon who paid $0 in taxes last year can't avoid taxes. Allowing management, owners, innovators to maximize efficiency - allowing them to still be incentivized to do so, and simply taking a small portion - which is enough - and redistributing it to society will lead to an exponential increase in quality of life; the buying power of "$1,000" / month of UBI Yang wants to give every adult American will increase exponentially as automation replaces everything.

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If I'm not mistaken, the VAT is a consumption tax that is paid for by the consumer and collected by the companies for the government. It's not a tax paid by companies.

I assume such a tax would replace the local state based sales taxes?

Having said that when I was in the US, it was very frustrating to never know how much something would cost me based on the advertised price.

> I assume such a tax would replace the local state based sales taxes?

Probably not. Government's aren't keen on reducing tax.

Thank you for sharing your thoughts.

Your initial point's thinking isn't evolved enough: in Europe the # I have heard, however I haven't confirm - it does however align with my own understanding, is that 55% of the VAT tax is paid for by a company's profits; companies have to maintain being competitive by not transferring 100% of the tax to consumers, e.g. companies will compete based on how much profit margin they're giving themselves.

I'm not sure how Andrew Yang at least will implement the VAT - it will be 10% VAT vs. Europe's 20% - which will maintain competitiveness with Europe. Likewise, Yang doesn't think income tax is a good idea because he believes you should incentivize and not penalize people who are actually working; tax people who are consuming.

And agreed, there is indeed a planned confusion - psychological trick - that occurs, manipulates people - when something is priced at say $9.97 - where people tend towards not calculating the final price that includes tax, and it otherwise requires people to unnecessarily use mental energy to do calculations if the person wants to stay very price conscious.

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