How out of touch and uneducated are these people? Pandemics can't be stopped outside a vaccine. We are all going to catch it or be quarentined for 18 months.
Want to flatten the curve? I could go to Walmart and interface with 50 people to get ibuprofen, or I can interface with 1 worker?
We need to stop electing marketers and start electing people that understand math.
Only thing I could think of is credentialing.
https://www.cdc.gov/plague/resources/235098_plaguefactsheet_...
They are raising their wage to $17 per hour. That's around $3,000 per month in stead of their usual $2,500 per month.
Little vacation, few sick days.
According to Google, that beats Walmart pay[0]. Less clear for Target[1]. Of course, if reports are even remotely accurate, Amazon warehouse working conditions are considerably worse.
I don't know what other retailers pay, but I wouldn't be surprised if they're comparable.
Right now, 0.1% of the US has had Covid-19. For heard immunity we need that number to be at least 500 times larger.
So, what's the plan here? Wait for a miracle that isn't coming? Stay in quarantine for a year and risk societal ruin?
Those building blocks will be needed if we want a plan that isn't too painful.
Would deaths scale linearly with a 500x increase?
How about the impact on our medical system, would that scale linearly with a 500x increase?
Probably look at Iraq and Afghanistan has dealt with post 9/11.
Speaking strictly in terms of the US, we'd be able to weather a 10-year lockdown. America is rich in natural resources, and has a large agricultural base.
Our government can handle the basics:
Drinking water
Food
Shelter
The rest would be economic shifts, such as reduction in costs of living to account for a new economy that has shifted away from the ability to get together.
I would speculate we're better off with the entirety of the economy being in shambles, than we would be by having rather high mortality rates, and overwhelming our health services.
Let me post another question:
What if you did not need to work to have your any of needs met?
Processes and procedures would need to be put in place to ensure safety.
Society would need to adapt to meet those needs.
By any reasonable estimate, it's over 1%. Highly infected areas like NYC likely exceed 10%
> So, what's the plan here?
It's not feasable to get herd immunity in a world as open as 3 months ago. The hospitalization rate (and duration) is too high -> it would take longer than the optimistic time for vaccine development.
Electronic contact tracing, heavy testing, traveler quarantines, mass gathering restrictions. It's not going to get contained, but you can have a world where isolated bursts effectively get squashed.
https://www.axios.com/andrew-yang-2020-media-attention-acc26...
https://vocal.media/theSwamp/a-visual-history-of-the-yang-me...
The whole structure of the debates and 24/7 news coverage is more about reality TV than any kind of substance. It's geared for soundbites and drama. So someone like Yang doesn't fit into that, but shines in long form formats like podcasts.
His plan to use a VAT to pay for UBI is a regressive tax. People with lower incomes spend a higher percentage of their income on consumable goods. Putting a higher VAT or sales tax on everything to UBI puts a lot of the burden on the lower class to pay for this program. Someone with a much higher income has a number of ways to avoid this tax - they can invest in companies instead, they can buy real estate, they can take a jet to a different country and buy expensive stuff there instead of buying it in the country with a high VAT, like how people in Massachusetts buy their computers in New Hampshire.
So, he "did the math," but that doesn't automatically make it good policy.
The concept of UBI is a good idea to explore in the future. However, we shouldn't just assume that it's definitely going to work as intended, either: https://www.helsinki.fi/en/news/nordic-welfare-news/heikki-h...
That said, I wasn't entirely convinced by the Freedom Dividend and wish it hadn't been the centerpiece. What I was more interested in and really appreciated was his overall approach and focus on problems and solutions. An actual problem solver and uniter, not someone perpetuating the WWE reality TV show that is our politics.
"Assuming all goods are subject to a VAT and the entire VAT is passed on to consumers, an individual would have to buy $120,000 worth of items before the extra costs associated with a VAT “use up” their UBI."
That is...true, yes. Everyone's still getting the extra $1,000 a month.
Using all of that up by spending on a 10% VAT puts you at spending $120,000 a year.
So, while a VAT is not progressive, funneling it into UBI turns it into being progressive. That makes sense. You don't even need a goods exemption for that to work as intended.
I am also not convinced on the idea of UBI. There needs to be more studies including large scale studies if possible. I am not convinced that the largest rent-seekers with limited competition and supply alternatives wouldn't just suck those income gains away - jobs with labor supply surplus might pay closer to the minimum wage, landlords might simply all agree to raise rent, Comcast will raise bills across the country, colleges raise tuition, etc. UBI sometimes feels like an oversimplification, one of those "easy solutions" that doesn't take a long time to write down and fits in a campaign slogan.
But then we use the tax to directly fund one of the most progressive programs in the US, which directly pays people who need it most.
I think most people would think of Social Security as a net progressive policy, even though it has a very regressive funding model.