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stievstigma t1_j5c4bvf wrote

Reply to comment by PoliteThaiBeep in UBI before riots, possible or a worthless pursuit? by nitebear

You mean like a “Freedom Dividend”?

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PoliteThaiBeep t1_j5c8jqm wrote

I think Andrew Yang called it that right?

But his solution was to introduce VAT taxes and use that to finance UBI to avoid "redistribution" stigma.

I think politically it probably makes sense, but personally I think taxing rich passive income is more beneficial for the economy if implemented.

Right now poor people's major income source is work, investment income is a tiny portion for them. As you go up the bracket investment income tends to be more and more important and for billionaires I think it's over 70% income is in investment. I don't remember exact numbers but I remember the trend.

Despite this investment income taxes are capped at 20%. (For a stock owned for over a year) This creates a natural runaway wealth scenario where more money just makes money with limited incentives to actually create stuff.

I'd say UBI should be financed from the top 1% investment income taxes, make them higher like 30-50% for people with over 10 mil in investment, don't touch regular income taxes, don't introduce VAT.

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stievstigma t1_j5f2yt5 wrote

Yeah, it was Yang. I agree with most of what you said but I was under the impression that the VAT tax he was proposing was to be leveraged against big tech, as in, Amazon would be taxed on every transaction, Google would be taxed on every search, etc. Of course, it’s easy to see how those costs could trickle down though so yeah, taxing passive income makes more sense.

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