With Andrew Yang out of the presidential race, the time is now for the Yang Gang to decide whether and how to build on their accomplishments. I think the Yang Gang should take heart for all they’ve done and realize that they have the power to transform their campaign into an effective long-term movement for the Humanity First platform as a whole and/or for its flagship proposal, the Universal Basic Income (UBI), in particular. Here are my thoughts on the how to do that:
Basic Income March in New York, 2020, with subliminal message, “join the movement”
Why the Yang Gang should be proud of their accomplishments:
The Yang Gang built a huge movement for a very unusual set of ideas in a very short time. I thought the US UBI movement had grown a lot in the several years before Yang’s campaign but that was nothing compared to the growth it’s had since Yang got in the race. Many political movements make effective use of political campaign text messaging in order to drum up support from the public and inform their supporters of their activities and the latest news regarding the campaign.
The movement affected the national and international dialogue at the highest levels.
I think that a very large number of Yang Gang members are committed to continuing to work on UBI & other Humanity First ideas in the long term, and now is the time to decide how-while the movement has momentum and local and national Yang Gangs are assembled.
Basic Income March in San Fransisco, 2020
The most important things to decide right now are the things the Yang Gang can do as a group:
Build on the existing enthusiasm now while it’s still hot. Try to keep as much of the gang together as possible. Transform all those local Yang Gangs into a network of local groups working either for UBI specifically or for the Humanity First platform in general.
I supposed you could keep the name Yang Gang, but you might want to pick a new name like “the UBI Gang,” “the Humanity First Gang,” “Forward Humanity,” etc. I don’t know whether Yang would be allowed to give some of his leftover campaign funds (if there are any) to whatever movement grows out of his campaign or whether people would be willing to contribute to a long-term movement like they did for the Campaign. But it would be great if some of them did.
I’d most like to see the Yang Gang do so by becoming a political movement for UBI. There’s already group called “Income Movement” committed to doing that. They organized the UBI march in 30 cities worldwide last October. It’ll be bigger this year. They’re doing more than just that, and they can do lots more if dozens or hundreds of local Yang Gangs join up with them. I’d love to see every local Yang Gang become a local chapter of the Income Movement with every member supporting it as strongly as they supported Yang (both with time and with money). Obviously, that won’t happen but if one-tenth of the membership of one-tenth of the local Yang Gangs does this with one-fourth of the effort, they will greatly multiple the size and influence of the Income Movement, and they will keep the US UBI movement growing.
Diane Pagen led local NYC UBI group that grew into the Income Movement. It’s also the most successful local UBI group in the USA so far. She might need help, or she might have advice for people trying to replicate Basic Income NYC‘s success.
There’s also a UBI caucus of dozens of candidates running on UBI platforms across America right now-mostly in House and Senate races. I bet there are dozens or even hundreds more running for lower offices. I bet the UBI Caucus needs lots of volunteers working in lots of different ways, and the coordinated effort of all the former Yang Gangs across the country would help enormously.
Some local Yang Gang’s might want to switch as a group to be the Gang of their local member of the UBI caucus. This will probably be the best strategy for Yang Gang’s located in places with a caucus member who is both trustworthy and a viable candidate. It will require some research.
I don’t know whether the Income Movement, the Pac, & the caucus should work together, but that’s something to look into.
I’m less enthusiastic about converting the Yang Gang into a long-term movement for the whole of the Humanity First platform. It might be worthwhile, but my guess is that it’s harder to keep a group together around a broad platform across many different issues than it is to organize groups dedicated to action on single issues.
Probably the Yang Gang will splinter into several different groups working for different aspects of the Humanity First platform in different ways. That’s OK. That’s a good thing. A collection of smaller groups doing parallel work has some advantages over one larger-group.
Whatever happens, the first step is for the local Yang Gang’s to meet and talk over their ideas of how to move forward from here.
Finally, I hope any UBI move movement that grows out of the Yang Gang presses for a much more ambitious UBI: especially the UBI proposal should be more than $1000 per month and includes children. I got the impression Yang’s version was a pre-compromise tailored for the political climate of the 2020 presidential election (and it worked well). But a long-term movement should work toward an exciting, ambitious goal, and compromise down from there only if it’s essential to getting something passed.
Assembled in America
Things Yang Gang alumni can do individually:
If you like working on political campaigns, research the UBI caucus, pick a candidate you can trust, and work as hard for their campaign as you did for the Yang Gang even if no one else from your local gang is doing it. The only candidate I know well enough to recommend at this point is James Felton Keith, who’s running to represent Harlem in the House of Representatives. I don’t know what he calls his volunteers-the Keith Gang, the JFK Gang, or whatever-but I bet they can use a lot more volunteers. Scott Santens has already joined the Mike Broihier campaign for Senate in Kentucky. Broihier has strongly endorsed UBI and other elements of Yang’s platform.
Volunteer and/or donate money to organizations like USBIG and BIEN. They are very different from the political activist groups mentioned above, but their role in the movement is just as important. They work on education and information about UBI. They are tax-exempt non-profits. (Political activist groups are subject to taxes.) The world needs lots of education and information about UBI. These organizations need lots and lots of volunteers and financial donations. Right now, BIEN is extremely short on reporters for Basic Income News. They could use like 100 reporters, but one new dedicated reporter would be enormously valuable. If you wrote one objective, just-the-facts story about UBI per week you’d quickly become one of the most valuable volunteers in the organization. I was the news editor of USBIG and then BIEN for a total of about 15 years. Doing so made me an expert on UBI. It indirectly led me to publishing at least three books and to the opportunity to speak about UBI on all six inhabited continents-including meeting heads of state one day and people living in shantytowns the next (in both Brazil and Namibia). It’s a thankless job on a day-to-day, but to me, it proved to be a great job in the long run. If your skill-set is more toward this kind of thing than activism, do it.
You could do what I did when I got enthused about UBI. I was a sleeper-cell of one for 16 years. I completed high school, got a college degree, got a PhD, and only then started working directly on UBI. I’m not really an activist, I specialize in “primary research” in both social science and philosophy. It won’t be the best strategy for most people, but that’s how I was able to give my best contribution.
It’s OK to leave UBI to others and work to stop the environmental collapse or to reunite families separated at the border, etc.
Do something else for UBI that I haven’t thought of. You might come up with some idea that everybody thinks is crazy. To be level-headed you have to realize that they’re probably right but because they could be wrong and because you feel so strongly, you should give yourself permission to follow up just in case. Even if 9-out-of-10 people in that position are wrong, you never know if you’re that tenth person with that great out-of-the-box idea.
Yang Gang Supporters
Little thoughts about how to make whatever you do work:
Don’t waste any time thinking about which remaining presidential candidate the Yang Gang should endorse. Yang’s platform is too unique and Yang Gang members are too individualistic to make it possible for them to move as a useful block to another presidential campaign. Yang will probably endorse someone, but that’s his business.
Don’t put any effort into organizing for Andrew Yang’s next political campaign unless and until he asks you to do so. His next campaign will probably be local and probably not where you live. Even if his next campaign is national, it probably won’t start for at least a year, maybe several years. So, any effort for possible-future-candidate Yang is likely to be wasteful and frustrating.
Accept that the UBI movement won’t grow as fast next year as it did last year. Last year was a phenomenon. Growth will probably slow before it picks up again. That’s OK. That’s how long-term movements grow.
The effort to build on the Yang Gang’s accomplishments requires acceptance that movement for UBI and/or the Humanity First platform is long-term.
Believe in the ultimate success of the movement. Why? Not because anyone can actually predict the future, but because hope will make you happy. Despair will make you sad and less effective. However…
Don’t expect any progress in your lifetime. Assume the movement will succeed after you’re dead, and take any progress you see at any time as a bonus. Why? Because getting bonuses makes you happy. Every good piece of progress will exceed your expectations. Having dashed expectations makes you sad and frustrated. This attitude has really worked for me for the years. I’ve expect nothing, but I’ve watched the movement grow every year since I started paying close attention the 1990s.
Don’t expect anyone else to do anything for the movement. Don’t even expect people to follow through on their promises. Take anything anyone else does as a bonus. Why? Because get bonuses will make you happy. Being let down will make you sad and frustrated. If you expect 20 people and two show up, you’ll be disappointed. If you expect nobody, and two people show up, you’ll be like “Wow, two people!”
Accept the individuality of Yang Gang alumni. People will choose different strategies. Some will work on political issues that have nothing to do with the Humanity Frist platform. Others will do something nonpolitical, like care for relatives who need care. Others will work for something to do with Humanity First in ways that you’re convinced will fail. Don’t waste time telling them how wrong they are for not doing what you’re doing. You can give them quick advice, like I have in this blog post, but if they don’t take it, wish them well and hope you’re wrong. The belief that there’s only one right path is step toward becoming a cult, and becoming a cult is a one-way ticket to political irrelevance.
The UBI movement has so-far escaped becoming a cult because it has no party line. People support different sizes of UBI, different ways to resource it, and different strategies to promote it. People who are turned off by one person’s argument for UBI might be brought in by someone else’s conflicting argument for or version of UBI. If people start in-fighting and kicking others out for supporting the wrong version of UBI, we’ll stop growing & start shrinking.
The Yang Gang has to avoid becoming a cult of personality, a cult of the platform, or a cult of some specific version of UBI. Luckily, it’s easy to avoid becoming a cult: respect each other (see above).
The idea that people should respect each other might seem obvious, but there are a lot of people in the UBI movement who can’t seem to do it. I know people who’ve been working on UBI for 20 years, but their work seems to consist mostly of telling the rest of the movement that they’re doing the wrong thing. Lighting a candle is better than cursing the darkness, and it’s even worse to curse people who light candles for not doing enough.
Obviously, thank others for what they do. As obvious as that is, I haven’t done it enough. My thanks and apologies to everyone.
Finally, don’t take my work for anything. Everything I say is on an IMHO basis. Evidence-based reasoning is our greatest strength.
UBI march near a sign for the Devine 9 Cafe, which is located in Hervey Bay, Queensland, Australia.
Andrew Yang, the United States presidential candidate for the 2020 elections who most notoriously pushed (his own version of) a basic income policy to public debate in the country, has dropped out of the campaign for the Democratic Party setup. This has been reported in severalnewsoutlets, some of which had allegedly been deliberately underreporting his activities as candidate. On this issue, Scott Santens, a prominent basic income activist, has written on social media (Facebook):
Amazing how the #YangMediaBlackout ended the moment Yang dropped out of the race. Suddenly every media outlet is falling over themselves to cover the candidate they worked so hard for so long to hide. Congrats. You got the outcome you wanted. But this fight is far from over. The #YangGang has awakened.
Thank you to all of you for everything you’ve done, pouring your heart and soul into this campaign which has become a movement. The Yang Gang is incredible and important and we will change the world. I hope you all will continue fighting for the economic justice we all so desperately need.
Fear is a weapon used against us to keep us in line, but hope is a shield.
(…)
It will take the effort we’ve all put in for Andrew Yang and more. It will even require us running for office. Everyone in the YG who runs for office, we will need to support as we have Andrew. What happens next is up to us.
One of my main takeaways from this campaign is every one of us is now equipped for life with the skills to forge a new path. Democracy requires active not passive engagement, and the we just learned everything we need to know. Those tools are now ours to wield. Watch out world.
The Yang Gang is only getting started.
Andrew Yang himself has also written a message on this occasion (transcript from a post by Michael Howard, another long-time basic income activist):
Thank you for your incredible support these past months. You all have uplifted me and inspired me and Evelyn and this campaign at every turn. Your passion and energy. Your donations and hundreds of thousands of hours of calling and volunteering. Your enthusiasm, dedication and commitment.
We have accomplished so much together. We have brought a message of Humanity First and a vision of an economy and society that works for us and our families to millions of our fellow Americans.
We went from a mailing list that started with just my Gmail contact list to receiving donations from over 430,000 people and support from millions more across the country.
One of the things I’m most proud of — we gave $1,000 a month for a year to 13 families across the country.
We highlighted the real problems in our communities as our economy is being transformed before our eyes by technology and automation. We stood on the debate stage and shifted our national conversation to include the fourth industrial revolution, a topic no one wanted to touch.
Our signature proposal, Universal Basic Income, has become part of the mainstream conversation. We increased the popular support for Universal Basic Income to 66% of Democrats and 72% among voters 18-34.
And without a doubt, we accelerated the eradication of poverty in our society by years, perhaps even generations.
And that is thanks to all of YOU!
Though thousands of voters came out for our campaign tonight in New Hampshire, it is not the outcome we fought so hard for. It is bitterly disappointing for many of us.
But it should not be.
Every single day I’ve had supporters say to me:
“Your campaign helped me out of a depression. Thank you.”
“Working on this campaign has made me a better human being.”
“I met my significant other because of you.”
“Your campaign brought my family together. Your campaign got me excited about politics for the first time.”
These are all things that people have said to me in the past days. I’m incredibly proud of this campaign. We have touched and improved millions of lives and moved this country we love so much in the right direction.
And while there is great work left to be done, I am the MATH guy. And it is clear tonight from the numbers that we are not going to win this race. I am not someone who wants to accept donations and support in a race that we will not win.
And so tonight, I am suspending my campaign for president.
This is not an easy decision. Endings are hard and I’ve always intended to stay in this race until the very end. But I have been convinced that the message of this campaign will not be strengthened by my staying in this race any longer.
Endings are hard. But this is not an ending.
This is a beginning.
This is the starting line. This campaign has awakened something fundamental in this country and ourselves.
We’ve outlasted over a dozen senators, governors, and members of Congress and become the most exciting force in this entire race.
The Yang Gang has fundamentally shifted the direction of this country and transformed our politics, and we are only continuing to grow.
My goal when I first started was always to solve the problems that got Donald Trump elected. And I know in order to do that, I will support whoever is the Democratic nominee. That said, I hope this campaign can be a message, and word of caution, to all of my Democratic colleagues.
Donald Trump is not the cause of all of our problems. He is a symptom. We must cure the disease that got him elected, and in order to do that we must address the real problems that affect our people and offer solutions to actually solve them.
Those solutions are bold, and many think they are crazy. But I hope my campaign has made it a little less crazy to think we can lead our country to eradicate poverty. In fact, five candidates in this field have already supported it or expressed openness to supporting Universal Basic Income.
I stand before you today and say that while we did not win this election, we are just getting started.
This is the beginning.
This movement is the future of American politics.
This movement is the future of the Democratic party.
This wave is just beginning and it will continue to build until we rewrite the rules of this economy to work for us, the people of this country.
Thank you to each and every person who made this campaign possible, I love and appreciate you. Being your candidate has been the privilege of my life. We will continue to do the work and move this country forward.
Thank you all. God bless you. And God bless the United States of America.
As US presidential candidate Andrew Yang continues to outperform expectations, his signature policy proposal, the Freedom Dividend or Universal Basic Income (UBI), is receiving increased scrutiny. Some of the criticisms are well warranted, while others are misconceptions based on a flawed understanding of how basic income would operate.
The following addresses some of the primary misconceptions regarding Yang’s plan.
UBI is too expensive
The cost issue is one of the most persistent misconceptions about basic income.
A basic income system would have a built-in clawback through the tax system. In Yang’s case, a portion of the clawback comes through the opt-in system that would substitute cash-like welfare programs for the Freedom Dividend, such as food assistance. However, most of the burden of the clawback would be on the wealthiest families who would pay more in taxes than they could receive from basic income
As I have noted previously, the UBI clawback can be both direct and indirect. For example, the Affordable Care Act (ACA) requires families to pay back some or all of their healthcare subsidies at the end of the year if their yearly income exceeds a certain amount. A UBI system can similarly create a phase-out in the income tax system.
Considering Yang’s Freedom Dividend is opt-in, it is likely that many wealthy families would not opt to receive the dividend anyway.
Indirect clawback mechanisms could include Yang’s proposed Value Added Tax (VAT). The VAT is effectively a national sales tax, meaning even lower-income people would pay back a portion of their basic income depending on how much they spend their dividend on taxed goods.
Yang has said he would exclude many essential items from the VAT, though. Calculations show the VAT combined with UBI would have a net positive effect on purchasing power for low-income individuals.
Any taxes paid on the UBI would be used for the following year’s dividend, meaning much of the money is repeatedly recycled through the system. The additional amount that is redistributed to lower-income families is called the “net cost” or real cost of basic income. The net cost is the amount the government would actually redistribute every year under UBI.
Factoring the clawback, the real cost of basic income to the government would be approximately $539 billion annually, according to Georgetown Professor Karl Widerquist. This is less than 25 percent of existing entitlement spending.
UBI would have the same cost as a Negative Income Tax (NIT) when factoring the clawback, but the sticker price of the gross cost creates a false impression of a higher cost for UBI. NIT is not universal — it only provides the subsidy to those who qualify, making the cost appear lower than UBI. When I asked Yang whether he would support NIT to avoid the cost misconception, he said NIT would be a step in the right direction.
UBI would cause inflation
The inflation misconception has been around for many years, but it has become more convincingly debunked since I first wrote about it nearly three years ago.
It is essential to note that Yang’s plan is redistributing existing cash, not printing new cash. For every dollar spent, there must be a dollar taxed first, which would offset inflationary pressures.
As Karl Widerquist noted, basic income is no different than other welfare programs in terms of increasing demand for goods. Denmark has one of the most generous welfare states in the world, but they also consistently experience a low and stable inflation rate below two percent.
In the United States, food assistance, which can be freely spent like cash on most food items, has not produced inflation in food prices. On the contrary, research from the London School of Economics shows in states with higher take-up of food stamp assistance, prices have dropped and there is greater product variety relative to those areas with lower food assistance take-up. This is because suppliers respond to increased demand with more competition entering the market.
Thus, the guaranteed demand from basic income could generate higher levels of competition that brings down costs for low-income people.
In Alaska, which has a small Universal Basic Income funded by oil revenues, inflation has been lower than the U.S. average since the program started. Other research in Mexico demonstrates that directly giving cash does not produce inflation.
Since the United States is a globalized market, any short term demand spike creates an economic profit that is resolved by increased production, bringing the price down in the long-run.
In fact, the United States is experiencing unusually low levels of inflation. Contributing factors could include the Amazon.com effect, automation, immigration, and global trade. Basic income would not change these underlying factors keeping a hold on inflation.
The main area where there could be meaningful inflation in the medium term is the cost of rent because there is a fixed supply of land.
Basic income could empower more people to move and find other options. Renters would have a better bargaining position with their landlord if they had a guaranteed dividend than if they are desperately clinging to their job.
In the long-run, greater purchasing power from low-income people should induce more homebuilding and open up a greater share of unoccupied housing. That said, the high cost of rent exists now in many areas and should be addressed as a separate policy issue.
Nonetheless, it is unlikely that any inflation from UBI could completely wipe out the improved purchasing power from the dividend, let alone make people worse off.
UBI would cause laziness
The problem of laziness is one of the most thoroughly debunked misconceptions about UBI. Among those who closely study cash transfers, many no longer consider labor participation an interesting research question because the results consistently show no effect. Those who have read the relevant research and are still convinced that basic income causes laziness will likely never be persuaded otherwise.
As I reported in 2016, “The Overseas Development Institute just released the largest meta-analysis of cash transfer programs ever, spanning 15 years of data and 165 studies. The main takeaway is that studies show a consistent reduction in poverty measures. Perhaps an even more important conclusion is that most evidence showed an increase in work participation after receiving the basic income.”
Many specific examples from across the developmental spectrum corroborate the conclusion that basic income would not meaningfully reduce work. In Finland’s basic income experiment, there was no negative effect on work. Iran’s generous basic income did not reduce overall work but did cause some young people to substitute their time for more schooling. In Alaska, their partial basic income did not reduce overall work. On the contrary, Alaska’s basic income increased part-time work due to the increased demand generated by a basic income.
With a permanent basic income, there is reason to believe that a healthier and more productive labor market will emerge. For example, the Finland experiment showed basic income recipients were happier and more trusting overall. Many polls indicate that individuals would use the basic income to gain additional skills, spend time with family, volunteer, and engage in freelancing.
If the poor are no longer clinging to a job for survival, they can more freely find a job where they can be the most productive. They will also have more bargaining power to demand better working environments.
Most importantly, basic income would allow greater time and mental energy to be focused on the most important job in society: caregiving. Volunteering and caregiving provide enormous economic and societal benefits that are not recorded in GDP because they are typically unpaid.
Basic income gives people the right to say no to exploitation. But the most revolutionary aspect of UBI is that it finally gives everyone the opportunity to yes to their passions.
With an article on medium, Scott Santens, long time Universal Basic Income (UBI) advocate, has explored in depth Andrew Yang’s proposal of a Freedom Dividend (FD).
The Freedom Dividend, one of the pillars of Andre Yang’s campaign for the democratic nomination for the 2020 American presidential election, is a $1,000 UBI for every American. Santen’s article discusses in detail the implications the proposal would have if introduced, and defends it against claims that it would end up increasing inequality or destroying the safety net. In Santen’s words, “The freedom dividend would be the single most progressive policy advance ever signed into law in America history”.
In order to clarify how and why the Freedom Dividend would work as a progressive measure to enhance freedom and as an instrument against poverty and inequality, Santens provides answers to two questions regarding its design:
1) Why to provide people with a choice between existing programs and the Freedom Dividend and not let people keep everything?
People would need to voluntarily opt out from some assistance programs, based on low income, whilst other contribution-based programs would continue to exist on top of the FD (health care remaining a separated issue, not connected with the FD). Santens’ article points out that this is done in order to maximize unconditionality and the incentive to work by avoiding welfare traps.
2) Wouldn’t the funding of the FD through a 10% value added tax –as proposed by Andrew Yang- make it a regressive measure, thus disproportionately disadvantaging the poor?
Even though a tax on consumption is usually considered regressive, as those with lower incomes tend to spend more of it in consumption when compared with those having higher incomes, the VAT-UBI design ends up making it a progressive instrument. That is, those on the lower part of the distribution would end up receiving more than what they lose because of the VAT, which would be rebated by the FD. Santens quotes a distributional analysis by The UBI Center, that concludes “that the bottom 10% (of the income distribution) would see their disposable incomes increased by almost 120% while the top 10% would see their disposable incomes reduced by 4%.”
Moreover, Santens says, the FD would strongly reduce poverty with “74% fewer households would have disposable incomes that fall under the federal poverty line” and impact heavily on inequality, causing a drop of 15% in the American Gini index.
UBI would fill the holes in the existing safety net, a “welfare mess” that leaves many people behind, and which design is far too complex, inhumane and not efficient, as Santens explores in depth in his article.
“Is it progressive to not support the greatest reduction of poverty and inequality — and greatest increase in freedom and dignity — ever proposed in American history, because you insist upon preserving paternalistically neoliberal conditionality?”
In this video from MSNBC, Democratic candidate for the United States presidency Andrew Yang answers some direct questions about racial issues and economic inequality.
According to him, racial issues get diluted if communities are economically better off, of course with the Freedom Dividend which is central to Yang’s candidacy. That would be because poverty is one of the greatest causes for racial exclusion, while also a consequence of it, in a social degrading feedback loop. So, the rationale is that with less poverty, people respect each other more, irrespective of their skin colour.
On economic inequality, Yang reminds us that 1000 $/month for someone like Jeff Bezos is irrelevant, while crucially significant for millions of people living on the lower end of the income scale. That means that, according to him, the distribution of a Freedom Dividend immediately reduces inequality. Moreover, financing the Dividend might also further reduce inequality, by imposing a 10% Value Added Tax which naturally will weight more on relatively richer people, due to their higher levels of consumption.
