If all goes well, hyperefficient robots and AI will take most of our jobs a century from now. Instead of working, humans will get free money from the government to buy goods and services produced by robots. Kids today call this "Fully Automated Luxury Communism", though Yang used the more traditional "Universal Basic Income" (UBI). It's a future where advanced technology gives us economic freedom like old-fashioned aristocrats, and we can pursue whatever our hearts desire.
Yang wanted to implement UBI now, which isn't a good idea. Government can provide some things more efficiently than markets can -- public infrastructure and health insurance, for example. Better to buy people more of those things than to give them a $1000 monthly check to try to get them from the market. We aren't far enough into the automated robot future yet to run both UBI and all these services at once.
I might support UBI as a way to stabilize the economy in a recession. Instead of bailing out the banks to make sure paychecks still go out in a financial crisis, we can let them fail and give people free money to replace their paychecks. This might target people in dire situations better than traditional monetary policy does. If we started it off as an economic stabilization policy, we could ramp it up into a permanent thing as the robot future develops.
Yang wasn't the best choice for President. He doesn't have experience working within government. Obviously I'd take him over Trump, but that goes for probably 95% of the American population.
But it was good that Yang demonstrated the acceptability of UBI, at least within the Democratic party. Nobody tried to score points by attacking UBI, which they might have if it was anathema to Democrats for some reason. He carried the UBI flag all the way to New Hampshire, which is farther than many well-regarded Senators got.
I hope the Yang Gang will take note of this, and be part of Democratic policy conversations in the future. Perhaps I'll live long enough to see UBI become a reality.
