Much of the buzz around Yang is generated by his “freedom dividend,” a universal-basic-income (UBI) proposal to give every American the option of receiving $1,000 per month from the federal government. Unlike the policy proposals of the other Democratic candidates, most of whom seem to be basing their positions more or less on where their next-closest competitor was standing yesterday, Yang’s UBI — though rightly unpersuasive to conservatives on principle — is based on his careful thought about the state of the American economy and the social complications that have arisen as a result.
He describes the status quo in somewhat grave terms, noting that rates of business formation and interstate migration are at multi-decade lows, which he calls “very dispiriting.” He also doubts that things will improve on their own. “It’s likely to get much worse,” he says, “as the stores close and the self-driving cars take over and the robots start displacing warehouse shelvers and all the rest.”
It’s a bit grim, and yet he’s still optimistic. He thinks policy can actually have an effect. The question for policymakers, to his mind, is how to increase economic mobility and dynamism in spite of these factors — and he calls his UBI proposal “easily the most direct and impactful and immediate” way to “put resources in the hands of American families and workers.”
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