Sam Altman and Andrew Yang talk UBI

Living in a VAT Post-Soviet country, I am not sure if that argument about "hitting harder the poor" is true, if VAT system is not specially aligned against the poor, which was the case in my country earlier times of Post-Soviet transition, but has changed recently.

The thing about VAT is that it is multilateral, and applies to many types of business-to-business transactions as well to business-to-consumer, so all the suppliers in the chain pay their share, not only the consumer.

And, given by pure numbers, the value provided by VAT paid by business is pretty significant. In some implementations (such as my country one), business share of VAT can not be less than final consumer's VAT, because consumer has paid VAT only once, while any producing business, was paying VAT for any transaction by any supplier.

The argument about aligning VAT against the poor, is that, given corrupt government being in power, some business can easily avoid paying VAT, or pay only small percentage of it.

This was (and, to some extent, still is) the case in my country (Ukraine), due to existence of so-called "VAT Refunds" scheme, which allowed many oligarchs to concentrate big amounts of value during 90s-00s. The scheme is easy as using non-market practices such as paying less VAT than their competitors, and being not punished then due to law loopholes passed by cronies in the state legislation.

The new governments, after 2014 Maidan revolution, being pressured by country's civil community, and also the international community, have started to remove many types of "VAT Refunds" scheme loopholes. That's why many oligarchs already went bust, and many are going to, just because their enterprises are now required to pay their share of VAT, and can not survive competition in changed reality.

So in reality, implementing proper VAT system requires powerful government, and also VAT does not survive lobbyism and cronyism.

UBI gives incredible power to the laborer, who has leverage against unfair working conditions, and by default is past the "Safety" level of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, allowing them to develop healthy relationships and goals.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs

Certainly one plausible future is that, if your video isn't making them money after some period, you either pay them some ongoing fee to keep it live or they delete it. After all, that's the model for most other hosted content.

That YouTube is a free hoster for video content wasn't inevitable and isn't guaranteed going forward into the indefinite future.

> If you're using a regressive VAT tax to pay for UBI you are not redistributing wealth

Sure you are. Joe Teach pays $5000/year in VAT and gets a $10,000/year UBI, $5000/year is being transferred to him. Carlton Moneypenny pays $50,000/year in VAT and gets a $10,000/year UBI, $40,000/year is being transferred away from him.

> much of which will be lost as the prices of goods increases to match equilibrium

But then you would collect more VAT at the same rate, which would fund a larger UBI. By the time that reaches steady state it's a wash.

On top of that, VAT is great for people who are in debt (i.e. the poor), because no more income tax means they can pay down their existing debt with money they would have otherwise lost to income tax.

> Amazon won't "pay the tax" it will pass the tax along in the form of higher consumer prices.

The party who pays more of the tax is the party whose alternatives have gotten worse instead of better. For an individual, saving has just gotten more attractive relative to spending, so Amazon will have to keep the price of that stupid knickknack lower in order to get people to still buy it instead of banking the money and collecting interest on it to spend next year.

Meanwhile it's now the case that the tax applies to Amazon and not just their smaller, less international competitors, so Amazon would start losing business to them if they don't keep prices low by eating more of the tax.

> If the primary concern is tax evasion, there are many ways to improve this while still maintaining progressive taxation.

Not really. The primary problem is that shifting profits to other jurisdictions with lower taxes is easy to do and hard to prevent, and then there are no "profits" in the jurisdiction with the progressive tax, which turns the "progressive" tax into a massively regressive tax since the richest pay nothing.

The best way to fix it is to make everyone pay the same rate (so the rich can't avoid it) and then make it progressive by giving everyone a fixed refund (UBI), which gives you the effective rate curve a progressive income tax is supposed to have except that international corporations can't avoid it by declaring profits in Ireland.

Downvoted to the max here wonder why which demographic l also. No problem #1kBro sigh...