The Freedom Dividend - Yang2020 - Andrew Yang for President

Andrew would implement the Freedom Dividend, a universal basic income of $1,000/month, $12,000 a year, for every American adult over the age of 18. This is independent of one’s work status or any other factor. This would enable all Americans to pay their bills, educate themselves, start businesses, be more creative, stay healthy, relocate for work, spend time with their children, take care of loved ones, and have a real stake in the future.

Other than regular increases to keep up the cost of living, any change to the Freedom Dividend would require a constitutional amendment.

It will be illegal to lend or borrow against one’s Dividend.

A Universal Basic Income at this level would permanently grow the economy by 12.56 to 13.10 percent—or about $2.5 trillion by 2025—and it would increase the labor force by 4.5 to 4.7 million people. Putting money into people’s hands and keeping it there would be a perpetual boost and support to job growth and the economy.

Learn more about Universal Basic Income

Problems to be Solved

Approx. 40 million Americans live below the poverty line.
Good jobs are becoming more and more scarce and Americans are already working harder and harder for less and less.
It is necessary to support and preserve a robust consumer economy.
Many Americans are stuck in the wrong jobs because of a need to survive.
There are many positive social activities that are currently impossible for many to do because they lack the financial resources to dedicate time to it, including taking care of a child or sick loved one, and volunteering in the community.
Technology is quickly displacing a large number of workers, and the pace will only increase as automation and other forms of artificial intelligence become more advanced. ⅓ of American workers will lose their jobs to automation by 2030. This has the potential to destabilize our economy and society if unaddressed.

The most direct and concrete way for the government to improve your life is to send you a check for $1,000 every month and let you spend it in whatever manner will benefit you the most. The government is not capable of a lot of things, but it is capable of sending large numbers of checks to large numbers of people promptly and reliably. We have plenty of resources, they’re just not being distributed to enough people right now. Let’s build a new kind of economy – one that puts people first. If there’s one policy that would transform American lives for the better, it is Universal Basic Income.

It’s simple, it’s fair, it’s equitable, it’s easy to understand, it benefits at least 80 percent of the population.
4/3/18 - The War on Normal People

The reason why Trump is our president today is because we automated away four million manufacturing jobs in the swing states. Why isn't that the main topic of conversation? Democrats are running around trying to figure out what to do about that. I'll tell them exactly what we are going to do about it: we're going to impose our Freedom Dividend and give everyone a thousand dollars a month for starters, and then we're going to build a new kind of economy that people can participate in independent of their region and their skill level. That's a generation long project and it is going to be massively challenging honestly, but the alternative is the unthinkable - the alternative is to witness the disintegration of our society over the coming years and we are there right on the cusp of it.
6/19/18 - Sam Harris

If you put $1,000 a month into the hands of American adults who — right now, 57 percent of Americans can’t pay an unexpected $500 bill — they’re going to spend that $1,000 in their community on car repairs, tutoring for their kids, the occasional night out. It’s going to go directly into the consumer economy.
1/9/19 - Freakonomics

We’d save money on things like incarceration, homelessness services, emergency room healthcare and just the value gains from having a stronger, healthier, mentally healthier population would increase GDP by $700 billion.
6/27/19 - First Debate

Goals

End poverty in the most direct manner possible: giving people money
Move our economy into its next stage of development – human capitalism – with a focus on improving everyone’s quality of living
Prevent the massive disruption that will accompany the rapid development and adoption of automation and other AI technologies
Allow people the freedom to switch jobs, move, innovate, and contribute to society
Turbo-charge the economy by providing income to those who are most likely to spend it

As President I will...

Implement the Freedom Dividend, providing Universal Basic Income of $1,000/month to all American adults over the age of 18 so that we may all share in the prosperity we have contributed to and participate in the new economy.

An excerpt from The War On Normal People

Universal Basic Income, or UBI, is a version of Social Security where all citizens receive a set amount of money per month independent of their work status or income. Everyone from a hedge fund billionaire in New York to an impoverished single mom in West Virginia would receive a monthly check of $1,000. If someone is working as a waitress or construction worker making $18,000, he or she would essentially be making $30,000. UBI eliminates the disincentive to work that most people find troubling about traditional welfare programs – if you work you could actually start saving and get ahead. With the growing threat of automation, the concept has gained renewed attention, with trials being run in Oakland, Canada, and Finland as well as in India and other parts of the developing world.

Today, people tend to associate Universal Basic Income with technology utopians. But a form of UBI almost became law in the United States in 1970 and 1971, passing the House of Representatives twice before stalling in the Senate. Versions of the idea have been championed by robust thinkers of every political persuasion for decades, including some of the most admired figures in American life. Here’s a sampling:

Thomas Paine, 1796: "Out of a collected fund from landowners, “there shall be paid to every person, when arrived at the age of twenty-one years, the sum of fifteen pounds sterling, as a compensation in part, for the loss of his or her natural inheritance,. . . to every person, rich or poor."

Martin Luther King Jr., 1967: "I am now convinced that the simplest approach will prove to be the most effective — the solution to poverty is to abolish it directly by a now widely discussed measure: the guaranteed income."

Richard Nixon, August 1969: "What I am proposing is that the Federal Government build a foundation under the income of every American family . . . that cannot care for itself--and wherever in America that family may live."

Milton Friedman (Nobel-winning economist), 1980: "We should replace the ragbag of specific welfare programs with a single comprehensive program of income supplements in cash — a negative income tax . . . which would do more efficiently and humanely what our present welfare system does so inefficiently and inhumanely."

Bernie Sanders, May 2014: "In my view, every American is entitled to at least a minimum standard of living . . .There are different ways to get to that goal, but that's the goal that we should strive to reach."

Stephen Hawking, July 2015: "Everyone can enjoy a life of luxurious leisure if the machine-produced wealth is shared, or most people can end up miserably poor if the machine-owners successfully lobby against wealth redistribution. So far, the trend seems to be toward the second option, with technology driving ever-increasing inequality."

Barack Obama, June and October 2016: "The way I describe it is that, because of automation, because of globalization, we’re going to have to examine the social compact, the same way we did early in the 19th century and then again during and after the Great Depression. The notion of a 40-hour workweek, a minimum wage, child labor laws, etc. – those will have to be updated for these new realities. What is indisputable . . . is that as AI gets further incorporated, and the society potentially gets wealthier, the link between production and distribution, how much you work and how much you make, gets further and further attenuated . . . we’ll be debating unconditional free money over the next 10 or 20 years."

Warren Buffett, January 2017: "you have to figure out how to distribute it . . . people who fall by the wayside through no fault of their own as the goose lays more golden eggs should still get a chance to participate in that prosperity, and that’s where government comes in."

Bill Gates, January 2017: "A problem of excess [automation] forces us to look at the individuals affected and take those extra resources and make sure they’re directed to them in terms of re-education and income policies . . .” (Gates later suggested taxing robots.)"

Elon Musk, February, 2017: "I think we'll end up doing universal basic income . . . It's going to be necessary . . .There will be fewer and fewer jobs that a robot cannot do better. I want to be clear. These are not things I wish will happen; these are things I think probably will happen."

Mark Zuckerberg, May 2017: "We should explore . . . universal basic income so that everyone has a cushion to try new ideas."

Nicole Sallak-Anderson, June 2017: "Creating a world where UBI is our foundation would go a lot further towards equality between the sexes, for in doing so we acknowledge that the work of the home is real, and we free women from the economic constraints that childrearing has come to bear upon us, much more than our male counterparts."