Unlike Morvoran, I don't think you are arguing in bad faith, but even a quick look on google says VAT is a consumption tax that's added at each stage of the supply chain, unlike the taxes we have now. From searching and what he mentioned on his website, somethings are lower or exempted, but nothing that says all businesses are outright exempted. Also, unlike other places with VAT, this VAT will go directly back to the people.

 

Ignoring the impracticality of implementing UBI & The inevitable Hyper Inflation, I will say that the Yang Gang Memes are straight fire tbh. I get a real strong Vaporware Vibe from the Cap in particular.

On the other hand, If I look at it from a "Glass Half-full" perspective, the political ramifications of the Federal Reserve losing it's power (And in turn Bankrupting our Federal Government) does make me tingly all over. Remember boys and Girls, you can Love America and what it stands for while condemning the Decisions & leadership at the helm.... At least for now, until our slave masters find a roundabout way to ban/regulate "Hate-Speech".

 

The push bike thing I still find stunning. I have never and would never expect to hear of anybody undertaking some kind of formal education on push bike repair (bikes are popular here, maybe not as much as the Netherlands or Cologne but enough that small villages will tend to have a shop, and in towns most estates within them will have at least one), or having it as a spin off of more general machining/engineering/mechanical training course. The bike shops themselves will endeavour to train their people and some of them are pretty good (saw one once grind a lathe tool to deal with some of the weird and wonderful threads pushbikes have) but nobody would even think to seek formal qualifications for pushbike repair.

As for starting your own business as a car or motorbike mechanic then Joe never so much as touched a socket set could open up his garage tomorrow and perform all the brake repairs they like. To the best of my knowledge there are no formal standards (nothing like a professional test of an agreed upon level for things to test at, though there are things like NVQs, GNVQs, Btec and City and Guilds which may or may not mean something to someone) and a lot of the time manufacturers will have their own courses. If you bothered to get professional indemnity insurance and had nothing the rates would likely be through the roof but that is an if.

Might have been that guy but I am awful with names when it is actually relevant, never mind just something amusing I read. This would have been possibly 16 years ago when it happened, bit later when it all came out and crossed my path and even then it was something of a small note in passing in probably New Scientist. If it is a quirk of regional law though then fair enough, still an interesting one though.

Academic title might mean something slightly different to different people reading it (most of the English speaking world differing slightly on things here) and also fail to encompass some of the things it means in Germany.

 

All I can tell you is how the VAT works here in the EU, which what Yang is referring to as well.
Businesses have to file their VAT spent and collected every month and will get paid or charged the difference by the local IRS equivalent.
Businesses would not be forced to raise prices in this scenario as nothing would change for them other than some overhead for reporting VAT. I take it you’re referring to companies adding the VAT on top?
Usually a VAT is collected on every item but there are reduced rates for bare necessities like food. The base rates over here for example is 19% Andree reduced rate is 7%. It’s kinda funny you mention luxury items as people over here who are pushing for tampons to be taxed at the reduced rate are trying to frame the base rate as a luxury rate.
Don‘t get me wrong, I don’t think it’s a bad system, it taxes people for spending so it taxes the rich more than the poor by nature. It just doesn’t do what yang claims it does.

With regards to spending the additional revenue, I tend to be very careful of what a politician will say. I have seen it way too often that the additional revenue will be spent completely differently than promised.

I actually like Yang but my problems with him are mostly that he seems too ambitious and gullible at the same time. I mentioned this in another thread before. His reasoning for the UBI relies more on Tesla‘s PR department than market research and with Elon Musk being the snake oil salesman that he is, it’s a recipe for disaster.

Well, the rising popularity of cycling didn’t come from thin air. I applaud your investments into cycle to work schemes and British Cycling. Results at Grand Tours and olympics have been impressive to say the least.

I agree that even some amateur mechanics are amazing at what they do. I always enjoy watching the YouTube videos from the Bespoked bike show, which is a show for handmade bikes in the UK. I hope I‘ll get to go there at some point.

We here have a dual education system for nearly all trades where you will be receiving practical training at your employer and go to school for three years. The time is usually split around two thirds time on the job and one third time in school. For most trades you can do an additional two year education after you have gained experience on the job for three years. Like I said, some trades require you have the additional education for liability purposes if you start your own business.

EDIT: Wanted to elaborate a bit on the admittedly a bit ridiculous requirement for bicycle mechanics. I get how a regular person wouldn't be too concerned about it but like I mentioned earlier, even amateur recreational cyclists regularly hit speeds at which a simple crash without the involvement of others can be fatal. As a matter of fact we've seen a sharp increase in bicycle accidents here since e-bikes have been introduced as people start riding up mountains that they were previously unable to get up and a lot of times they're too inexperienced to control their bikes on descents.
There's a few safety concerns with mid- to high-end bike components mainly because of the carbon fiber that is used. Over tightening bolts can lead to catastropic failure of carbon fiber components, using the wrong brake pads on carbon fiber rims can easily lead to failure of the rim, especially on fast descents where a lot of heat is generated by braking which could lead to the resin melting and delaminating layers of carbon fiber, not being careful when bleeding the mineral oil in hydraulic brakes and getting some of the fluid onto the brake pads.
Layering carbon fiber is a labor intensive but fairly low skill job which is why most bicycle component production is in Taiwan and China. As a matter of fact, the chinese Government had an export ban for carbon fiber bike components for a while because the chinese engineered products were a huge safety risk at the time, they lifted the ban once things improved.
This is just to illustrate from a hobby road cyclist's perspective why you get a certain peace of mind with these licensing regulations in place when you take out your bike for a ride after it's been to the shop.

FYI, carbon fiber bikes aren't too uncommon, especially in the UK as there's some British manufacturers who specifically offer carbon frame bikes for the cycle to work scheme which I believe have to be less than £1,000, which is considered about as low a price you should go for a beginner road bike.

I believe his case was often cited as an example of a PhD getting stripped when a corruption scandal regarding doctorate programs in Germany was uncovered about a decade ago. This might explain why it was only mentioned in passing.

True. I was mainly referring to titles achieved through degrees in higher education.
As I understand it, German higher education has been quite different from other countries in the past. The full title used to be „Diplom Ingenieur“, the „Diplom“ would denote that it’s an engineer with a higher education degree.
As far as I’m aware there technically is no engineer title anymore after the introduction of bachelor‘s and master‘s degrees through the bologna process. People still refer to a person holding such a degree as an engineer though.
Use of language might change here in the coming decades and people are really eager to use English job descriptions here, especially in the technology space. We even have product evangelists now -_-

 

Sorry for answering late, I had an answer almost ready but things have been busy and the draft is gone now.

They are only going to pay if:

1. they are taxed at all
2. they raise prices less than they are taxed

Especially the latter is just wishful thinking. It's a tax that under no circumstances will tax businesses, which is what Yang claims it will do. You're essentially asking businesses to pay more for the resources they need for their products without raising prices or raising them less than their increase in cost, don't you see how that's a little utopian? This is why it makes much more sense to only tax at the end of the supply chain to streamline the process.
I'd be even more interested how his proposal would stop big corporations from hiding money in tax havens. As he said, most of the developed world has a VAT and has the same problems. It's something you can't just claim without explaining in detail. At this point I assume that he thinks businesses will do the utopian thing of taking a net loss once a VAT is introduced.

Technological unemployment has been a thing for centuries at this point. Agriculture workers have been displaced by tractors before, manufacturing workers have been displaced by assembly lines before.
Whether this wave of technology will create less jobs than lose them is still a hotly debated topic. It's true we're currently seeing a net loss in jobs, however, there's also large industries that are desperate to find workers and are actively recruiting in foreign countries.
AI based automation is nowhere near production ready, right now people don't even know how to deal with the results of AI decisions. An AI that assisted Amazon's HR department for software development hires heavily favored men, where do we go from here? Trust the AI that it made the right decision or throw everything out because it can't be right? If you ignore decisions you don't like, is AI automation something that will displace office workers in the near future or is it just a hint machine and humans keep making the decisions with improved efficiency?
It's difficult so it's always worth a look at actual market research. Here's some of one of the most renowned market researchers in the technology space.


As you can see, according to Gartner, most automation critical technology hasn't even reached the "Peak of Inflated Expectations" yet. It would be VERY unwise to create policy now based on the expectations of the tech industry.
This is where my problem with Yang lies, one of the examples he constantly gives for automation is autonomous trucks, where even Autonomous Driving Level 4 will do his argument no good as the vehicle would still need to be piloted by a real person outside of a few situations like driving on highways. Now look at where Autonomous Driving Level 5 (the point at which the payload doesn't need a driver to reach it's destination) is in terms of maturity.
It's more likely to me that truckers will benefit from lesser degrees of autonomy that decreses their fatigue and increases their quality of life for a long while before it outright displaces them. Just thinking about the safety regulation process to have a 30+ ton vehicle driving around at 80mph without the failsafe of a human driver will probably tell you that it's gonna take half a decade or more after the actual technology ships in most jurisdictions.

I'm not outright dismissing it but let's talk again in 5-10 years towards the beginning or end of Yang's second term, ok?

If that is your goal, sure. It wasn't stated as one of Yang's goals though, which is what lead to this discussion in the first place.

Well, first of all let me say that what Space-X did was very impressive. I can't really speak to brain implants, as I haven't really kept up with the developments there. I even think that some of the work Tesla does with regards to batteries is good, even though I don't think it's a viable long term solution for renewable energy storage, but boy does he grind my gears with electric cars and autonomous driving.

First of all there isn't much to push with regards to electric vehicle technology. It's nothing special engineering wise. He really only had a better sense of customer acceptance than the rest of the industry and this acceptance is fueled by the network of superchargers. I also encourage you to take a good look at a Tesla vehicle if you see one, the build quality is utter shit. On top of that, Tesla had to walk back a lot of automation because of quality issues, is perpetually behind deliveries and as far as I'm aware hasn't even made any money yet.

Personally I'd much rather have electric cars be pushed in the direction that BMW is doing, the i3 is a car that is tuned to be as economically friendly as possible. It cas a carbon fiber body to make it as light and energy efficient as possible and 95% of the car is recyclable, unfortunately it is too expensive for the average family at the moment. But I guess pioneering electric vehicles means porting cuphead to the infotainment system now.
With regards to autonomous driving, look at the market research data above. IMO, a conservative estimation is that autonomous driving might not be feasible unless the system is being fed more perfect information, like actual data from traffic lights. There's a good chance that image recognition will prove to be too unreliable. To go back to the earlier point of jobs, think about the workforce required to revamp the whole infrastructure, this is a job for multiple decades. Musk is currently trying to sell you on the idea that lidar is a waste of money while his cars are demonstrably driving into barriers.

 

What I was trying to say is that if you want to tax a business you need to find a way to do it such that it won't affect prices, because that would mean they are in effect not being taxed, the consumer just pays for it on top of that.
The biggest concern would be that with price increases growing exponentially across the supply chain, the effect of the VAT on low income households would be disproportionally higher. If you want the Freedom Dividend to be more than a vehicle to introduce VAT and alleviate the immediate effects of an introduction of a VAT the specifics are kind of important.

Outright reducing the need for people to work traditional jobs is exactly what the example of the tractor I have given did as well. No difference here.
New and better technology has displaced low skill manual labor jobs for centuries now.

With regards to job growth, most of the resources I find say that the total number of jobs are increasing. I was specifically speaking to a net loss in jobs incurred due to automation as automation will also create jobs.
However, I didn't read my sources properly, the 7% loss I came across in google searches was an expected loss until 2027, not the loss we had so far which I can't really find relevant information on right now.

Generally the studies regarding job loss due to automation vary wildly, Oxford predicted 47%, OECD suggest 9%, and this is all total job loss due to automation, not net loss.
The video you posted only mentions the higher end figures.

To me it feels like you're not accounting for new jobs created. Things like AR or VR, which are already used in production, have the capacity to lower the skill barrier for a lot of jobs because they can outright tell a worker what to do or allow a remote expert to assist a lower skilled worker if needed.

Again, AI, which is the technology expected to fuel all of this, is just finding the problems and isn't at the point yet where we know whether these problems will have practical solutions. The expectations of engineers are very likely to be overinflated. To expect these technologies to reach production level maturity at the scale that is suggest sounds ridiculous to me.

Look at the cloud technology hype a few years ago. Granted, it's a much simpler problem, however, everyone and their mother thought we'd just ship everything into the cloud and save a ton of money. As it turns out the economic viability of cloud services for small and medium businesses is fairly narrow.

We disagree here.
e=mc² would tell you that something not being "perfect" and reducing oversight for a thing like a truck and to subject it to the reliability issue of a data connection WILL lead to the deaths of a lot of people in traffic if it's done within the next decade.

I mean, weather would be the least of my concerns when current systems veer off the lane if the paint isn't 100% due to wear, will not brake if a picture of a road is painted on the back of a truck or have trouble recognizing red traffic lights because every single car's rear lights are red.

Even the best autonomous vehicle technologies show that humans intervene at a much higher rate than humans would crash. Reliability needs to be improved MASSIVELY still and this will be the most time consuming step or as some software engineers say: "we're 99% done, just need to do the other 99%".
Going back to the e=mc² thing, expect this technology to be applied to trucks in a meaningful way that reduces labor at a much later point in time.

See, this is exactly the problem I have with the discussion.
Instead of actually looking at market research and what is happening you post a video filled with jobs that are nowhere close to being automated and very early development stage robots or pure research objects.
Of course there is stuff in there that is already in production and stuff that has been in production for a long time as well but basing your argument on an overexaggerated and misrepresented current state of things is just unnecessary.

Worst case scenario is that people will only marginally be better off with increased prices due to an introduction of VAT.
Yang expects UBI to cost roughly $3 trillion, he expects spending to be $1.8 trillion on top of the current welfare programs and he expects that the additional spending of people recieving UBI will recoup roughly $400 billion in tax revenue.
So taxation would be somewhere in the vicinity of 12%-20% of the amount spent on consumption. Of course it wouldn't all be VAT as some of the money spend will end up as income tax for example but you need to apply VAT to all of the consumption, not just the additional spending caused by UBI.

Like you, he also mentions roughly 50% of american jobs to be at risk of being lost soon and like I've mentioned he's counting the jobs that would be heavily automated through AI and states that "AI isn't coming, it's already here". Please look at the market research above, it's simply not.

Realistically he doesn't have a chance at the presidency in 2020 but I'm really glad he introduced himself at this point in time. I can easily see him being an ideal candidate in 2028,2032 or 2036, just not right now.

 

At the latest debate.


Unfortunately, I can't find a video of the whole debate.