So, if the limits I've been theorizing in the past 2 days are true, we may have to choose between Medicare for all and universal basic income. The policies that would be feasible would actually come down to looking at two different candidates, and their philosophies on life. I've been agnostic to some extent on this issue for the most part, recognizing that they have pros and cons, but I recently went with the Bernie side in 2020 due to him having what I deemed to be a more comprehensive platform. However, a caveat of that was that I was willing to allow Sanders to address other necessary issues now, before we turn to UBI in maybe 10 years. Assuming the two visions are somewhat mutually exclusive, we need to take a look at which one would be better for the ideal policy.
Bernie Sanders' Democratic Socialism (actually social democracy)
Bernie Sanders' platform was called "socialism", but there wasn't anything particularly socialist about it. The dude was an FDR style social democrat. His main policies were a $15 minimum wage, medicare for all, free college, student debt forgiveness, and a green new deal. Some of these plans were fairly cheap and not borne by the taxpayers at all, but by the market. a $15 minimum wage, for example would cost nothing, except for what employers have to pay their workers.
However, he did have many ambitious proposals, and these would probably raise marginal tax rates by around 20 points, the same as a UBI.
He supported:
$220 billion a year for free college and student loan debt forgiveness
$250 billion a year for expanded housing programs
$150 billion for universal preK
$435 billion for eliminating medical debt
$1.63 trillion on a green new deal
$1.75 trillion on medicare for all
+
$4.435 trillion a year
This is a lot of money. It's more than my UBI plan would have cost. If we took all of those ideas other than M4A, and turned them into a UBI plan, you could probably pay people $10,000 a year or so. If you kept free college, you would get roughly the same $2.4 trillion needed to fund my $9000 a year UBI lite plan. Just letting you know the opportunity costs of Bernie's plan.
At the same time, Bernie's plan would help millions. It would eliminate student loan debt and give everyone free college. It would help fix housing. It would give us universal preK. It would give us healthcare and eliminate medical debt. It would give anyone a job for the next 10 years doing infrastructure stuff. It's a compelling platform. Is UBI worth all or most of that? Well, it depends. The only ones I would definitely keep of that list are M4A and free college/student debt forgiveness as part of my ideal platform. Free college and student debt forgiveness isnt super expensive. Medicare for all is though, that's the big elephant in the room and I feel like the idea of a public option is a band aid.
Also, climate change is upon us so I can tolerate a jobs program for now.
At the end of the day, this would be an ambitious platform. But we've had a platform as progressive as this 100 years ago when FDR and while that made peoples' lives better, it did not inherently solve all of capitalism. People would still be stuck working 40 hours a week, trying to raise GDP. it would keep us in the treadmill. And given automation in coming decades, I'm not sure that this would actually alleviate the problems we face. It's a compelling platform and affordable, but would bring us close to some potential laffer curve limits. And while we could axe a green new deal and do a partial UBI in 10 years, it would never be a full UBI if we hit hard limits to how much we can spend. I don't know. This is a hard one.
If I were a normal social democrat though, Bernie's platform would be compelling. I voted for it in 2020 for a reason. I believe it deals with the biggest crises of the times, and potentially could open the door to a UBI down the line. After all FDR's new deal and Johnson's war on poverty led to Nixon's failed UBI plan. But by then, entrenched interests also undermined the concept.
That said, let's now look at Yang, and potentially, in the absence of Yang's own plans, what Biden is doing.
Andrew Yang's Human Centered Capitalism
I'm going to be honest, as impressive as Bernie's platform is, I have a soft spot for Yang's platform too. He supported human centered capitalism as an alternative to Bernie's ideas. In short, he supported an expansive UBI program, but it is possible that he cheaped out on some other proposals, while still attempting to address those concerns in cheaper ways. Let's take a look.
Universal Basic Income- $800 billion from VAT, $500-600 billion from spending cuts, $100-200 billion from savings, $800-900 billion from growth
This would amount to an estimated $2.2-2.5 trillion. And a lot of it appears deficit funded, which is a reason I didn't like Yang's plan much.
Still, let's stick with it. It's feasible, it's $2.2-2.5 trillion. I would estimate such a proposal would cost $2.9 trillion but he would be not giving it to everyone per se, such as people who remain on welfare or social security. So, regardless of funding let's stick with the $2.5 trillion number as that makes more sense to me.
Medicare for all?- This is where Yang really lost me. I'm having trouble finding his plan, but during the campaign he transitioned to a public option, and then later he proposed this weird mix of fixes that seemed to do very little at all. Still, let's replace his plan with Biden's plan in absence of a real plan.
This costs $75 billion a year.
Free college- Yang supported free community college but didn't have a price tag on it. Biden's plan will be substituted here cost wise and would cost $75 billion a year.
Student debt- yang didn't support free college but he did have a mild student debt forgiveness plan. It doesn't list costs, but it would likely be absorbed over time as it basically was an improved version of income based repayment, which would admittedly solve the problem more incrementally.
Climate change- Yang did have a fairly progressive climate platform. I was more into Bernie's green new deal at the time but I feel like I slept on Yang a bit. Looking at his plan and breaking it down by year, I estimate he would spend $244 billion a year. And he would be spending it on tons of useful things, just like Bernie. I'm not an expert to be able to compare the ins and outs of Bernie vs Yang here, but it looks like different ideas. Bernie seems more aggressive, but Yang seems more efficient and still has a progressive plan I actually liked better than Bernie's in some ways.
Childcare and universal preK- Yang would spend $84 billion a year on this.
Yang seemed to lack a housing policy.
Adding all of this up, we come up with:
$2.5 trillion for UBI
$75 billion for healthcare
$75 billion for free college
$224 billion for climate change
$84 billion for childcare/universal preK
+
$2.958 trillion a year
Yang kind of cheaps out on a lot of things. I'm gonna be brutally honest, his poor healthcare plan/lack of numbers and his poorly funded UBI plan by itself are huge reasons not to support him in 2020. I love Yang on a pure ideological level, but this isn't it as far as his policies though. For as much crap as Bernie got for not being able to pay for his policies, he at least has numbers that work. Yang doesn't. Brutally honest, ideology aside, this is why I did not support Yang.
My ideal platform
Okay, say I pushed everything just as I would want it. My ideal would cost:
$3.565 trillion for UBI
$1.75 trillion for medicare for all
$220 billion for for free college and student debt forgiveness
$224 billion (Yang's plan) for climate change
+
$5.759 trillion
Yeah, this is too much.
Let's say we get total spending down to Bernie levels
$3.565 trillion for UBI
$75 billion for public option healthcare
$220 billion for free college and student debt forgiveness
$224 billion for climate change
+
$4.084 trillion
This is doable. I could have my UBI, as long as I scaled back on UBI in particular.
Heck if I included housing and universal preK I could have $4.484 trillion, which is slightly more than Bernie's plans. I just can't have medicare for all.
Is medicare for all worth it?
Well, to answer that, let me develop a metric in which I weight my priorities the way I believe they deserve to be weighted. UBI is my first priority, medicare for all is my second one, and I want climate change and free college and climate change as my tertiary priority.
I would say my priorities would be:
40% UBI
30% Medicare for all
15% climate change
15% free college/student loan forgiveness
Bernie's platform
Bernie doesn't score well on UBI but gets perfect scores on medicare for all, climate change, and free college.
He gets a 60.
Yang's platform as is
Yang gets a 25 on UBI for effort, but his plan is flawed. I won't give him any points for his joke of a healthcare plan or lack thereof. Climate change I'll give him 10 points, and free college I'll give him 10 points.
He gets a 45.
So Yang was just a weak candidate in some ways
Buffing up Yang's platform a bit
Adopting a perfect UBI plan would give him 40 points.
A public option will get partial credit, so 10 points.
Climate change is 10 and Bernie's free college would to up to 15.
He would then get a 75.
Yang platform version 2
Say we modified Yang's platform another way. Say he implemented a full $1000 a month UBI for $2.9 trillion(fully functional), had medicare for all ($1.75 trillion), stuck to the cheaper free college plan ($75 billion), and stuck to his climate plan plan ($224 billion).
Well that would cost around $5 trillion, a bit on the high side.
I would give him a 35 for UBI, 30 for medicare for all, 10 on climate, and 10 on education.
That would be 85. High, but expensive.
Yang platform version 3
Say we went for my partial UBI of $9k/$3k, and then kept the above as is. It could cost around $4.5 trillion, similar to Bernie's plan.
I'd give such a platform a 25 for UBI, 30 for medicare for all, 10 on climate, and 10 on education.
That would be a 75. Not as expensive, but lower.
What can we conclude?
Well, both approaches have pros and cons. Bernie's plan addresses a lot of problems with capitalism comprehensively, but leaves, in my opinion, the largest one unaddressed, the problem of coercion and freedom. He makes the system actually work and deliver on its promises, which I see as the bare minimum for this kind of society. However, he will always have that flaw for me. Bernie does everything outside of UBI the best, but his plans are expensive. Medicare for all is prohibitively expensive and would make a full UBI difficult to accomplish.
Yang's actual plans...suck. His UBI plan is weak and relies on fuzzy math. He appeared to lack a healthcare plan, and while he was good on other issues, he was not as good as Bernie is. Still, assuming Yang spruced up his platform a bit, I would like him a lot better. Had he come out at least in favor of a Bidenesque public option and made his UBI plan more sustainable, I would likely support him over Bernie.
The real question to me, is whether I would rather compromise on UBI or healthcare. And I guess the answer is "it depends". While nominally, a partially implemented UBI with compromises such as rejecting the childrens' benefit or lowering the amount slightly won't be frowned upon as much by me as bumping medicare for all down to a public option would, it depends. On smaller priorities like free college or climate change, assuming the option is sufficient, I'm willing to compromise. I felt Yang's climate plan was still solid and his education plan was...sufficient. And I guess I would like to see some form of healthcare plan beyond a nominal public option but still less than full medicare for all. I think that might be the ideal. I feel like mainstream democrats like to do the bare minimum but Bernie's ideas can be mindblowingly expensive at times.
I guess a full UBI along side Biden-esque plans on everything else is sufficient for me. At the same time, so is a partial UBI ($9k level, or $12k without children's benefit) with medicare for all. Again, it depends. If I could find a healthcare plan better than mainstream democrats' while still being cheaper than medicare for all, that would be a winner for me.
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