Scott Santens

You essentially bought your own $10 for the same of not doing anything.

And so when you look at UBI too, there's this, you can look at it as a slope

where there's a threshold point where someone is essentially paying $12,000 to receive $12,000.

And in which case that cost is zero.

They're paying for their own.

And anyone spending more than $12,000 for their $12,000 is again, spending for their own.

And then on the other side of that line, people are net receivers.

They're spending, let's say, if you're spending $6,000 to receive $12,000, then that's $6,000.

$6,000 is increased taxes to receive the $12,000.

So whatever the tax regime put in place, whatever you're doing to make the basic income possible, you have to subtract out what people are receiving from what they're paying to get it.

And if you looked at the 10% value-added tax and Andrew Yang's freedom dividend, then the threshold point

depending on expenditure details, and also if you assume that the full 10% of the VAT is even passed on to the consumer, then if you're spending $120,000 on goods and services every year, and 100% of that is going towards VAT goods and services, and the full cost is put on, then you are essentially paying $12,000 in VAT

for your $12,000 in basic income.

And that's where the net is.

So those spending more than $120,000 on that goods and services are net payers.

And those spending less than $120,000 on goods and services are net receivers.

We can absolutely do that.

And I recommend doing that to a large degree, but not 100% kind of degree, because I think there are things that make sense to keep and things that don't make sense to replace with cash.

Example of that would be like Medicaid.

Like it wouldn't make sense to me to cash out Medicaid and provide people that as money instead of you going about like a universal health care kind of system.