Estimated current US Population over 18: 254,046,000
Cost of $1,000/mo ($12,000/yr) per 18+ individual per year: $3,048,552,000,000
Current Total Federal Receipts: $3,422,000,000,000
Estimate total gross revenue of 10% VAT (taxpolicycenter.org
>people already receive benefits
This proposal still involves much more spending; let's look at the biggest benefits ones and maybe exclude the lesser ones:
62 million people currently receive Social Security benefits receiving an average of $1,200 monthly, so that group of people would add a substantially lower number versus what is already collected, 148,000,000,000 instead of 892,000,000,000 were they not already receiving benefits already.
42 million SNAP beneficiaries receive an average of $253 a monthly so they would cost an additional $376,488,000,000 on top of the $127,512,000,000 they already receive ($504,000,000,000)
That is a net decrease of about $367.5 billion, but still leaves nearly a $2.7 trillion dollar deficit unaccounted for.
At best a 10% VAT will only help fund the UBI by around 25%. You would need a VAT of almost 40% to cover it in its entirety, or add the 10% VAT and increase income tax revenue by 60%
>but the bureaucracy
Yang vaguely says that it will cut down on bureaucracy etc. At least for the 62 million social security recipients who are already receiving more than $1,000 a month they have no incentive to leave the current system or its "bureaucracy" behind.
Also it's worse than it looks, consider the potential for fraud a "relaxed bureaucracy" invites when even a formidable one can be exploited: youtube.com
A 10% VAT and $1,000 UBI would do to every item sold or service offered what federal loan guarantees did to College in the US.
