Andrew Yang’s Dependency Dividend October 22, 2019 by Dan Mitchell

While he’s not as outwardly radical as Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, and Kamala Harris, Andrew Yang has joined together two very bad ideas – universal handouts and a value-added tax.

Needless to say, I was not overflowing with praise when asked to comment.

At the risk of understatement, giving every adult a $12,000-per-year entitlement would be a recipe for bigger government and more dependency.

Even Joe Biden understands that this would erode societal capital.

And the ever-sensible Swiss, in a 2016 referendum, overwhelmingly rejected universal handouts.

Needless to say, it also would be a catastrophic mistake to give Washington several new sources of revenue to finance this scheme. A big value-added tax would be especially misguided.

Let’s take a closer look at Yang’s plan. As I noted in the interview, the Tax Foundation crunched the numbers.

Andrew Yang said he wants to provide each American adult $1,000 per month in a universal basic income (UBI) he calls a “Freedom Dividend.” He argued that this proposal could be paid for with…a combination of new revenue from a VAT, other taxes, spending cuts, and economic growth. …We estimate that his plan, as described, could only fund a little less than half the Freedom Dividend at $1,000 a month. A more realistic plan would require reducing the Freedom Dividend to $750 per month and raising the VAT to 22 percent.

If you’re interested, here are more details about his plan.

…individuals would need to choose between their current government benefits and the Freedom Dividend. As such, some individuals may decline the Freedom Dividend if they determine that their current government benefits are more valuable. The benefits that individuals would need to give up are Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP), Temporary Assistance for Needed Families (TANF), Supplemental Security Income (SSI), and SNAP for Women, Infants, and Child Program (WIC). To cover the additional cost of the Freedom Dividend, Yang would raise revenue in five ways: A 10 percent VAT…A tax on financial transactions…Taxing capital gains and carried interest at ordinary income rates…Remove the wage cap on the Social Security payroll tax…A $40 per metric ton carbon tax.

By the way, Yang has already waffled on some of his spending offsets, recently stating that the so-called Freedom Dividend wouldn’t replace existing programs.

In any event, the economic and budgetary effects would be bad news.

…his overall plan would reduce the long-run size of the economy and the tax base. The three major taxes in his plan (VAT, carbon tax, and payroll tax increase), while efficient sources of revenue, would tend to reduce labor force participation by reducing the after-tax returns to working. Using the Tax Foundation Model, we estimate that the weighted average marginal tax rate on labor income would increase by about 8.6 percentage points. The resulting reduction in hours worked would ultimately reduce output by 3 percent. We estimate that Yang would lose about $124 billion each year in revenue due to the lower output.

Here’s how the Tax Foundation scores the plan.

As you can see, the VAT, the financial transactions tax, the higher capital gains tax, and the increase in the payroll tax burden don’t even cover half the cost of the universal handout.

P.S. When the Tax Foundation say a tax is an “efficient source of revenue,” that means that it would result in a modest level of economic damage on a per-dollar-collected basis. This is why they show a rather modest amount of negative revenue feedback (-$124 billion).

I think they’re being too kind. Extending the Social Security payroll tax to all income would result in a huge increase in marginal tax rates on investors, entrepreneurs, and other high-income taxpayers. As explained a few days ago, those are the people who are very responsive to changes in tax rates.