The floor should hold
In 2019, Andrew Yang stood on a debate stage and said what every other candidate was thinking: the trucks are going to drive themselves. Three and a half million jobs. He proposed $1,000 per month, no strings. The other candidates changed the subject. Yang did not win a primary. He won the argument.
AI is compressing what used to be a thirty-year workforce transition into five. We propose $1,500 per month per adult — funded through a VAT on AI-generated output and consolidation of welfare programs whose administrative costs eat 15 to 30 percent before a dollar reaches anyone. The poverty line is $15,060. Our floor is $18,000. Not luxury. The absence of destitution.
The institutional reform camp points to retraining. The Trade Adjustment Assistance program has been studied since 1974: participants earn no more than non-participants after five years. The meaning-crisis camp says money cannot replace purpose. We agree. Money is the floor beneath which purpose becomes impossible. A person drowning does not need a life coach. She needs a life raft.
Finland’s trial: higher life satisfaction, better health, modestly higher employment. Stockton: money went to food, utilities, car payments. The idleness does not appear. What appears is a shift in the kind of work people choose.
Where we concede ground: A UBI solves income. It does not solve identity, and the retirement data on that front is not encouraging.
What would change our mind: If a permanent UBI at the poverty line produced a labor force drop above 15 points with no offsetting caregiving or education.
Read the full synthesis: If machines do most of the work, what do the humans do?