Uploaded January 2020 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
This video is an explanation and a critique of the Universal Basic Income as it is planned by Andrew Yang. I look at what it is, explain it's upsides, do a marxist analysis of it, explain why it may lead to a dystopian future.
Twitter: twitter.com/Viki1999Yt
Transcript:
The Universal basic income or UBI is an ambitious social program which has been gaining traction over the last few years. Thanks in large part to this man. Andrew Yang. He is running for US president though his chances of becoming the democratic nominee are low because of his low ratings.
Nevertheless, he has proven popular on the internet and especially on the new left if you want to call it that. That’s because of his proposal of what he calls a freedom dividend. It’s essentially a UBI. But what’s that? And why does my title imply that I don’t like it?
We’ll get to that. Let’s first go over the basics. A UBI would be a set amount of money given to people unconditionally. For now, we will use Andrew Yang’s plan because the specifics like who get’s the money and how much can vary. Yang’s plan is to give every American citizen over the age of 18 1000$ a month.
Yang doesn’t advertise this a lot in public but that would probably replace some social security like unemployment benefits and some healthcare stuff his website mentions something like that. It would probably also remove the need for all of the bureaucrats whose job it is to bully unemployed people into getting a job. There are many advantages to giving out money to EVERYONE rather than just to unemployed people.
One of them is that with usual unemployment benefits you may just loose all of them if you find a job. Here is an example of someone I know. She get’s 500€ a month in unemployment benefits and she is searching for a job. She found a part time job where she get’s 550€ for working 20 hours a week. Would you take that deal?
She didn’t. And before you judge her keep an in mind, she didn’t not take the job because she doesn’t want to work but because she wanted a full time job in the first place and because 20 hours a week aren’t worth 50€ a month. She isn’t lazy she is being rational.
But with a UBI she would always get those 1000$ and even if she got a job, even a part time one, she would get to keep all of that money. Work is always rewarded. This is one of the upsides, another one is the fact that those who have stable jobs could work fewer hours and still have the same income. Or they could work the same amount of time and get a higher standard of living.
It would also allow a sort of payment for socially necessary work which is currently not paid like housework and reproductive labour. Finally, families could afford to live with one primary bread giver…. again, I guess. But this time let’s not do it in a really sexist way? I guess? Alternatively both parents could just working part time.
Now you may wonder who is going to pay for all that and the answer isn’t necessarily easy but it’s not as unimaginable as it may seem. Yang has a whole section of his website dedicated to how he is going to pay for it and it’s not really relevant to my point, so I’ll just assume it all works out and it will work out forever even through all natural and economic crisis, inflation and all the other things that could prevent the US government from continuing it.
So then why then does my title imply that I dislike it? You may or may not have noticed that I am a bit of a socialist and I like helping the working class. And it really seems like a UBI would be great for the working people doesn’t it? And in the past, I used to like the idea of a UBI. Hell, there even used to be a video of me defending the UBI on this channel but looking a bit closer I changed my mind on it.
Now don’t get me wrong. I am not one of those people who want to oppose helping the working class to get them angry enough to start a revolution. I think that that’s a horrible idea and I think we should do everything we can to help the people which is why I also support minimum wages and universal healthcare.
But I am still a little hesitant on the UBI. Let’s look at why Yang is proposing it in the first place shall we? Luckily his website explains it to us. Essentially automation will make most people unemployed through no fault of their own and we somehow need to keep people alive even if they can’t work. The video “Humans need not apply” by CGP Grey from a few years back sums that up pretty good.
This video is an explanation and a critique of the Universal Basic Income as it is planned by Andrew Yang. I look at what it is, explain it's upsides, do a marxist analysis of it, explain why it may lead to a dystopian future.
Twitter: twitter.com/Viki1999Yt
Transcript:
The Universal basic income or UBI is an ambitious social program which has been gaining traction over the last few years. Thanks in large part to this man. Andrew Yang. He is running for US president though his chances of becoming the democratic nominee are low because of his low ratings.
Nevertheless, he has proven popular on the internet and especially on the new left if you want to call it that. That’s because of his proposal of what he calls a freedom dividend. It’s essentially a UBI. But what’s that? And why does my title imply that I don’t like it?
We’ll get to that. Let’s first go over the basics. A UBI would be a set amount of money given to people unconditionally. For now, we will use Andrew Yang’s plan because the specifics like who get’s the money and how much can vary. Yang’s plan is to give every American citizen over the age of 18 1000$ a month.
Yang doesn’t advertise this a lot in public but that would probably replace some social security like unemployment benefits and some healthcare stuff his website mentions something like that. It would probably also remove the need for all of the bureaucrats whose job it is to bully unemployed people into getting a job. There are many advantages to giving out money to EVERYONE rather than just to unemployed people.
One of them is that with usual unemployment benefits you may just loose all of them if you find a job. Here is an example of someone I know. She get’s 500€ a month in unemployment benefits and she is searching for a job. She found a part time job where she get’s 550€ for working 20 hours a week. Would you take that deal?
She didn’t. And before you judge her keep an in mind, she didn’t not take the job because she doesn’t want to work but because she wanted a full time job in the first place and because 20 hours a week aren’t worth 50€ a month. She isn’t lazy she is being rational.
But with a UBI she would always get those 1000$ and even if she got a job, even a part time one, she would get to keep all of that money. Work is always rewarded. This is one of the upsides, another one is the fact that those who have stable jobs could work fewer hours and still have the same income. Or they could work the same amount of time and get a higher standard of living.
It would also allow a sort of payment for socially necessary work which is currently not paid like housework and reproductive labour. Finally, families could afford to live with one primary bread giver…. again, I guess. But this time let’s not do it in a really sexist way? I guess? Alternatively both parents could just working part time.
Now you may wonder who is going to pay for all that and the answer isn’t necessarily easy but it’s not as unimaginable as it may seem. Yang has a whole section of his website dedicated to how he is going to pay for it and it’s not really relevant to my point, so I’ll just assume it all works out and it will work out forever even through all natural and economic crisis, inflation and all the other things that could prevent the US government from continuing it.
So then why then does my title imply that I dislike it? You may or may not have noticed that I am a bit of a socialist and I like helping the working class. And it really seems like a UBI would be great for the working people doesn’t it? And in the past, I used to like the idea of a UBI. Hell, there even used to be a video of me defending the UBI on this channel but looking a bit closer I changed my mind on it.
Now don’t get me wrong. I am not one of those people who want to oppose helping the working class to get them angry enough to start a revolution. I think that that’s a horrible idea and I think we should do everything we can to help the people which is why I also support minimum wages and universal healthcare.
But I am still a little hesitant on the UBI. Let’s look at why Yang is proposing it in the first place shall we? Luckily his website explains it to us. Essentially automation will make most people unemployed through no fault of their own and we somehow need to keep people alive even if they can’t work. The video “Humans need not apply” by CGP Grey from a few years back sums that up pretty good.
