A few 2020 Presidential contender highlights:

• Andrew Yang (polling at about 1%) is promoting a Universal Basic Income of $1000/month for all U.S. citizens 18 and older regardless of income. He would pay for it by scaling back some other assistance programs and instituting…a VAT.
• Cory Booker (polling at about 2%) is promoting “baby bonds”, where every baby gets a $1000 bond annually, and low-income children get up to an additional $2000 per year.

These are all ideas that (any) Democratic President and Congress could explore together, if they were to get a chance and managed to keep the corporate lobbyists at bay. I am 1000% in favor of VAT. It is just one of those things that all other modern countries do and the U.S. does not. It works and we just need to do it. Other taxes people hate can be reduced.

Both the UBI and baby bond ideas are supposed to address inequality quickly. The baby bond idea is supposed to particularly help racial disparities in wealth very quickly, but there is no reason the UBI could not do that with some fine-tuning. I like the idea of setting kids up with assets in principal, but in practice I am afraid unscrupulous relatives, Wall Street and payday lenders will find a way to take advantage of them. The UBI would essentially just be a “Social Security for All” scheme. We have the bureaucracy for that all set up and ready to go, so it seems practical to me. The only other difference I see between the two is that the government can more easily go back on a promise to pay you in the future than it can take money away from you that it has already paid. But of course it can do either, let’s not be naive.

My verdict – I’d like to see a VAT and a carbon tax used to fund education, infrastructure, and research. All of these things should help keep people busy if technology really does lead to unemployment. People can study to upgrade their knowledge and skills, design and build infrastructure and other types of capital goods, or go into research and teaching. Unemployment and disability insurance could also be beefed up to cover the gaps.