Sam Altman and Andrew Yang talk UBI
&quot;Altman, who favors UBI, said in exchange for a floor, he’d like to see no ceiling on earnings, as some, like presidential hopeful Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, have suggested. And like Friedman, Altman suggested tying the amount of the basic income to a fixed percentage of GDP. “Right now, because people are rightly angry that there&#x27;s no floor, and that most people have no real chance to be super successful, we sort of say billionaires are inherently evil,” he said. “I think it would be great to say, we as a society will allow trillionaires in exchange for a floor for everyone.”&quot;<p>The problem with having a handful of people be billionaires and trillionaires is that money is power, and with that amount of money you have nearly unlimited power and influence over everyone and everything. A system that will concentrate that much power <i>will</i> be inherently evil, it will and does serve the needs of that few over the needs of the many.<p>UBI just doesn&#x27;t solve that, and it especially doesn&#x27;t solve that when it&#x27;s being funded by a highly regressive VAT tax that none of these ultra wealthy people will ever pay as Yang is proposing.<p>Honestly, this whole Yang project just strikes me as a weird 10x play by wealthy bay area VC types to get out of paying more progressive income taxes by attempting to bamboozle voters into a regressive tax based UBI they will shoulder the burdon on, so we will forget about major structural problems like wealth concentration.<p>Regardless, no, I don&#x27;t think trillionaires should exist and I&#x27;m pretty confused why anybody thinks that is going to work out well for them, competition, or democracy.