As the only candidate currently running on a UBI platform, Andrew Yang has argued that one of its benefits would be a reduction in economic anxiety, with ancillary benefits to health in the form of stress reduction and improved executive function, as well as lower rates of depression, suicide, and drug addiction.
I can attest to this. I've been in both situations where I was very financially comfortable and where I've been in more financially risk situations on and off. You definitely have higher stress, anxiety, and develop negative habits at financially risky times. And for reference the were longer time frames: 5 years well off, 3 years poor, 2 well off, 2 poor
I think many of the poorest would happily choose a flat $1000/month over the benefit systems we have in place now. But even for those who opted out in favor of existing aid programs, I think the societal benefits of additional liquidity from everyone else getting the dividend would lead to more consumer spending, and therefore better employment opportunities: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demand-side_economics
Without other universal floors on things like housing and healthcare, UBI is just going to be eaten up by those costs. An indirect sop to these sectors isn’t going to do much to improve the average person’s quality of life.
I agree that universal health care should be solved independently from UBI (Yang supports opt-in Medicare For All).
Housing is a more complicated story; there's certainly a theory that landlords will simply raise rents in proportion to their tenants new ability to pay more. On the other hand, a stable income boost might make the housing market more fluid, giving renters more options to move when the rent goes up. I personally favor LVT to discourage rent-seeking, and there's a lot that could be done by removing zoning and building restrictions (multi-family conversions, etc) to make housing more competitive.
As the only candidate currently running on a UBI platform, Andrew Yang has argued that one of its benefits would be a reduction in economic anxiety, with ancillary benefits to health in the form of stress reduction and improved executive function, as well as lower rates of depression, suicide, and drug addiction.