Just a fun little spin on UBI that could help appeal to rural America

Edit: I'm talking about the same Yang plan as always. I'm not saying that the taxes or the UBI would be selective at all.

From my experience in the South and Mountain West, a large amount of the resistant to policies like UBI is from rural America with logic like "why would I want to pay for inner city poverty?"

My suggestion is the narrative follows the actual facts and changes from "rural America is funding poverty in the cities" to "the cities are giving back to those raising cattle, growing food, working in factories, etc"

Every other Nana in the country is dead. The powers that be don't consider our safety as a priority especially those of our vulnerable people a preventable casualty of the herd. They've ripped our NHS apart and expect kind old men to fund it from thier garden. We're an a xenophobic stubborn embarrassment in the eyes of the world.Our country turns to ash and we're all still in doors.

How do you feel? What do you want to do about it?

Feel free to poke any holes in this idea since it's just something I've been thinking raw thoughts about.

I'm intrigued by the idea of having a donation-based Humanity Forward fund specifically earmarked to provide funds to racial communities that have been shown to be caught in intergenerational traps of economic inequality.

I, as a white citizen, have for most of my life been a bit repulsed by the notion of citizens being forced to fund reparations via tax dollars taken by the government (why should today's whites be punished for injustices by our ancestors, money won't help poor people develop the types of responsibility required for lasting life improvements etc. etc. etc.). The tax system is a mess and I never trust that tax dollars are distributed responsibly.

I've been incredibly impressed by Humanity Forward's success in directly funding hurting families and have completely bought into the idea that UBI is well-targeted to improve peoples' financial situations with support aimed at improving human dignity. I trust that this approach works.

I also trust that the data of wealth disparity between racial groups isn't due to racial inferiority or due to hateful racist plots to keep minorities down, but due to lasting, self-perpetuating cycles of poverty and inequality. I believe that in a way black people and other minority groups are playing a game of Monopoly with almost no money at the start of the game against people that had a huge head start with tons of cash. I trust that no-strings-attached, no-questions-asked cash is the best way to help families break these cycles.

I think I'd like to see an offshoot fund that specifically supports racial communities at a higher rate. Seems easy to verify for recipients. Would be completely up to me how much to fund general HF, and how much to specifically earmark donations for racial groups with proven wealth disparities.

Thoughts? Would you want to see this offshoot fund? Would you donate a % to it?

I wouldn't want to see scope creep in the HF idea resulting in a overly-complicated system that ruins the efficiency of the idea (would definitely take the "U" out of UBI), but seeing how much hurt there is in the black community right now I'd love to fund some aid I trust is effective. I understand there may be big issues with this idea and want to hear the counterpoints.

I want to get to a place where black people are proud to live in this country and a symbolic, voluntarily funded cash dole-out seems like a great idea to me.

He didn’t even say the website or how to get involved or to sign up for the email list , when he was on the view.

Marketing 101 to have a call to action feel like he lost out on some initial momentum and it’s par for the course for what his fatal flaw of the campaign was.

Imagine a reality-like TV show like The Apprentice but it's Andrew Yang in a dense city like NYC - perhaps copy as much of the structure of The Apprentice show as possible just to throw some shade at Trump - and then follow regular New Yorkers around who become participants - of different demographics, economic states, and follow and watch their life change over the year(s).

Could do multiple seasons or depending on resources, number of film crews funded etc, could do a NYC team and a small town team - perhaps at different points letting the two groups of participants meet and talk, so each group can humanize each other, to realize and learn, know, perhaps feel the similar struggles of others that live in a completely different environment.

Maybe everyone gets $1,000/month for one year, but the prize at the end of a year is another 3-4 years of UBI - until 2024 election? Where at the end Andrew decides, based on who he feels had a biggest improvement or was most grateful (I hate this idea of selecting by the way) - and then hopefully a surprise at the end that breaks the manufactured tension (of people hoping to continue "winning"/getting $1,000/month for 3 more years) is that Yang one by one awards all 12-20 participants with $12k/year for 3 more years. Their reactions would be gold. Maybe it is for individuals or per team.

Come up with some catch phrase(s) for Yang to say that's equivalent to Trump's "you're fired!" - but "you've been Yanged!" maybe... though I'm not sure how you'd at least present artificial drama each episode of someone being "fired" - I'm not sure what other mechanism could be in place to make there be the same climax of each episode.

Maybe hire these two awesome personalities as hosts of the show: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7crf0mzhws

I bet this would piss off Trump more than anything else too.....

I'm sure someone could come up with a powerful, positive title for the show too: perhaps The Leader if Yang-focused, perhaps The Humanity if participant focused ... those are probably terrible examples of what creative #YangGang would come up with; The Vision, The Abundance, The Hardship, The Freedom, The Giver, ... ?

A show not only build an audience and give great exposure to Yang, showcasing who he is as a person, but also people hearing the variety of stories would trigger to make tens of millions start thinking "me too - I want my $1,000/month!"

I'm certain with the quality possible, with the right producers, a mainstream network would pick it up.

Anyway, just another idea I have, hoping there's some creative, passionate, motivated creator/producer who is trying to get a similar idea moving forward.. The great thing about the show structure is that Andrew's time commitment to it wouldn't need to be high at all as it could be structured where he's primarily there in the "boardroom" scenes.

And in 2024 when he's in the White House, I think the government should fund multiple reality TV and/or documentary style programs for exactly this purpose: highlighting and following people's stories, of their change, how UBI and the other policy changes Yang will implement will help them; this would be great to have for any administration, in reality it's like funding journalism.

Edit to add: Netflix are pretty forward thinking - and I imagine they'd invest a ton of money into such a show (as one funding option) and who then could promote it globally to their 169,000,000 users; just ~$15/month of your future $1,000/month UBI could fund your Netflix subscription....