Thread by @yashkaf

I wrote about UBI after meeting Andrew Yang last year, and noted that his current plan has a funding shortfall: putanumonit.com/2018/10/10/ubi…
Now that both Yang and UBI are back in the headlines, I have an idea that could really improve it.

We want to give $ where it would improve people's lives, and not where it won't. Where's the boundary? To me, it's not in how much people make, but in what they buy.

Poor people buy necessities: food, a car, bills. Non-poor people buy HHE: houses, healthcare, education.

A marginal $1 to the poor buys better food, reliable car, more slack. But HHE, beyond a basic level, are just a zero-sum competition for nice neighborhoods, impressive doctors, prestigious schools. A marginal $1 goes straight to rentiers like landlords and Harvard's endowment.

So: fund UBI by taxing land, higher education, and non-essential healthcare. Alleviate poverty while diverting the $ Americans spend from rentiers to productive businesses.

I know no politician would dare suggest it, but I wonder what @robinhanson and @bryan_caplan would think.