Micah Walker | Detroit Free Press

Kelsey Kremer, kkremer@dmreg.com

During a campaign stop in Detroit, Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang pitched his proposed plan to provide $1,000 a month payments to every American.

Yang talked to a young, diverse crowd of around 300 people at Detroit Shipping Company, a restaurant collective in Midtown Detroit, on Saturday as part of his Humanity First Tour, according to MLive,

One of the subjects he touched on was his Universal Basic Income proposal, under which he says every American over the age of 18 would receive $1,000 a month.

Kelsey Kremer/The Register

Yang says the plan is needed to counter the rise of automation in jobs. He states on his website that by 2015, automation had already destroyed four million manufacturing jobs. Yang believes over the next 12 years, 1 out of 3 American workers are at risk of losing their jobs to new technologies, and that new jobs will not be created in time to make up for it.

The UBI would be a form of Social Security given by the government, regardless of income or employment status. If Yang wins the 2020 elections, he says, payments would begin in January 2021.

Funding for UBI, he said, would come from a value-added tax of 10%. A VAT is a tax for a business's production of good and services.

While the tax would be a new concept in the United States, all of Europe and some African and Asian countries have implemented VAT. Under the tax, Yang would consolidate some welfare programs, and current welfare and social program beneficiaries would be given a choice between their current benefits or $1,000 in cash unconditionally.

In addition, the UBI would be funded by current spending and new revenue. According to The Roosevelt Institute, it is projected that the economy would grow by approximately $2.5 trillion and create 4.6 million new jobs. This would generate approximately $500 billion to $600 billion in new revenue from economic growth and activity.

Yang also says the country would save $100 billion to $200 billion as people take better care of themselves and avoid the hospital, jail, or the street. Therefore, the policy would pay for itself.

"The most direct and concrete way for the government to improve your life is to send you a check for $1,000 every month and let you spend it in whatever manner will benefit you the most," said Yang on his website. "The government is not capable of a lot of things, but it is capable of sending large numbers of checks to large numbers of people promptly and reliably. We have plenty of resources, they’re just not being distributed to enough people right now. Let’s build a new kind of economy – one that puts people first."

Yang is a former tech executive who founded the nonprofit, Venture for America, a two-year fellowship program for recent graduates who want to create a start-up or create jobs in cities across the U.S. He was also the CEO of test prep provider, Manhattan Prep and vice president of the healthcare software company, MMF Systems.