Still, not everyone who heard Yang that night in April 2019 was sold. One Baltimore woman who showed up out of curiosity wondered what the drug dealers on her block would do with their $1,000 check. I also had doubts — about his vague plan to pay for it with a value-added tax that he said would fall heavily on tech companies, and on the overall cost that even Yang himself said could be $2.8 trillion a year.