On May 9th, 2019, Democratic Presidential Candidate Andrew Yang, the first Asian American to run for president in 50 years and second in history of the U.S., spoke to a crowd of Dartmouth Students at Beta Alpha Omega. Having graduated from Brown and Columbia Law School, Yang felt a special connection with Dartmouth students. He bridged that kinship to the rationale behind his successful nonprofit, Venture for America, which helped create thousands of jobs around the country in cities in economic decline. Yang argued that we have an oversupply of bright young people (perhaps often Ivy League students) looking for careers in law, consultant and investment banking, and an undersupply of them looking for careers in entrepreneur endeavors. Yang asked a series of questions to the student crowd: “How many of you are going into consulting?” “How many of you are going to work for startups?” The answers confirmed Yang’s asymmetrical-employment theory.
Yang believes that this asymmetrical attitude towards employment needs to be shifted because it creates a vast inequality in development amongst cities. Indeed, the few career paths listed above incline students to work in certain specific cities such as Washington, D.C., New York, Boston, and Chicago. At the same time, other cities are in economic retreat due to automation and other factors. To that end, Venture for America— whose mission is “to revitalize American cities and communities through entrepreneurship”—has strived to connect and train hundreds of fellows to launch companies in cities like Detroit, Baltimore, Cleveland, and Pittsburgh.
What prompted Yang to run for president in the 2020 election is consistent with the work of Venture for America. Witnessing what he calls the biggest technological and economic shift in the history of the U.S., Yang realizes that he needs on a larger scale to help millions of Americans embrace the challenge of automation and employment dislocation. “One of the reasons why Donald Trump won in 2016 is that we automated away four million manufacturing jobs…in all the swing states,” Yang argues in his interview with Joe Rogan. “Truck drivers are the most common job in 29 states,” Yang says, but they, along with call center employees and other unskilled workers, are going to face an employment crisis due to artificial intelligence and automation.
Drug overdose and suicide have overtaken car accidents as causes of deaths. Yang attributes this to a crisis of purpose and worries that it will continue to worsen. “We all see ourselves as economic inputs—what the market tells us we are worth is what we are worth,” Yang maintained in his interview with Joe Rogan. So, if the market tells us that we worthless, we might think that there is no place for us in the world. But the situation is not hopeless. Yang has put forth the slogan “Humanity First” to emphasize his focus on helping real individuals find a sense of purpose, fulfillment, happiness, and self-worth. The inventor of the concept GDP warned us against using it as a measurement for national well-being, and while the GDP is doing well, the same is not necessarily true of our day-to-day lives. Yang proposes an alternative—he wishes to use a set of statistics based on human factors such as mental health, suicide rates, and level of engagement with jobs to reflect nation well-being. Yang says that he will be “the first president to use a PowerPoint at the State of the Union” to present these statistics annually before the nation. With the right focuses and transparency, Yang is confident that the country will move toward the correct path of reconstructing a happy and meaningful life for every citizen.
The path forward is not to regulate or stop technological advancements. Rather, Yang proposes to ease Americans into the future economic shift. To get the boot off of people’s throats, as president, his first priority will be to “implement Universal Basic Income” for every American over 18 and under 64 years old: $1000 per month and no question asked. He calls this the “Freedom Dividend” and plans to pay for it “by a new tax on the companies benefiting most from automation.” Yang frequently mentions Martin Luther King, Jr. and Milton Friedman as supporters of UBI and that Alaska has implemented it for decades already. Yang refers to his economic vision as “capitalism where the starting point isn’t zero,” and argues that the money issued in the Freedom Dividend will end up circulating back into the economy, creating jobs for the people in local communities, and helping people reconstitute meaning. Addressing concerns about inflation and other skepticisms, Yang cites many studies on Universal Basic Income on his campaign website.
“Why the Freedom Dividend and not negative income tax?”—our correspondent at The Dartmouth Review asked Yang after the event. “I am a big fan of negative income tax,” Yang responded, “but there is a from-rich-to-poor stigma attached to it, whereas the Freedom Dividend has no strings attached. We would need to have people checking individuals’ incomes with negative income tax.” Moreover, although, according to Yang’s policies, there will be an option between existing welfare programs and the $1000 monthly payment, you can’t have both. Some have raised doubts about Yang implementing a Universal Basic Income plan without replacing welfare programs entirely and worry that it will hinder economic growth. The Dartmouth Review raised this concern, to which Yang replied by arguing that “it is unrealistic to replace welfare entirely” because many depend on it greatly, “but when given the option, many will opt out of welfare naturally.”
Additionally, Yang has posted nearly eighty other policies in detail, including reasonable gun control, Medicare for all, and the legalization of marihuana. Because Yang is known for accurate and precise usages of data, there are always “Math” caps and signs at Yang’s presidential events. “‘Math’ stands for ‘Make America Think Harder,’” Yang said to Dartmouth students. He described himself as the opposite of Donald Trump: “an Asian man who likes math.” The event at Dartmouth was a success. A Dartmouth undergraduate called Yang her hero and even the College’s photographer got his picture taken with Yang.
The Washington Post describes Yang as a “total disrupter” in the democratic party. Currently, some polls have Yang at three percent, ranking him the seventh presidential candidate in the Party. Moreover, Yang has raised about three million dollars and successfully secured entrance to the first primary debates that will take place in June and July. His strong online support, the “Yang Gang,” has attracted substantial attention from both Time magazine and The New York Times. Yang also has a special uniting effect on people across the political spectrum, democrats, conservatives, libertarians, and independents. He is welcomed both on Fox News and CNN. Many people maintain that Yang is the first candidate that they are excited about and have been prompted to vote for the first time in their lives. This is not hard to understand—Yang’s “Humanity First” presidential campaign which believes in a human-centered capitalism and a trickle-up economy naturally empowers people on an individual basis. Instead of grouping people into categories and advocating simply for government intervention, Yang believes in people. He believes that they will better their own conditions and that of their surroundings when they are given the opportunity. As Yang sums his campaign up in many different occasions, his visions are “not Left, not Right, but forward.”
An excellent article. As a Dartmouth ’62 and member of the #YangGang I was delighted to see this fact-based article in the Dartmouth Review. It is an accurate and well-written summary of Yang”s views. I was surprised only to see that the third of Yang’s “3 Big Policies”, Medicare for All, was not discussed. As Xiao notes, Yang is, IMHO, successfully bridging the outmoded left-right dichotomy.