Welcome to the show. Well, it's great to be here.
Thank you so much for having me. Can I... can I just say,
of all the candidates I've seen on the trail, you seem
to be having the most fun. Are you? Well, it's a very low bar
you've set, Trevor. (laughter) What does that even mean? You are.
You're, like, out there. You've got, like, cool music. You're, like, rapping
at, like, campaign events. It feels like Andrew Yang--
you're just, like... You're having a good time whilst you're putting out
your policy proposals. The only place where you didn't
seem like you were having fun was at the debates,
where I think you had two minutes
and 53 seconds of total time that you spoke. Uh, what are you gonna do
differently in the next one
to get more time? You're gonna...
you're gonna cough, you're gonna, like, interject?
Are you gonna...? I'm assuming you weren't happy. You know, I'm really happy
to say, though, that the debate
in Detroit next week's gonna be a very different story. Uh, not only is the format
really set up -for us to succeed...
-Right. ...but we just got a poll,
just now that puts us on path to...
the path to qualify -for the debates in September,
as well, so... -Right. The debates--
it's a whole string. And unlike a lot
of the other candidates, we're in a great position
to be here the entire way. So you're running
a long-term race, you know. You've come in as, um,
somewhat of an outsider. You know,
you're an entrepreneur. You come from Silicon Valley.
That is your world. And many of your policies
have been aimed at or from that direction. One of the biggest ones being,
you've been called, for some, "The Doomsday Candidate,"
where you've said, "Guys, if we don't do something
with robots, about robots and AI, then,
it's over for human beings." What-what do you mean
when you say this to people? Well, I looked at the numbers,
I did the math around what happened to many
of the manufacturing workers in the Midwest that, in my view,
ended up electing Donald Trump. -Yes. -And the trends
that affected those communities are now going
to affect retail workers, which is the number one job
in the United States. It's going
to start hitting truck drivers in the next number of years, -and driving a truck is the most
common job in 29 states. -Wow. And one of the things
that I say is like, "Look, when you call a customer
service line right now, you get that operator." In a few years, it's going to be
an AI that sounds like this. "Hey, how's it going, Trevor?
What can I do for you?" -That's creepy, but, yeah.
-It's creepy... -(laughter) Um, but what
that's going to mean... But you think
it's gonna get that good. You think
it's gonna get to the point where even human jobs
are now completely done by AI and robots. -Certainly a lot of the business
process jobs. -Yes. There are two and half million
Americans -who, uh, do customer service
for a living right now. -Mm-hmm. And that job's days are
numbered, unfortunately. So, then, what do you...
what do you think you do in-in that circumstance?
Do you put a tax on robots? -Do you... do you protect
the workers? -(laughter) This is an honest proposal.
It sounds funny. Yeah. No, don't laugh. That's
actually a very good idea. No, it sounds funny, but...
it's actually, like, an honest proposal. Like, what do you...
what do you say to American workers who go,
"Hey, I don't have a job, and-and I want to... I want
to... I want to change this"? That's exactly right. Amazon right now is closing 30%
of America's stores and malls and paying zero in taxes. So what we do is,
we set up a mechanism where the American people get
our fair share of every Amazon sale,
every Google search, every robot truck mile,
and put a dividend into Americans' hands
of $1,000 a month. The Freedom Dividend would help
all Americans feel like we're benefiting from all
of the progress and innovation. That's an interesting
and-and, uh... -(applause and cheering)
-Yeah, you like that. Yeah, a lot of people like that. Because I mean, uh, it takes
guts to come out and say, "My plan is that we will give
every single American -$1,000 a month
just for being here." Yeah. It's like Monopoly,
but instead of passing "Go," uh, it's the first of the month. You just get... Yeah. But now,
but now, here's the thing I don't know
if you've played Monopoly-- -it always ends in tears. Um...
-(laughter) And that's what people
are saying would happen if you gave people univers...
universal basic income. You know, yes, the smaller
countries have trialed it, but they have found,
for instance, in some Scandinavian countries
that then people don't work enough
or they don't want to work, they lose ambition-- there-there
is a negative effect to that. How do you pay for it,
and how do you ensure that it doesn't mean people just
don't contribute to society? Well, when I've looked
at all of the studies as to what happened
when people got money, only two groups worked less:
new mothers, who spend more time
with their children, and teenagers,
who spend more time in school and graduate at higher levels. I don't think anyone here
has a problem -with either of those.
-(cheering, applause) -Wow. And, then,
how do you pay for it? And the way
you pay for it, again, if you have a trillion dollar
tech company like Amazon paying zero in taxes, then of
course you're gonna look around and be like, "Where's the money
going, where's the money going?" But if you give
the American people a slice of every Amazon sale, every, uh,
A.I.-driven interaction... -Yes.
-Just a sliver. Because the amount of value that that technology's
going to generate can literally be measured in the
hundreds of billions of dollars. We have to put ourselves
in position to benefit, and then we can pay
for a dividend of a thousand dollars a month. But how is this
different to tax? Because, I mean, isn't that
what tax is supposed to be? Everyone getting a sliver
of what people make so that the general society
can rise up? I mean, if they find a way
to not pay what you're saying, why would--
you know what I mean, they don't pay now;
why would they pay then? Well, the great thing is, I'm friendly with a lot
of the technologists, and they're not evil people. If you say to them, "Hey,
you automating away the jobs?" and you're in private,
they're like, "Oh, yeah, yeah, -I'm doing that."
-That sounds evil to me. Well, they're not doing it
deliberately-- it's just, like, -a repercussion of their work.
-Got it, got it, got it. Okay. And then if you say to them,
"Would you like "to give up a slice so that
America actually is in position to sharing benefit,"
you know what they say to me? They say, "No one's
ever asked me that before." So what we have to do is,
we have to give them-- really, in this case, actually, we're
not gonna give them a choice, -we're just gonna
make it happen. But... -Right. -(laughter) -But half of them
are on board with it. -Because they're parents,
they're Americans, -Right. many of them came
from other parts of the country, and so they understand
what's happening more than most other people do,
in terms of the economic impact. That's interesting that
they've never been asked. 'Cause I met Jeff Bezos, and
I didn't think of just saying, "Can I have some of your money?" We don't think of these things. Yeah, maybe you
should have asked him. We genuinely
don't think of that. Um, you are tackling
this whole campaign from a different point of view. One of, uh, my favorite quotes
that you said was, you said, um, you are the complete
opposite of Donald Trump, -(whooping)
-and the reason was... -Because he... Thank you.
-(cheering, applause) Well, listen to the reason why. Because the opposite
of Donald Trump is an Asian man who likes math. -Yes.
-(cheering, applause) How do you think math helps you
in-in campaigning? Because it-- no--
because it feels like Americans like more of the show, Americans
like more of-of the celebrity, as opposed to the numbers
and the percentages. Do you think
you can break through with just the math
of what you're proposing? What's fun is,
MATH is now an acronym that stands
for Make America Think Harder. -(whooping, applause)
-And... It's certainly not immigrants
that are driving -these economic problems.
-Right. It's the fact that our economy
is now progressing to a point where things have changed
fundamentally. And when I go around to people
in Ohio, New Hampshire, there's actually a huge appetite
for this type of solution. People say to me all the time,
"You don't sound like any politician I've ever
heard before," and they love it. They're not like,
"Oh, get me a politician, fast." What they say is, "You don't
sound like any other politician, and this is what we need." So there is
such a massive, uh... market need--
I'm an entrepreneur, and so you see
there's a market need. In this case,
I saw that our politicians were not going to address
the elephant in the room, so to speak, and so I decided
to run for president. -(whooping, cheering)
-Well, it's going to be exciting to see you at the next debate. I hope you make it to
the next one and the next one, -'cause it's fun
having you around. -Thank you. Andrew Yang, everybody.
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Wait. Is it me, or is this actually good timing to upload it after the debate? People need to flock somewhere ("legitimate"), and cnn arent providing shit.
Edit: comments disabled? Damn. Would like to hear voices of new fans.
Its funny how they mention jeff bezos but he has publicly said that he IS in favor of UBI. As are billionaires like Mark Zuckerberg, Richard Branson, Stewert Butterfield, Sam Altman, and Elon Musk to name a few people. What do they all have in common? They're tech entrepreneurs and they realize that automation is coming and it's only going to become a bigger and bigger problem
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/12/27/what-billionaires-say-about-universal-basic-income-in-2017.html
https://www.quora.com/What-does-Jeff-Bezos-think-of-basic-income
YangGang ASSEMBLE!
Called it. Knew they were going to upload after the debate for max views.
OH NONONONO!
Lmao of course they only upload it once he actually starts gaining momentum and they have a chance they'll be called out. Better than it not being uploaded at all though.
Still trying to figure out the low bar response to having fun on the trail! Overall a great interview. Mainstream media elite haven't embraced him like Whoopi has, but they'll all pile on board once it becomes obvious Yang is the candidate to beat. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fBAVhSRMsEw
That's a pretty positive title they gave it, too.
Can a bro outside of the US get a mirror?