Andrew Yang, one of the candidates who made an early entry in the 2020 field, might not have much name recognition now, but his popularity and presence have netted increased prominence among the crowded bench — due in part to his unconventional proposals to resolve income disparity and warnings of a robot takeover of America’s job sector.
Yang, an entrepreneur who mounted his long-shot bid for the White House back in February 2018, has crafted a campaign platform around the issue of universal basic income — proposing that the government provides all Americans 18 and older with $1,000 per month that would be funded by a value-added tax.
“I’m a capitalist,” he told the New York Times in the interview that launched his campaign, “and I believe that universal basic income is necessary for capitalism to continue.”
“If you have a town in Missouri with 50,000 adults and they’re all getting $1,000 a month, that’s another $50 million in purchasing power that comes right into that town’s local economy — into car repairs, tutoring or food for your kids, the occasional night out, home repairs,” he told “Rolling Stone” in January. “And that money ends up circulating all through that town.”
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At the National Action Network conference in New York in April, the tech industry veteran underscored the importance of addressing the needs of the future — as motivations for his candidacy.
Technology and capital are “about to come and verge in historical ways,” he said Wednesday, which he added will cause many jobs to disappear.
The 44-year-old New York businessman speaks frequently about both income inequality and the economic transformation that has enriched certain parts of the country while disproportionately harming regions that have failed to keep pace.
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“I was stunned when I saw the disparities between Detroit and San Francisco or Cleveland and Manhattan. You feel like you’re traveling across dimensions and decades and not just a couple of time zones,” he added in that interview with the magazine. “None of our political leaders are willing…
