A few days ago, the Washington Post ran a feature cleverly titled “Random Man Runs for President” quite literally describing Andrew Yang, one of the 20-something candidates running for the Presidential Elections of the United States in 2020—against one Donald Trump. Except he isn’t random anymore. His campaign is powered by young, neoliberal-leaning, meme-ready, predominantly online supporters calling themselves the ‘yang gang’. Pitching himself as the data guy, Yang hails modest success in business. Like Trump, he is an outsider but unlike him, he comes with no baggage, or public notoriety. And though his candidacy is a long-shot, in a sea of tired ideas, Andrew Yang stands out.
In fact, it is Yang’s framing of certain ideas that have garnered him such meteoric popularity. In the past few months leading into the first democratic debate where he managed to secure a spot, Andrew talked of how the greatest global technological and economic transformation is changing the playing field completely. Trillion dollar companies are creating less and less jobs. Millions of workers have already lost their jobs in many sectors especially retail, and many more will as big technology companies replace labourers with robots and artificial intelligence. His oft-quoted example is how automation and driverless vehicles would replace 0.5 million truck drivers in the next decade while 2.5 million call center jobs will be displaced because of artificial intelligence.
His assertion is backed by data. In 2013, Apple, Google, Facebook, and Amazon were worth $1 trillion, but only created 150,000 jobs. An Oxford University study found that nearly half the jobs in America across different industries and skill levels will be done through automation. Another study looked at tasks within different jobs that could be automated. This study found that 14 percent of the jobs across 32 rich countries were vulnerable with 70 percent chances of automat ability, while 32 percent jobs could have the potential of automation by 50-70 percent.
Yang’s solution? A universal basic income (UBI) policy that would put $1000 in the hands of every American adult funded by a value added tax (VAT) on the big winners of the 21st century economy—the so-called Amazons of the world. It is fascinating that he remains the only candidate on the left who demonstrates a keen awareness of why Trump won the 2016 election—one word: jobs; in particularly, Middle American jobs. Yang has argued that Trump’s win in swing States was caused by job losses in those states which Democrats neither acknowledged nor addressed. Trump’s solution to the problem, as it materialized, was going back on globalization and putting controls on imports to “bring jobs back”. Yang wants to do it through the UBI which he calls a “freedom dividend”. He believes that every American should enjoy the spoils of the new economy since they contributed to it one way or the other.
Yang takes a leaf out of Bernie Sanders’ book and attempts to repackage the big bad economic system—capitalism—calling it ‘human-centered capitalism’ where “humans are more important than money” and the focus of the economy would be to maximize human welfare. Of course, in Bernie’s case, the big bad word was socialism which he re-branded as ‘democratic socialism’ characterized by free education and free healthcare and paid for by higher taxes on the richest 1 percent.
The difference between Bernie and Yang is simple yet profound. While Bernie would dictate where the tax collection would be spent on, Yang wants to let the people decide through UBI. The concept itself is not new either. Many historical figures—from Martin Luther King to Nobel winning free-market capitalist Milton Friedman, to Warren Buffet and Elon Musk and more—have suggested some form of universal income over the years; or what Friedman called “negative income tax”.
The merits and demerits of UBI are also well-documented. On the one hand, it gives buying power to the poorest of people and those that have lost their jobs. On the other hand, there is a very real fear that a government handout would de-motivate people from seeking employment. More money in the hands can also cause inflation as spending power goes up for everyone. Meanwhile, the VAT is inflationary as well because it is often passed onto the consumers.
However, what is more intriguing is that the idea resonates with many on the liberal left as well as the conservative right. Where Trump ran on anger, Yang wants to run on logic, reasoning and data which are reflected in his tongue-in-cheek slogan Make America Think Harder (MATH), a twist to Trump’s Make America Great Again (MAGA).
Soon after the first debate, it was clear that many of the current Democratic candidates are piggybacking on Bernie’s ideas that he widely popularized in the 2016 election cycle. It seems the same will happen post- 2020. While Yang’s boldness and overall likeability is not translating in polls fast enough—he may not even make it to the Primaries—his ideas will certainly carry forward. Arguably, if American politics becomes more about ideas than ideology, the country is on the right track, wherever it ultimately lands.
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