Afraid that superintelligent computers are going to take your job? Andrew Yang has a plan for that. Hate robocalls? Andrew Yang would fine companies that make them. Need marriage counseling? Andrew Yang says all our health plans should pay for family counseling.
When we sat down with Yang, his donor list had expanded to 80,000 donors, albeit small donors who, he jokes, “are cheaper than Bernie’s.” Although he is barely registering support or name recognition in early polls, he’s garnering buzz on social media, where fans show support under #YangGang. Take, for example, one of the ways Yang would address climate change if he were in the White House. While he is in favor of a carbon tax plan that has been floated by moderate Democrats and Republicans, he also supports a highly controversial approach to lowering the earth’s temperature through direct technical means, known as geoengineering.
Yang’s plans to tackle climate change aren’t his only ideas far outside the box. He is reviving a 1970s-era concept that would guarantee every American monthly income from the federal government, repackaging it as a solution to job losses from automation and artificial intelligence. “People realize there’s nothing stopping the members of a democracy from voting ourselves a dividend,” says Yang. “We’re the richest and most advanced economy in the history of the world. Our economy is about $20 trillion. We can easily afford a dividend of a thousand dollars per American.”
Yang clarified his remarks in his Yahoo News interview, saying they were meant to motivate Asian-Americans who have been “politically disengaged.” However, the comments are consistent with Yang’s view that U.S. politicians are intentionally framing China as an antagonist, when it should be seen as a potential collaborator on big issues that cross national boundaries, including AI and climate change.
TheStephSy Automation will create more jobs than it takes, as many case studies have shown. He appeals to the lazy who want to justify their desire of free stuff. There's no gender wage gap as he claims. Yang is also a racist who argues that white people will 'shoot up Asian churches'.