Presidential candidate Andrew Yang talks A.I. and a universal basic income

The Future of Work: A Discussion with Andrew Yang

As we navigate the complexities of the modern workforce, it's becoming increasingly clear that traditional employment models are no longer sustainable. The rise of automation and artificial intelligence has led to concerns about job displacement, and policymakers are struggling to find effective solutions. In a recent conversation, I had the opportunity to discuss the future of work with Andrew Yang, the entrepreneur and politician who is running for president on a platform of Universal Basic Income (UBI) and other progressive policies.

Yang's discussion centered around the impact of automation on workers, particularly truck drivers. He pointed out that there are approximately four million people in the United States who drive a car or truck for a living, with most of them being men. The average age of a truck driver is 49 years old, and Yang joked that this demographic is often seen as uneducated and without opportunities for advancement. However, he argued that this stereotype is not only inaccurate but also damaging, as it fails to recognize the skills and dedication required to be a successful truck driver.

Yang's platform aims to provide individuals with a financial safety net, which he believes will enable them to pursue alternative careers or start their own businesses. He cited statistics showing that government-funded retraining programs have had limited success, with effectiveness rates ranging from 0 to 15%. Yang argues that this is because traditional education systems are not equipped to prepare workers for the changing demands of the modern economy.

The discussion also touched on the impact of UBI on the younger generation. Millennials and Gen Z individuals are increasingly concerned about their future prospects, particularly in terms of job security and financial stability. Yang pointed out that recent college graduates face an average debt load of $38,000 and an underemployment rate of 44%. He noted that 94% of new jobs created since 2005 have been temporary or contract-based, leaving many young people struggling to find stable employment.

Yang argued that this is not a result of personal failure on the part of young people but rather a consequence of systemic policies that prioritize corporate interests over human well-being. He pointed out that college education has become two-and-a-half times more expensive since he graduated, and as a result, many students are saddled with crippling debt.

The conversation also delved into the potential benefits of UBI on entrepreneurship and innovation. Yang argued that providing individuals with a guaranteed minimum income would enable them to take risks and pursue entrepreneurial ventures they might not have considered otherwise. He cited studies showing that recipients of UBI experience improved mental health, reduced stress, and increased creativity.

In conclusion, Andrew Yang's discussion highlights the need for policymakers to rethink traditional employment models and prioritize human well-being over corporate interests. By providing a financial safety net and enabling individuals to pursue alternative careers or start their own businesses, we can create a more equitable and sustainable economy that benefits everyone, not just those at the top. As Yang noted, "we're gonna pay you money for being you," and this vision of the future is both exciting and liberating.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enwe're coming to you live from New York and I have with me the first ever political candidate that I've spoken with Andrew yank thank you very much for joining us on the show oh it's great to be here Jeremy thank you thanks for having me Digital Trends of course we are a technology brand we talk about technology one thing we don't like to talk about is politics so it's great to have you here mister politician we're not really gonna talk so much about politics I'm reminded I've been giving some presentations to a bunch of marketers and the gist of it is how much I hate marketing I'm thinking myself well gosh similar concept here don't worry about it I mean I I've been a serial entrepreneur for a couple of decades now and I'm very happy to talk about what's happening in the economy and technology yeah exactly that's what we're looking forward to talking to to you about one of the platforms of your of your one of the tenants of your platform is a universal income yes which is predicated in the fact that we have some concerns about the role that artificial intelligence is playing in society and what it's doing to jobs yeah maybe you can give her a little background on what exactly that means well sure so if you look at the most common jobs in the US economy they're all getting eliminated progressively by artificial intelligence and new technologies so the reason why Donald - no we can argue about that I don't know well you know I wrote a book and like went into the data sets and so if you just think about it for a moment being a retail worker is the most common job in America about 9 million retail workers the average retail workers a 39 year old woman with a high school education making between 11 and 12 dollars an hour now you don't think AI is going to actually walk in and like have a robot that does the cashiers job but we know that 30 percent of American malls are going to close in the next four years along with a similar number of Main Street stores and people who are watching this you're probably seeing stores closed in your Main streets right now is that a reflection on shopping trends or is that about the role of artificial intelligence well that's not AI though Amazon's obviously the big reason why so many of these stores are closing and Amazon's also one of the leading innovators and investors in AI so another thing you might not think of as AI is self-driving cars and trucks and self-driving trucks in particular are going to be rare very very devastating to the three-and-a-half million Americans who work as truck drivers right now it's the mall common job in 29 states so if you see these things coming in the next five to ten years then you start reflecting on what a meaningful solution would be and one of the solutions I propose is universal basic income of $1,000 per American adult which I've christened the freedom dividend because Americans like the word freedom frequency great word let a thousand bucks per month or per year now that's known as per month so twelve thousand dollar income that's actually pretty decent yeah twelve thousand seven hundred seventy dollars is the poverty line in the US so no one's going to be living large on a thousand dollars a month but at the same time it would enable massive improvements in how dynamic our labor market our economy are because right now Americans are moving across state lines at multi-decade lows they're starting businesses at multi-decade low rates I started an organization venture for America that's trying to encourage entrepreneurship and one of the reasons why I became so alarmed as I saw we're where our economy is heading so there are three hundred and twenty nine million people in the u.s. right now right now according to the US and world population o'clock I'm looking at yeah twelve thousand dollars per person sounds like a couple trillion dollars yeah so we're including 18 to 64 year-old Americans so the headline cost would be about two point four trillion dollars per year for reference I've got a I got about fifteen dollars in my wallet right now so I'll contributor that here the age of twenty well thank you we're looking good well so the two point four trillion sounds like a lot but for context our economy has grown to 19 trillion up four trillion in the last ten years alone and the federal budgets around four trillion so the big change we would need to make to pay for the freedom dividend is right now the huge winners are going to be Amazon Google Facebook really the biggest companies that are gonna capture the gains from AI and big data and the American public is going to see very little of that because those tech companies are graded not paying a lot of taxes here in the US they just move it through Ireland or say didn't make any money this quarter now and so what we need to do is we need to join every other advanced economy and have a value-added tax which would then give the public a sliver of every Amazon transaction every Google search because our economy is so massive a value-added tax that even half the European level would generate 800 billion in new revenue and that plus the 800 Billy we currently spend on 126 welfare programs plus the economic growth we'd experience by giving Americans $1,000 a month because right now 57% of Americans can't pay an unexpected $500 bill so if you give them the money they're going to spend it and then all of the cost savings and things like health care incarceration homelessness services and having a stronger better educated more mentally strong population pays for the two point four trillion say well thought-through plan I'm intrigued I must say that tax by the way cut very common in Europe so does that vary based on the on a product is a percentage is it a flat amount how does that get calculated um so for the most part it's a flat percentage okay nice and easy um so there's a fascinating platform I want to drill a little bit into the a I think yes as I've heard this comment from a lot of people that AI is taking away jobs and I would propose instead that for every job that gets taken away AI in technology creates additional jobs so I'm I don't see the rise of AI and the whole issue with jobs are so much of a challenge for this country well so by the numbers it's definitely creating jobs but it's creating smaller numbers of jobs in different places for different people with different skills than the folks that are being displaced so if you just look at the numbers three and a half million truck drivers are you gonna need logistics managers and software engineers and others to manage the soft driving truck fleet yes but is it going to be the same three and a half million people completely not moving probably not and the transitions unfortunately right now are really difficult for many many Americans if you look at what happened to the manufacturing workers we automated away 4 million manufacturing jobs which is why Donald Trump won the election because those jobs were in Michigan Pennsylvania Ohio Wisconsin all the states in the Midwest those workers did not get retrained and Reese killed for new jobs half of them left the workforce and then half of that group filed for disability so if you imagine what's going to happen to the truck drivers that they're all going to become logistics managers and software engineers that's not going to happen now are there gonna be some new jobs yes but they'll be in different places for different people yeah I've heard a lot of concerns about self-driving cars especially there's like a whole industry that lives around just driving cars and driving people yeah yeah I mean they're like almost four million people who drive a car truck for a living in the States and most of them are men and we all know who they are you know the average truck driver is a 49 year old man ninety-four percent of them are male so what I joke is that the person you think of as a truck driver that's actually a truck driver most people probably aren't going well does your platform provide for training to to re-educate people or is it just a well that's one reason why the freedom dividend is so valuable is that if you get $1,000 a month and you're much better positioned to be able to move for a new opportunity or retrain or rescale in a genuine way but unfortunately government-funded retraining programs directly have shown an effectiveness rate of approximately 0 to 15% and fewer than 10% of workers qualify so you're talking about more of a fantasy solution before we went on air you and I were joking about how most politicians aren't fact-based I mean I went looked up the facts and said hey how good are we at retraining people and the answers were terrible at it so you know pretending that we're going to become amazing at it is not a real solution I should keep my $20 as what you're saying don't worry man where there's much more that came from you know you'll you'll be getting the freedom dividend just like me well let's talk about the economy for a second we have a lot of viewers that are Millennials what do you have to say to a younger crowd what are the economy and the jobs market look like for younger people today so young people are very very concerned about their future in the the stats bear that out where if you look at a young person so 32 percent of Americans graduate from college and of that 32 percent now the average debt load is about $38,000 and the underemployment rate if you're a recent college graduate the odds of you getting a job that does not require a college degree is 44% according to New York Fed ninety-four percent of the new jobs created in the u.s. since 2005 have been temporary gig or contract or work so young people are graduating from school with all this debt and then they're having trouble finding a stable job that really will provide them a ladder upwards and they know it they see it they feel it and they say and then the worst part is that we blame the young people for it we're like hey it's somehow your fault like because of your you know cultural lacquers they can't get I mean it's really a moral what we've done the young people where we've set up these institutions I mean why has College become two-and-a-half times more expensive than it was since you and I went to school it has not gotten two-and-a-half times better no oh it's just gotten two and a half times more expensive and then we again we somehow you know like put young people in position we're like well you have no choice but to pay this crazy bill one last question this just occurred to me about the universal basic income people what happens to other any studies that reveal what happened to people when they do get this sort of thing to people lays around and I mean twelve thousand dollars in the ya know there are Studies on it and so what you found is that the only two groups of people that work fewer hours are new moms who spend more time with our kids and teenagers who graduate from high school at higher levels on the flip side are studying more one rope yeah they one would hope on the flip side graduation rates go up nutrition improves mental health improves hospital visits go down domestic violence goes down the studies are really compelling we can make people's lives demonstrably better if we just put a thousand dollars a month into their hands you worded here first folks we're gonna pay you money for being you it would also be the greatest catalyst to entrepreneurship we've ever seen because how many people would start a business they want to if they had a thousand bucks coming you I would yeah oh and you already have me if you're interested in Andrew Yang and his platforms you can learn more at yang 2020 com or you can pick up a book right yes yeah available everywhere it's called the war on normal people don't let that title scare you though it's uh it's actually pretty depressing so a politician with policies based on facts Andrews been a pleasure talking to youwe're coming to you live from New York and I have with me the first ever political candidate that I've spoken with Andrew yank thank you very much for joining us on the show oh it's great to be here Jeremy thank you thanks for having me Digital Trends of course we are a technology brand we talk about technology one thing we don't like to talk about is politics so it's great to have you here mister politician we're not really gonna talk so much about politics I'm reminded I've been giving some presentations to a bunch of marketers and the gist of it is how much I hate marketing I'm thinking myself well gosh similar concept here don't worry about it I mean I I've been a serial entrepreneur for a couple of decades now and I'm very happy to talk about what's happening in the economy and technology yeah exactly that's what we're looking forward to talking to to you about one of the platforms of your of your one of the tenants of your platform is a universal income yes which is predicated in the fact that we have some concerns about the role that artificial intelligence is playing in society and what it's doing to jobs yeah maybe you can give her a little background on what exactly that means well sure so if you look at the most common jobs in the US economy they're all getting eliminated progressively by artificial intelligence and new technologies so the reason why Donald - no we can argue about that I don't know well you know I wrote a book and like went into the data sets and so if you just think about it for a moment being a retail worker is the most common job in America about 9 million retail workers the average retail workers a 39 year old woman with a high school education making between 11 and 12 dollars an hour now you don't think AI is going to actually walk in and like have a robot that does the cashiers job but we know that 30 percent of American malls are going to close in the next four years along with a similar number of Main Street stores and people who are watching this you're probably seeing stores closed in your Main streets right now is that a reflection on shopping trends or is that about the role of artificial intelligence well that's not AI though Amazon's obviously the big reason why so many of these stores are closing and Amazon's also one of the leading innovators and investors in AI so another thing you might not think of as AI is self-driving cars and trucks and self-driving trucks in particular are going to be rare very very devastating to the three-and-a-half million Americans who work as truck drivers right now it's the mall common job in 29 states so if you see these things coming in the next five to ten years then you start reflecting on what a meaningful solution would be and one of the solutions I propose is universal basic income of $1,000 per American adult which I've christened the freedom dividend because Americans like the word freedom frequency great word let a thousand bucks per month or per year now that's known as per month so twelve thousand dollar income that's actually pretty decent yeah twelve thousand seven hundred seventy dollars is the poverty line in the US so no one's going to be living large on a thousand dollars a month but at the same time it would enable massive improvements in how dynamic our labor market our economy are because right now Americans are moving across state lines at multi-decade lows they're starting businesses at multi-decade low rates I started an organization venture for America that's trying to encourage entrepreneurship and one of the reasons why I became so alarmed as I saw we're where our economy is heading so there are three hundred and twenty nine million people in the u.s. right now right now according to the US and world population o'clock I'm looking at yeah twelve thousand dollars per person sounds like a couple trillion dollars yeah so we're including 18 to 64 year-old Americans so the headline cost would be about two point four trillion dollars per year for reference I've got a I got about fifteen dollars in my wallet right now so I'll contributor that here the age of twenty well thank you we're looking good well so the two point four trillion sounds like a lot but for context our economy has grown to 19 trillion up four trillion in the last ten years alone and the federal budgets around four trillion so the big change we would need to make to pay for the freedom dividend is right now the huge winners are going to be Amazon Google Facebook really the biggest companies that are gonna capture the gains from AI and big data and the American public is going to see very little of that because those tech companies are graded not paying a lot of taxes here in the US they just move it through Ireland or say didn't make any money this quarter now and so what we need to do is we need to join every other advanced economy and have a value-added tax which would then give the public a sliver of every Amazon transaction every Google search because our economy is so massive a value-added tax that even half the European level would generate 800 billion in new revenue and that plus the 800 Billy we currently spend on 126 welfare programs plus the economic growth we'd experience by giving Americans $1,000 a month because right now 57% of Americans can't pay an unexpected $500 bill so if you give them the money they're going to spend it and then all of the cost savings and things like health care incarceration homelessness services and having a stronger better educated more mentally strong population pays for the two point four trillion say well thought-through plan I'm intrigued I must say that tax by the way cut very common in Europe so does that vary based on the on a product is a percentage is it a flat amount how does that get calculated um so for the most part it's a flat percentage okay nice and easy um so there's a fascinating platform I want to drill a little bit into the a I think yes as I've heard this comment from a lot of people that AI is taking away jobs and I would propose instead that for every job that gets taken away AI in technology creates additional jobs so I'm I don't see the rise of AI and the whole issue with jobs are so much of a challenge for this country well so by the numbers it's definitely creating jobs but it's creating smaller numbers of jobs in different places for different people with different skills than the folks that are being displaced so if you just look at the numbers three and a half million truck drivers are you gonna need logistics managers and software engineers and others to manage the soft driving truck fleet yes but is it going to be the same three and a half million people completely not moving probably not and the transitions unfortunately right now are really difficult for many many Americans if you look at what happened to the manufacturing workers we automated away 4 million manufacturing jobs which is why Donald Trump won the election because those jobs were in Michigan Pennsylvania Ohio Wisconsin all the states in the Midwest those workers did not get retrained and Reese killed for new jobs half of them left the workforce and then half of that group filed for disability so if you imagine what's going to happen to the truck drivers that they're all going to become logistics managers and software engineers that's not going to happen now are there gonna be some new jobs yes but they'll be in different places for different people yeah I've heard a lot of concerns about self-driving cars especially there's like a whole industry that lives around just driving cars and driving people yeah yeah I mean they're like almost four million people who drive a car truck for a living in the States and most of them are men and we all know who they are you know the average truck driver is a 49 year old man ninety-four percent of them are male so what I joke is that the person you think of as a truck driver that's actually a truck driver most people probably aren't going well does your platform provide for training to to re-educate people or is it just a well that's one reason why the freedom dividend is so valuable is that if you get $1,000 a month and you're much better positioned to be able to move for a new opportunity or retrain or rescale in a genuine way but unfortunately government-funded retraining programs directly have shown an effectiveness rate of approximately 0 to 15% and fewer than 10% of workers qualify so you're talking about more of a fantasy solution before we went on air you and I were joking about how most politicians aren't fact-based I mean I went looked up the facts and said hey how good are we at retraining people and the answers were terrible at it so you know pretending that we're going to become amazing at it is not a real solution I should keep my $20 as what you're saying don't worry man where there's much more that came from you know you'll you'll be getting the freedom dividend just like me well let's talk about the economy for a second we have a lot of viewers that are Millennials what do you have to say to a younger crowd what are the economy and the jobs market look like for younger people today so young people are very very concerned about their future in the the stats bear that out where if you look at a young person so 32 percent of Americans graduate from college and of that 32 percent now the average debt load is about $38,000 and the underemployment rate if you're a recent college graduate the odds of you getting a job that does not require a college degree is 44% according to New York Fed ninety-four percent of the new jobs created in the u.s. since 2005 have been temporary gig or contract or work so young people are graduating from school with all this debt and then they're having trouble finding a stable job that really will provide them a ladder upwards and they know it they see it they feel it and they say and then the worst part is that we blame the young people for it we're like hey it's somehow your fault like because of your you know cultural lacquers they can't get I mean it's really a moral what we've done the young people where we've set up these institutions I mean why has College become two-and-a-half times more expensive than it was since you and I went to school it has not gotten two-and-a-half times better no oh it's just gotten two and a half times more expensive and then we again we somehow you know like put young people in position we're like well you have no choice but to pay this crazy bill one last question this just occurred to me about the universal basic income people what happens to other any studies that reveal what happened to people when they do get this sort of thing to people lays around and I mean twelve thousand dollars in the ya know there are Studies on it and so what you found is that the only two groups of people that work fewer hours are new moms who spend more time with our kids and teenagers who graduate from high school at higher levels on the flip side are studying more one rope yeah they one would hope on the flip side graduation rates go up nutrition improves mental health improves hospital visits go down domestic violence goes down the studies are really compelling we can make people's lives demonstrably better if we just put a thousand dollars a month into their hands you worded here first folks we're gonna pay you money for being you it would also be the greatest catalyst to entrepreneurship we've ever seen because how many people would start a business they want to if they had a thousand bucks coming you I would yeah oh and you already have me if you're interested in Andrew Yang and his platforms you can learn more at yang 2020 com or you can pick up a book right yes yeah available everywhere it's called the war on normal people don't let that title scare you though it's uh it's actually pretty depressing so a politician with policies based on facts Andrews been a pleasure talking to you\n"