Written by Brice Hall
Andrew Yang is my Presidential pick for 2020. Yang is an entrepreneur who has focused the majority of his career on creating the entrepreneurs of the next generation. His major project, Venture for America, is an organization that facilitates entrepreneurship in cities that have experienced major economic slowdown.
The Obamas are big fans of Yang, and the Obama administration named him a Champion of Change in 2012 and a Presidential Ambassador for Global Entrepreneurship in 2015.
Yang’s campaign is structured around the Freedom Dividend, a UBI program. UBI stands for Universal Basic Income. Universal Basic Income means that all individuals are cut a check by the government, no questions asked. UBI is an old idea in the U.S. and was first proposed at the national level by President Nixon. UBI would help criminals transition back into society from prison. It would ease national economic anxiety and allow for average Americans to take control of their own life through this economic policy. This would give all Americans 1000 dollars a month to do whatever with. This would be paid for with a tax on major businesses and through the consolidation of several pre-existing welfare programs. The UBI is a defensive policy that will help protect the populace from the advance of artificial intelligence. AI will damage the human condition in a way that we as a species will never be able to recover from. AI is coming and Yang is at least aware of this risk.
Yang is also a major enemy of my arch nemesis- huge corporations. He has proposed a policy that would jail CEO and shareholders of businesses that act recklessly in their own interests and must be bailed out by the federal government. Other policies that Yang supports include lowering the voting age to 16 in order to encourage higher voter turnout and higher civic engagement, to decriminalize marijuana, put body cameras on all police officers, make Puerto Rico a state, hold Big Pharma accountable for the opioid crisis they facilitated and provide basic banking services from post offices which would free the citizenry from banks.
Yang has a plan. He has policies. He has the most proposed policies of any presidential candidate in our nation’s history. He wants to put humanity first. He will be in the first round of democratic debates. Yang Gang 2020.
