Welcome to the show.
Well, it's great to be here. Thank you so much for having me.
Can I... can I just say, of all the candidates
I've seen on the trail, you seem to be having the most fun.
Are you?
Well, it's a very low bar you've set, Trevor.
(laughter)
What does that even mean?
You are. You're, like, out there.
You've got, like, cool music.
You're, like, rapping at, like, campaign events.
It feels like Andrew Yang-- you're just, like...
You're having a good time
whilst you're putting out your policy proposals.
The only place where you didn't seem like you were having fun
was at the debates, where I think
you had two minutes and 53 seconds
of total time that you spoke.
Uh, what are you gonna do differently
in the next one to get more time?
You're gonna... you're gonna cough,
you're gonna, like, interject? Are you gonna...?
I'm assuming you weren't happy.
You know, I'm really happy to say, though,
that the debate in Detroit next week's
gonna be a very different story.
Uh, not only is the format really set up
-for us to succeed... -Right.
...but we just got a poll, just now
that puts us on path to... the path to qualify
-for the debates in September, as well, so... -Right.
The debates-- it's a whole string.
And unlike a lot of the other candidates,
we're in a great position to be here the entire way.
So you're running a long-term race, you know.
You've come in as, um, somewhat of an outsider.
You know, you're an entrepreneur.
You come from Silicon Valley. That is your world.
And many of your policies have been aimed at
or from that direction.
One of the biggest ones being, you've been called, for some,
"The Doomsday Candidate," where you've said,
"Guys, if we don't do something with robots,
about robots and AI, then, it's over for human beings."
What-what do you mean when you say this to people?
Well, I looked at the numbers, I did the math
around what happened to many of the manufacturing workers
in the Midwest that, in my view, ended up electing Donald Trump.
-Yes. -And the trends that affected those communities
are now going to affect retail workers,
which is the number one job in the United States.
It's going to start hitting truck drivers
in the next number of years,
-and driving a truck is the most common job in 29 states. -Wow.
And one of the things that I say is like,
"Look, when you call a customer service line right now,
you get that operator."
In a few years, it's going to be an AI that sounds like this.
"Hey, how's it going, Trevor? What can I do for you?"
-That's creepy, but, yeah. -It's creepy... -(laughter)
Um, but what that's going to mean...
But you think it's gonna get that good.
You think it's gonna get to the point
where even human jobs are now completely done
by AI and robots.
-Certainly a lot of the business process jobs. -Yes.
There are two and half million Americans
-who, uh, do customer service for a living right now. -Mm-hmm.
And that job's days are numbered, unfortunately.
So, then, what do you... what do you think you do
in-in that circumstance? Do you put a tax on robots?
-Do you... do you protect the workers? -(laughter)
This is an honest proposal. It sounds funny.
Yeah. No, don't laugh. That's actually a very good idea.
No, it sounds funny, but... it's actually,
like, an honest proposal.
Like, what do you... what do you say
to American workers who go, "Hey, I don't have a job,
and-and I want to... I want to... I want to change this"?
That's exactly right.
Amazon right now is closing 30% of America's stores and malls
and paying zero in taxes.
So what we do is, we set up a mechanism
where the American people get our fair share
of every Amazon sale, every Google search,
every robot truck mile, and put a dividend
into Americans' hands of $1,000 a month.
The Freedom Dividend would help all Americans feel
like we're benefiting from all of the progress and innovation.
That's an interesting and-and, uh...
-(applause and cheering) -Yeah, you like that.
Yeah, a lot of people like that.
Because I mean, uh, it takes guts to come out and say,
"My plan is that we will give every single American
-$1,000 a month just for being here."
Yeah. It's like Monopoly, but instead of passing "Go,"
uh, it's the first of the month.
You just get... Yeah.
But now, but now, here's the thing
I don't know if you've played Monopoly--
-it always ends in tears. Um... -(laughter)
And that's what people are saying would happen
if you gave people univers... universal basic income.
You know, yes, the smaller countries have trialed it,
but they have found, for instance,
in some Scandinavian countries that then people
don't work enough or they don't want to work,
they lose ambition-- there-there is a negative effect to that.
How do you pay for it, and how do you ensure
that it doesn't mean people just don't contribute to society?
Well, when I've looked at all of the studies
as to what happened when people got money,
only two groups worked less: new mothers,
who spend more time with their children,
and teenagers, who spend more time in school
and graduate at higher levels.
I don't think anyone here has a problem
-with either of those. -(cheering, applause) -Wow.
And, then, how do you pay for it?
And the way you pay for it, again,
if you have a trillion dollar tech company like Amazon
paying zero in taxes, then of course you're gonna look around
and be like, "Where's the money going, where's the money going?"
But if you give the American people a slice
of every Amazon sale,
every, uh, A.I.-driven interaction...
-Yes. -Just a sliver.
Because the amount of value
that that technology's going to generate
can literally be measured in the hundreds of billions of dollars.
We have to put ourselves in position to benefit,
and then we can pay for a dividend
of a thousand dollars a month.
But how is this different to tax?
Because, I mean, isn't that what tax is supposed to be?
Everyone getting a sliver of what people make
so that the general society can rise up?
I mean, if they find a way to not pay what you're saying,
why would-- you know what I mean,
they don't pay now; why would they pay then?
Well, the great thing is,
I'm friendly with a lot of the technologists,
and they're not evil people.
If you say to them, "Hey, you automating away the jobs?"
and you're in private, they're like, "Oh, yeah, yeah,
-I'm doing that." -That sounds evil to me.
Well, they're not doing it deliberately-- it's just, like,
-a repercussion of their work. -Got it, got it, got it. Okay.
And then if you say to them, "Would you like
"to give up a slice so that America actually is in position
to sharing benefit," you know what they say to me?
They say, "No one's ever asked me that before."
So what we have to do is, we have to give them-- really,
in this case, actually, we're not gonna give them a choice,
-we're just gonna make it happen. But... -Right.
-(laughter) -But half of them are on board with it.
-Because they're parents, they're Americans, -Right.
many of them came from other parts of the country,
and so they understand what's happening
more than most other people do, in terms of the economic impact.
That's interesting that they've never been asked.
'Cause I met Jeff Bezos, and I didn't think of just saying,
"Can I have some of your money?"
We don't think of these things.
Yeah, maybe you should have asked him.
We genuinely don't think of that.
Um, you are tackling this whole campaign
from a different point of view.
One of, uh, my favorite quotes that you said was, you said,
um, you are the complete opposite of Donald Trump,
-(whooping) -and the reason was...
-Because he... Thank you. -(cheering, applause)
Well, listen to the reason why.
Because the opposite of Donald Trump
is an Asian man who likes math.
-Yes. -(cheering, applause)
How do you think math helps you in-in campaigning?
Because it-- no-- because it feels like Americans
like more of the show, Americans like more of-of the celebrity,
as opposed to the numbers and the percentages.
Do you think you can break through
with just the math of what you're proposing?
What's fun is, MATH is now an acronym
that stands for Make America Think Harder.
-(whooping, applause) -And...
It's certainly not immigrants that are driving
-these economic problems. -Right.
It's the fact that our economy is now progressing to a point
where things have changed fundamentally.
And when I go around to people in Ohio, New Hampshire,
there's actually a huge appetite for this type of solution.
People say to me all the time, "You don't sound like
any politician I've ever heard before," and they love it.
They're not like, "Oh, get me a politician, fast."
What they say is, "You don't sound like any other politician,
and this is what we need."
So there is such a massive, uh...
market need-- I'm an entrepreneur,
and so you see there's a market need.
In this case, I saw that our politicians
were not going to address the elephant in the room,
so to speak, and so I decided to run for president.
-(whooping, cheering) -Well, it's going to be exciting
to see you at the next debate.
I hope you make it to the next one and the next one,
-'cause it's fun having you around. -Thank you.
Andrew Yang, everybody.