Good job. Thank you
Only go, how beautiful are you Atlanta?
Wow, why are my rallies always composed of the most beautiful people in this country?
First let's thank lacy haunted Marci Allen. Oh
That's the greatest thing is that you come to places like Atlanta you like it lacy and I actually have friends online
Then you get to meet someone in person
I have to say meeting someone in person is about a thousand times better than meeting them online. I
Highly recommend it. So if you're friends with people online, try and meet them face-to-face
Oh
Someone asked me have I been to Atlanta lot
I bet it would land a lot over the last number of years
But I have to say I've never been to this park
I never really enjoyed this place as like like someone who was here. Like I always been very transactional about my time in Atlanta
So like in and out, you know what I mean?
Like I didn't know if coming in and I just go downtown
I do some corporate meeting and then often I'd instead of turning around
But I want to spend some more time than land. I get to know you all
Because this place is tremendous and you guys keep sucking up some of my favorite people from the East Coast you
Guys, just keep on absorbing them. How many of you are all from the Northeast and you've wised up?
yeah, we know you escaped and
We envy you we're mad. And the way we're gonna show our anger is we're gonna follow you
Know so I'll make you yeah, you look gathered. I'm running for president as a Democrat in 2020
When I have not a career politician
I'm an entrepreneur. I'm a problem solver and I've been studying for the last number of years how to create jobs
I jumped in studying
I'm actually not much of a studier anymore more of a doer where I went around the country trying to create jobs in Detroit
Cleveland st. Louis Birmingham New Orleans, I started an organization called venture for America of you know a venture for America raise your head
Yeah, talk about
So I've been doing that word for the last number of years and then Donald Trump won the election of 2016
Whoo, I know some of you supported Donald Trump but it's cool because we got all sorts of people in the yang gay
People it's all good so with Donald Trump one
To me. This was the way I interpreted the results. I was like wow America is so
Hurting that we took a chance on a narcissist reality TV star as our president. I
Was like that's pretty bleak. And so I started digging into the numbers. If you go to the mainstream, press no bars. That's right
Make America think harder. Am I right?
So what are the mainstream press explanations for why Donald Trump is our president today like what do they say
You just turn down cable news. You didn't know anything. Like why would you think he won?
Electoral college
now Electoral College Russia as a matter of fact
I brought a copy of the Muller report with me and I'm going to read it to you
For a day then
I'm kidding obviously has 446 pages. We've been here all night
So it's a little electoral college
Russia
Racism
Facebook the FBI something about Hillary
These are the explanations that have been offered to us as to why America decided to go with Donald Trump in 2016
And I looked at this
myself and I said that's missing the central point that
The reason why Donald Trump is our president today is that we automated away 4 million manufacturing jobs in Michigan
Ohio
Pennsylvania where you from brother you're from here, but he still he still knows this is true
Wisconsin Missouri, Iowa all the swing states that he needed to win and did win how many of you all work in technology?
I know that there are a bunch of people here I do
Yeah, there are a lot of techies in the yang gang
So any other hand up, you know that what we did to the manufacturing workers
We will now do to the retail workers
The call center workers the fast-food workers
The truck drivers and on and on through the economy and it's not just blue collar workers. It's also white collar workers
I was just talking to a marketing Pro who tells me that a lot of marketing is becoming data and algorithms
You know, it used to be come up with a creative message now. It's like we don't need you to be creative
We're just going to test
18 of them and then the numbers will tell us which one is the best and you can just sit back. Yeah the math
And I was an unhappy corporate attorney for five months and I can guarantee you you can automate that job
So there are a lot of jobs that are gonna be subject to automation that are not just the manufacturing jobs
This is gonna rip through our economy
In a very dramatic way and Lela is one of the most prosperous cities in our country
So in many ways you all are like some of like you have different experiences with this than a lot of the country
but you know that these changes are coming in part because many of you
those of you had your hands up before you're working on making these changes of reality every day and
You see it and I have many friends who are techies and if you ask techies, hey
Do you think that we are automating away many other Americans jobs?
Most techies will say yes. Yes, we are and then if you ask hey, how do you feel about it?
Don't feel they'll say I don't feel good about it
And then if you asked you want to help me and do something about it and help prepare America
They say yes, and you guys are here today because you said yes, too. So, thank you very very much. So
These are the problems were in the third inning of the greatest economic and technological transformation in the history of the world
experts call it the fourth Industrial Revolution and
This is why Donald Trump's our president. He's the symptom
He's the manifestation and yet everyone is reacting as if he's the cause of all of these problems
He is not you don't get angry at the symptom
You cure the disease and the disease
Right now is this rampant economic insecurity that's tearing our society apart because more and more Americans are getting pushed to the sidelines
So if you're all here today, you know this about me
There's an Asian man running for president who wants to give everyone $1,000 a month
Yeah, secure the bag indeed yeah
And all three of those statements are true I am Asian
I am running for president and I do want to give everyone $1,000 a month
Now it seems awfully dramatic, but then if you dig into our country's history
You see that Thomas Paine was for it at the founding of the country called it the citizens dividend
Martin Luther King
championed it in
1967 in his book chaos our community and you can google in YouTube his lectures in
1967 where this was the focus of his activism in
1967 the year before he was assassinated in
1968 and he was not arguing alone Milton Friedman and a thousand economists
Signed a study saying this would be tremendous for America and I don't know how you feel about him
But Jamie Dimon the CEO of JP Morgan
Just this week came out and said we should guarantee every American a minimum income
So this is not some like like radical idea
This is actually mainstream political wisdom in the 60s and 70s. It passed the House of Representatives twice in
1971 under Richard Nixon of all people and
Then 11 years later one state passed a dividend where now everyone in that state gets between one and two thousand dollars a year
No questions asked and what state is that?
And how do they fund it? And what is the oil of the 21st century?
Marijuana that's right
Oh, it's technology. You had it, right?
I'm just messing with you Atlanta. No, it's technology. It's AI. It's robotics, its self-driving cars and trucks
It's big data. Is this incredible wave of innovations? That's coming down the pike
Now who's gonna win from all these innovations?
You know Amazon on a related point, why are three percent of malls and stores closing around the country Amazon?
Yeah, pretty much. This is like a test where Amazon is always the answer
Who paid zero in federal taxes last year?
That's right
so this is the quandary that we're in you have Amazon that's sucking up 20 billion dollars of
Value every year and it's pushing 30% of Main Street stores and malls into oblivion
How many of you have noticed doors closing around where you live?
Yeah, and it makes you sad but then you realize you haven't been in that store in months and you live in unusually prosperous areas
Now unfortunately being a retail worker is the most common job in the United States of America
The average retail worker is a 39 year old woman making between 10 and 11 dollars an hour and you know that she does not
Have a huge savings cushion. So what is her next opportunity going to be when the mall or the store closes?
How many of you saw the recent AI demo from Google where the AI did the job of like picking up a phone call?
And I'm making appointments you guys see that?
What do you think the time frame is on AI being able to outperform the average call center worker?
Who makes about 14 bucks an hour?
Five years two years
now
There are two and a half million call center work in the United States. So when AI can outdo
All right right. Now when you call a company and you get the bot, you're like human human human zero zero human human
Shut up. Shut up human. I didn't say thank Dory
But in three years the AI is gonna be like, hello. How are you doing? I
Need this you'll be like sure no problem. You're gonna do it. You're like, oh that was delightful
We're about two or three years away from a I actually seeming human
And when that happens, it's not going to be a problem for a thousand or 10,000 Center workers
It's gonna be a problem for a hundred two hundred
Half-a-million call center workers
So this is what the technology wave is going to do
Driving a truck is the most common job in 29 states in this country. How many people know a truck driver?
Yeah, and so I now know many more truck drivers than I than I did about 18 months ago
But when you hang out with truck drivers today
You see the reality of their job driving a truck is a very very difficult punishing job. I mean, you know what I'm talking about
but when you got when you drive a truck the truck forces you to stop driving after 14 hours because it says it's time for
You to take a nap, you know, it's time for you to go to sleep
The robot trucks don't need to stop and my friends in Silicon Valley are working on these robot trucks. They can drive themselves
Now, why are they working so hard on the robot trucks?
The most American reasons of all money a
Hundred sixty eight billion dollars in financial incentives to automate truck driving a hundred sixty eight billion with a B
Per year. So if you're an investor, you can plow hundreds of millions of dollars into
technology that waynebow might acquire because you can see that you can save tens of billions of dollars a year by automating away a
Proportion of the three and a half million truck driving jobs, and it does not just labor savings
It's equipment utilization because the truck never needs to stop its fuel efficiency because the robot trucks can convoy and then lower wind resistance
It's fewer accidents. And so you can actually make a moral arguments. Like hey investing in robot trucks could save human lives
But it's going to be a disaster
For the three and a half or at least some of the three and a half million Americans who drive a truck for a living?
and the over five million Americans who work at truckstops
Motels and diners around the country that rely upon the truckers getting out and stopping
so when I went to Washington DC with all this set of problems and as
As lazy and marseilles said I did write a book about this stuff and I'm a pretty cool guy
So I went to Washington DC and I started I'll try and sign that for you. Thank you
Um, I went to Washington DC with the set of problems
Then I said look Donald Trump's our president because we're in the midst of this fourth Industrial Revolution
We need to have real solutions
And what do you think the folks in DC said to me when I when I with this set of problems?
Come back later, don't talk to me. Who are you?
The real responses I got were number one we cannot talk about this number two, we should study that
number three, we must educate and retrain Americans for the jobs of the future and
That that third one said the supports are behind me just said it doesn't work. Who is that? Yeah, that's right, man
It doesn't work. So then I said I looked at the numbers
And
We're terrible at retraining the effectiveness rate of federally funded retraining programs is between zero and 15% a year
And when I set that to the folks in DC, you know what they said to me. They said I guess we'll get better then
And so I had to take the train back from DC
Thinking like are we this backward as a country that we can't even wake up to the challenges that somehow we're blaming immigrants
when it is not immigrants, it is technology that is causing these dislocations and
One person Washington DC said something to me that has been motivating me to this day
And I'm so glad I had someone with me because he can vouch for this conversation because it sounds like it's made it up
He says Andrew no one in Washington DC will do anything about the set of problems you're talking about
Because this town is not a town of leaders. This is a town of followers and
the only way that we will do something is if you create a wave in
Other parts of the country and bring it crashing down on our heads and that's the only way we will wake up
And you know I said to that I said challenge fucking accepted
And that is why I'm here with you tonight
Atlanta
That is why we are going to make the freedom dividend
Mainstream wisdom in 2020 and it's going to be the first thing I do as president in 2021
So this freedom dividend that sound so radical the first time you heard about it
You were like ha ha ha like yeah, you know, that sounds too good to be true
I went through a bit of the history
I went to the fact that Alaska is doing it and then if Alaska is doing it with oil money
Then we can do it with technology money
And I want you all to think about what it would mean for you and everyone in Atlanta if you all got $1,000 a month
Where would you spend it? What would you do with it?
Bills dogs, I like it as a dog owner. That's right. American should be other own dogs. Am I right?
What kind of countries if you can't afford to own a dog
What else
Savings right bills, so we're in a country where right now
70% of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck including many of our friends and neighbors
57% cannot afford an unexpected $500 bill
Our life expectancy has declined for the last three years because of surges in suicides and drug overdoses
and our mental health is at crisis levels where we have
Anxiety and depression and stress at unprecedented heights in our country
So a thousand bucks a month. What's it going to do?
It's going to make it so that we can actually breathe easier
we can get the boot off of our own throats and
Most of that money would stay right here in your local communities
You would be giving it to local
Service providers and vendors and a lot of those people would then turn around and maybe even hire more people
How many of you think you might start a business if you're getting a thousand bucks a month?
That's exactly right
I'm an entrepreneur
And I know that most entrepreneurs are not on their last dollar
Trying to figure out how to make ends meet and then they go. Oh, I think when to start a business
Like that's not the way it works at all the way it works
is that when you can put when you can get your head up and you can see that your future is secure and then you
Can start solving problems for yourself and people around you? That's when you start a business
So this is the freedom dividend. It's going to make our community stronger
it's gonna make us healthier and mentally healthier and the Democratic Party talks about empowering women all the time and
We know that there are thousands of women right here in Atlanta and millions around the United States that are in exploitative or abusive
Jobs or relationships because they lack the economic freedom to walk away
And there is nothing more real we could do to empower those women than to give them $1,000 a month
The Democratic Party can either talk about empowering women or we can do something about it and I say we do something about it
What do you think?
The Democratic Party talks about empowering
Communities of color and marginalized people and I'm going to say that $1,000 a month would go much further to help
African Americans and communities of color who have lower access to education and resources and opportunities we can talk about
empowering
African Americans or the community so we can do something about it and I choose to do something about it. What is it?
And the great thing is there is nothing stopping a majority of citizens in a democracy from declaring ourselves a dividend
Nothing at all. All we have to do is get a majority of us to wake up and say you know what?
He's talking sense
I think it dividends a good idea and then I will run the table and I will pass this as president in 2021
Now you all are seem very very young and healthy
So this might not be as pressing for you, but we also have to get health care off the backs of American people
Because right now is the leading cause of bankruptcy is making us miserable
we spent twice as much in our health care as other countries to worse effects and
When we get sick or injured or our loved ones get sick or injured
We are more stressed out about navigating our crazy system and paying the bills and we are about getting healthy and it's totally unnecessary
We can make it better in anyone anytime. Someone says where are you gonna get the money for a single-payer health care?
I'm for Medicare for all public option single-payer health care
Okay, thank you thank you Bernie Sanders for me and screaming that I gotta give it up
But when people say where you gonna get the money
they're out of their minds and we spend 18 percent of GDP already and the money's coming out of families pockets and
Companies pockets and just getting passed along to us
anyway, we have this giant private insurance system that's siphoning off billions and billions of dollars and then you're like
We're gonna get the money. Are you kidding me?
We're gonna save so much money just by getting rid of this giant like matrix of middlemen that really do nothing
except extract value for themselves
And the third thing we're gonna do I'd like to talk about my wife a little bit first
How many of you woke up this morning and there you are excited about GDP
Like I'm gonna make a big contribution today. I can feel it
And on a serious note, my wife is at home right now with our two boys one of whom is autistic
What does her work calculated out of GDP?
What is the market value her work at and we know that's nonsense?
We know that the hard work is some of the most important and challenging and vital work being done in our society today
So if we use GDP as our measuring stick, we're gonna follow it off a cliff
Robot trucks will be great for GDP. They're gonna be terrible for human beings
So what would you all get excited about if it was the way we actually measure progress if GDP is obviously a joke to you
All like what might actually excite you when you wake up in the morning
Mantle hell. Yeah, how about mental health and freedom from substance abuse?
How about our own health and life expectancy
How about how clean our air and water on
How about average income and affordability
So believe it or not. That's the way we can measure economic progress. We made up GDP almost a hundred years ago
And even the inventor said he said three things number one
This is a terrible measurement for national well-being and we should not use it as that
Number two, we should include Parenthood and motherhood because it's so important and number three
We should not include military defense spending because it adds no economic value
And of course we ignored all of that and now we're just like yeah GDP and now we're gonna ride it until we die
So believe it or not as president. It's gonna be very easy for me to upgrade us from GDP
All I have to do is go down the street to the Bureau of Labor and Statistics and say hey GDP
Really old very out of date
we're now going to start using this basket of
Indicators called the American scorecard and I'm going to present it to you the American people every year at the State of the Union
I'm going to be the first president to use a PowerPoint
Here's how we're doing here's we're going to do to do better instead of these bizarre theater performances were subject to they're unwatchable
What the heck is going on
you gotta treat this on here like oh my gosh like and then people are like standing up and clapping and unison and like it's
This whole big deal like that. The whole thing has gotten so weird
So I'm just going to present to you the facts as to how we are doing
So this is the next generation of GDP the American score code. So number one the freedom dividend everyone gets a thousand bucks a month
Number two single-payer health care not single-payer the public option medicare for all
At number three humans that are capitalism the American scorecard
So if you go to yank 2020 calm you'll see I've got about 94 other policies including legalizing marijuana
Getting these crazy student loans off your back because
Like like we're after 1.5 trillion in student loan debt and so you have to ask yourself
Like what is our real preference is our preference that young people live in their parents?
Basements and like and pay off this phantom debt, or would we rather? Have young people out there buying homes?
Starting businesses starting families and moving our society forward
And it's obvious
We should have young people
Moving our society forward then when people are like where you gonna get the 1.5 trillion to pay off the loans
I'm like where the heck do we get the 4 trillion to bail out the banks during the wall street that
Voting for that, I don't
Remember anyone freaking out about wearing at the money, I don't
So this is a stimulus of the people
We're just gonna say look we put the money into Americans hands. Guess what?
It's gonna make us stronger and we are the owners and shareholders
Of this country. Are we not?
So these are the policies that will help move our country forward and I have to say Donald Trump got a lot of the essential
Problems, right? It's one reason why he's the president today
He went around saying to the American people we have problems and then the Democratic response at the time was essentially
No, things are great
and the American people disagreed
So Donald Trump got the problems, right? But his solutions are backward. His solutions are all wrong
His solutions are build a wall
Turn the clock back
Magically restore the jobs and I'm saying we have to turn the clock forward
We have to accelerate we have to build an economy that works for people in the 21st century
And I'm man for that job because the opposite of Donald Trump is an ancient man who likes man
Thank You Atlanta look beautiful we're gonna travel in 2020
I'm gonna tell you guys a little bit about the campaign just so you guys are into it
So some of you are hardcore, yangyang and I love you
And I thank you all those of you with us here because your friends drive you here and it's cool
But we are polling at 3% nationwide right now
We are polling at 3% and we raised almost three million dollars and my name recognition is lower than any other candidates
how many of you guys know who nate silver is 538
So nate silver took a look at those three numbers. He said okay polling 3% raised almost three million dollars
bottom-of-the-barrel name recognition
And he said and I quote we cannot rule out the possibility that as more people find out about Andrew
Yang, he grows and grows runs the table and wins the whole thing
And that is why we need your help because as more people find out about
This campaign the trickle up economy from people families and communities up
Then there's no stopping us
what's happened to us as a people as we've forgotten what is possible we have forgotten the power that we hold and
This campaign is going to wake people up to the fact that we are still in control of our own future
This campaign is powered more our average donations only nineteen dollars. So I joke that our fans are even cheaper than Bernie's
This is the cheapest gang to join you'll ever find
Initiations only $19 if you give $20 you're immediately an above average gang member
The other thing is you can actually leave this gang and we'll never know
We won't follow you. There's no punishment. There's no like Oh find that person
I mean, I'd be very hurt if you left the gang obviously, but we would never know so this is a very very
Thank you
So this campaign
Right now is that it's early stages you all by being here today are early adopters
And what we need your help in doing is we need your help in growing and growing from now
Through May. I've already qualified for the DNC primary debates in general
And you know what's gonna happen when people turn on that debate they're gonna say who the heck is that guy
And then they're going to Google Andrew young and they're gonna be like, holy crap that makes a lot of sense
So what we need your help in doing is we need your help to normalize this campaign between now and
June so that when people turn on that TV being like oh
Wait a minute. One of my friends told me about this guy. They sent me a link
I'm a man named a knot. I've watched the video, but now that I'm seeing him. He's actually
You know, he's actually the only person who's laser focused on solving the problems. I got Donald Trump elected in 2016. So
This is our path forward, we are growing by leaps and bounds every day. Our potential is higher than any other
Democratic candidate because we are already getting Trump supporters. Anyone here Trump supporters. You can admit it a
Few of them. You can hear them. There were those shy but he's got it we're getting libertarians
We're getting independence
We're getting conservatives
We're
We're getting Democrats
We're getting progressives
We're getting far left liberals
Because it is not left it is not right it is forward
And that is how we're going to win the White House in 2020 Thank You, Atlanta
Like