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Why I’m Running for President
I’m writing with some big news to share—I’m running for President as a Democrat in 2020.
This is not something I arrived at lightly. I’m running because I’m confident that we are going to automate away millions of jobs in the next number of years and we need big changes to get through this time. The elimination of 4 million manufacturing jobs in Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania and other midwestern states gave us Donald Trump. The displacement of retail workers, truck drivers, fast food workers, call center workers, etc. will strain our society beyond repair. The simple truth is that our technology is advancing faster than our labor market can adapt—I know this better than most because of my work with Venture for America.
I have met with some of the leading politicians in the Democratic Party and they express in private that these concerns are real, but that we “can’t talk about them.” We are capable of far better than this – we need to own the challenges of this era and rise to meet them, or else we will be left degenerating and fighting the symptoms of diminishing opportunities at every turn.
The deeper you dig into the numbers, the clearer it gets that automation is already tearing our society apart. Consider that our labor participation rate is at a multi-decade low of 62.7% even after 10 years of recovery, 1 out of 5 working-age Americans is out of the labor force, and disability claims are at record highs, as high as 20% of working-age adults in some counties.
Underemployment for recent college graduates is 44%. Our social measurements are telling—7 Americans die of opioid overdoses every hour, middle-aged suicide rates are spiking, life expectancy is declining and 40% of children are born to unmarried mothers due to a crumbling marriage rate among working class adults. These are foundational problems. And they are going to get worse as the malls close and the cars start driving themselves.
Education and retraining are positive but will address only a small proportion of the problem. The data shows that our retraining programs as they are currently practiced are almost entirely ineffective—one study of the Trade Assistance Program found that recipients had lower earnings than other unemployed workers and only 37% were working in the sector for which they were supposed to be retrained. We need to stop wishing and lying to people and start solving real problems.
My platform revolves around 3 proposals:
Universal Basic Income of $1k/month per adult (“the Freedom Dividend”);
Evolution to the next stage of capitalism, “Human Capitalism” geared toward optimizing around human well-being in addition to GDP; and
Single-payer healthcare—necessary in the aftermath of job reduction.
Universal Basic Income would create 4.6 million jobs and increase the size of the economy by 13% in perpetuity. It would also improve relationships and family dynamics, and provide the greatest catalyst to entrepreneurship and creativity we have ever seen.
You may not agree with me on every front. But I hope that you agree that we need to elevate meaningful solutions. I also hope that you’re excited to have me as a spokesperson for new approaches. We have a great team that feels like the best of startups. And we could use your energy and passion.
For those of you who have felt a measure of despair these past months, I’m with you, and I hope that you are excited by the launch of my campaign. We can improve the lives of our fellow citizens and make our country one that we will all be proud to have our children grow up in. We have that power. But no one will do it for us—we’re going to have to do it ourselves. Look forward to going on this journey with you—let’s show what we can do.
Yours gratefully,
– Andrew.
Source: Friends of Andrew Yang
Andrew Yang Keynote at Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire
Hello everyone. It’s a privilege and an honor to be back here at Phillips Exeter. This place shaped me in fundamental ways. I learned so much here. I can honestly say I would never be running for President if not for my time at Exeter.
That said, I didn’t really enjoy my time here. This is my first time back in 27 years.
Most of that was on me. I arrived here as an Upper and you all know that’s a difficult transition. I didn’t really fit in. There was, however, something here that may still be true today. This place was very competitive. And we somehow knew things about each other that we're going to determine where we went to school. “This kid has quadruple legacy to Harvard. That guy’s family literally built Brown University. That guy has a set of restaurant guides named after his family. That guy was going to get an athletic scholarship to Yale.” The subtext was always that our value and stature was going to be determined by where we got into college.
I did well here. I got into Stanford and Brown and decided to go to Brown. That too was a minor source of controversy. People here were like, “Stanford is better than Brown. Why would you go to Brown?” I visited Stanford and thought it was too nice a place to go to school. Their acceptance brochure had been a picture of a football crowd saying “Yes Stanford!” and I didn’t like football. But I mainly went to Brown because my brother was going to school nearby at Wesleyan.
Brown allowed me to grow up. I felt things very strongly throughout my adolescence, probably one reason I didn’t enjoy it here. I had a serious college relationship that, when it ended I took it hard. But it helped me mature. I was pretty depressed and Brown let me get away with that.
After Brown, I still didn’t know what to do. So I went to law school. I spent 5 months as an unhappy lawyer at Davis Polk. And I said, this is a terrible job. My quote at the time was, “This firm is like a temple to the squandering of human potential.” So I quit and started a dot-com.
I’m now thought of as a successful entrepreneur. Some of you read my book ‘Smart People Should Build Things.’ And I’m going to share the secret to entrepreneurship:
Tell everyone you know that you’re going to do something. That way, you don’t have a choice but to do it.
I started Stargiving.com, but it unfortunately flopped. Everyone I knew was aware that I had failed. That hurt too. I worked at another startup that ran out of money and then a healthcare software company. I spent my twenties working at startups that didn’t work out.
Meanwhile, most of my friends at Exeter were bankers, consultants, and lawyers living in very nice apartments in Manhattan. I was living with a roommate, teaching classes and throwing parties on the side. It was hard to stay positive.
During this time, a friend from Exeter, Fiona Smith, called me up and asked me if I would meet with a friend of hers. That meeting changed my life.
Her friend, Zeke had started an education company, Manhattan Prep, and asked if I could help. I later became CEO of that company when I was 31 and Zeke stepped away. The company eventually became number one in the country and was acquired by the Washington Post in 2009.
This is one reason why I know that Exeter shaped my career. If Fiona hadn’t introduced me to Zeke, I never would have wound up running that company.
I was still haunted by the sense that we had so many of our talented people doing one of six things in six places: finance, consulting, tech, law, medicine or academia in New York, San Francisco, Boston, Chicago, DC or LA. This was true of most of my friends at Exeter.
Now, you can’t be negative about something without offering a solution. I thought about what I believed more people like you should be doing 5 or 6 years from now. And I thought you should be starting businesses in places that need it – places like Detroit, New Orleans, Baltimore, or Birmingham. We needed to create a path for people to do that.
So I quit my job and started Venture for America. I donated $120k and started calling rich friends and asked them, “Do you love America.” Classmates from Exeter helped. Another Exonian introduced me to a Foundation that became one of our first funders.
This place is a magical, wonderful, difficult place to come of age. You are around people constantly, yet it is easy to feel alone. You are among the most successful high school students in the country, yet you feel your success to be challenged at all times. You are taught to do good in the world, yet it is your own success that remains the way that you are judged.
In my experience, if you want a career you will be proud of, you are going to have to fight for it. The market will not help you. Instead, the market will drive you to do certain things that may or may not be what you'd imagined. And here in America in 2019, the market is the most powerful force in our society.
Venture for America has a credo, that I hope some of you find useful. I confess that this place very much influenced it. It is:
"My career is a choice that indicates my values. There is no courage without risk. I believe that actions are the proper measure of one’s accomplishments. I will create value for myself and others. I will act with integrity in all things.
Thank you, students of Phillips Exeter. You will shape the future of this country. Use your power wisely.
Source: Friends of Andrew Yang