President Barack Obama meets with Champions of Change alumni in the Map Room of the White House, April 26, 2012. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)
Andrew Yang is running for the Democratic nomination for president in 2020.
Andrew Yang is not going to win the Democratic nomination for president in 2020.
I guess I could leave it at that. But that’s no fun. Yang is drawing some media attention because he’s a Silicon Valley (note: “entrepreneurial/tech/startup industry”) guy who has too much time and money. And so he’s visiting the early caucus and primary states.
Yang’s background is in tech, as I noted. He was most recently the CEO of Venture for America, which connects young people with venture capitalists. Sometimes with sexy results. Previously he was a CEO in the standardized test prep industry.
But, you know, enough about Andrew Yang for now. I want to talk about his platform. His single issue platform. Because his single issue is universal basic income, the topic of my previous post.
Yang really loves UBI, and his proposal is rather detailed. He’s running as a Democrat, and he’s claiming some generic leftist cred. But, as any good tech utopian, Yang is running in the ‘post-ideological‘ lane.
As with everyone else, Yang has gotten around to writing a book. It’s about UBI, and it’s called The War on Normal People.
I’m going to evaluate Yang’s UBI proposal by the standards I laid out for a good leftist universal basic income. Is Yang’s proposal universal? Is it basic? Finally, is it feasible as a leftist plan?
