Andrew Yang and Yang Gang: the presidential candidate of 2020, explained

The first Democratic presidential debate in June should bring together many familiar faces: Bernie Sanders, Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren, Cory Booker, Amy Klobuchar, perhaps Joe Biden or Beto O'Rourke if they decide to run.

We will probably also see some, even very few political junkies: Andrew Yang.

Yang, a startup veteran and founder of Venture for America, a non-profit organization that has never run in an election before, has a base income of $ 12,000 a year. for all American adults the centerpiece of his campaign. It averages 0 to 1% in opinion polls, but at the time of writing this article, it has surged ahead in prediction markets, with bettors giving it slightly worse odds than Warren, Booker and Klobuchar, and better than those of Tulsi Gabbard, Kirsten Gillibrand or Julián. Castro.

Part of this momentum can be attributed to his appearance on the hugely popular podcast of comedian Joe Rogan (the YouTube clip above of his appearance has been seen more than 2 million times). Small donations began to pour in. By Monday morning, Yang had exceeded 65,000 donors, thus freeing a threshold set by the National Democratic Committee to be eligible for the first two debates.

His campaign manager, Zach Graumann, told The Daily Beast that the campaign had already secured at least 200 donors per state in at least 20 states, eliminating another DNC threshold. "Everything is in place and right from the Joe Rogan podcast. That was the key. It was the moment, "said Graumann to Sam Stein and Will Sommer of the Beast.

Mass Popularity on Interview Podcasts – Yang also appeared on the Sam Harris show Freakonomicsand Vox's Ezra Klein show – is not a traditional path for a successful campaign. The appearances in Tucker Carlson's Fox News program are also not the norm in the Democratic primaries. But much can happen when an unexpected person succeeds well in a debate. It builds name recognition and can help candidates who stand out from the rest of their field (like Donald Trump or Bernie Sanders) to stand out.

And successful or not, Yang is a fascinating cultural phenomenon. It combines a traditionally left-wing platform (massive expansion of the safety net and a new value-added tax or VAT to be paid) with considerable appeal for young, predominantly male, and, in their own unique way, socially public conservatives of people like Joe Rogan and Sam Harris. The same, which shows an angry Trump supporter wearing a MAGA hat and turning into a Yang supporter with a basic income, is a good illustration of how this type of Reddit / 4chan Yang supporter thinks that Yang's message will penetrate to the right:

Indeed, Yang is already winning largely the wars of the kid of 2020 and on the strangest accounts:

For example, I saw this video compilation of pro-Yang memes fit into the "personality cult" of Living Color and now it is necessary to:

4chan is a particularly important focus for the Yang Gang, which can pose some problems given the popularity of the site with some white nationalists; a contributor posted a harmless tweet from Yang on the opioid crisis with the caption "Andrew Yang cares about whites".

Yang, of course, totally rejects the support of the white nationalists. But traditional Yangsters? This is a fan. "If you excite racist white nationalists, bigoted tendencies, I find the situation completely hysterical," Yang told me over a phone call, laughing audibly. "Do you know what I mean? Imagine seeing your face on dragons and all the rest.

"I would like to be able to jump out laughing about his funny, but there is obviously an element that is intimately linked to terrible beliefs," he continued. "Anyone who spends about five seconds looking at me, looking at my background, beliefs, or platform is like saying," This guy is the least white nationalist guy of all time. "

Message received! So what Is Yang represents – and what does his online success mean for the race to 2020?

Meet Andrew Yang

Yang, 44 years old and son of Taiwanese immigrants, worked as a business lawyer ("for five months unhappy," he told Klein) after Brown and Columbia Law, before embarking on startup. His first name was Stargiving and his goal was to "raise money for non-profit organizations affiliated with celebrities," Yang writes in his book. Smart people should build things, a kind of unofficial manifesto for its nonprofit organization Venture for America, which places recent graduates of elite schools within startups in cities like Detroit and Baltimore. "It was extraordinarily difficult. My business failed dramatically, but I recovered, "he writes.

"I went to work for a mobile software company, Crisp Wireless, and then a health software company, MMF Systems, over the next five years, eventually becoming the CEO of a test-preparation company, Manhattan GMAT, in 2006, "he added. keep on going.

The GMAT Manhattan is now known as Manhattan Prep. He went from preparation to GMAT (standard admission test to business schools) to preparation for GRE and LSAT. A few years after the takeover of Yang, the test preparation giant, Kaplan (owned by the Washington Post Company), bought Manhattan Prep.

In 2011, Yang launched Venture for America (VFA), an effort to prevent elite colleges and universities from directing graduates to safe options (such as positions in finance, consulting management or law) by engaging teams of Fellows to the cities. across America and work for local startups.

As reported in the 2013 New York Times profile, the group offers new graduates a five-week training camp on entrepreneurship and then puts them to work with start-ups in companies that must be less than 10 years old and employ less than 100 people. Starting salaries range from $ 33,000 to $ 38,000. Targeted Fellows are students from select schools who could easily generate six figures for other jobs just after leaving high school.

The profile, by Hannah Seligson, describes VFA as a darling of founders of wealthy startups such as Tony Hsieh of Zappos (based in Las Vegas, a VFA town) and Dan Gilbert of Quicken Loans (based in Detroit, another VFA town) ). And if you read Smart people should build thingsthis cultural milieu shines through. This is not the work of a radical socialist brandon. He speaks the language of founders of startups and TED speakers, and directly targets an audience of elite college graduates in an attempt to better geographically spread economic growth in the United States and Canada. to improve the allocation of talents of elite institutions.

"We use educational attainment as an imperfect indicator for" smart "and are talking about people being tracked, sorted and aggregated throughout their adolescence in different universities and degree programs," he wrote in the introduction. And, not surprisingly given the name "Venture for America," the book largely equates value creation in forgotten parts of the United States with business creation in that country. Examples offered by Yang include Kickboard, a VFA partner company "that provides a software application to help teachers track student performance," and ShapeUp, which "helps people promote health and wellbeing through through social networks and the measurement of goals ".

"People and businesses across the country are solving real problems right now," says Yang. This kind of business is what it means.

The dividend of freedom: Yang's universal basic income plan

The centerpiece of Yang's campaign is his call for a universal basic income (UBI) which he calls the dividend of freedom (he told Klein, with a little outspoken characteristic, that he so calls because it "tests better" than "universal basic income").

The dividend of freedom, described in the second book of Yang The war against normal people, is a check for $ 1,000 per month (or $ 12,000 per year) sent to every American adult aged 18 to 64, unconditionally. It is a purely universal basic income, with no progressive suppression of the highest incomes or professional requirements. For Americans currently benefiting from programs such as social security disability insurance, food stamps or housing assistance under Section 8, Yang would propose a choice between the existing welfare state and the Freedom Dividend, in the hope that no one would be left worse. of.

Yang, like many entrepreneurs attracted by UBI, is adopting this policy to deal with automation. "Truck driving is the most common job in twenty-nine states, with 3.5 million drivers – 94 percent of them men – and 12 million more workers at truck stops and motels across the country." Says his website. "What happens when the trucks start driving themselves?"

"Humanity First" is among the most prominent slogans of the Yang campaign. It oversees its main Freedom dividend financing mechanism – a 10% VAT – to prevent large companies like Amazon and Google[ling] hundreds of billions of gains abroad. VAT prohibits them from taking advantage of American people and infrastructure without paying their fair share. According to her, this would "capture the value generated by automation so as to avoid income taxes".

It's a strange claim. Taxes are essentially sales taxes collected at each stage of production (when a timber company sells wood to a paper mill, when the paper mill sells paper to Dunder Mifflin, when Dunder Mifflin sells you paper) and, as a result, economists generally believe that consumers bear almost the entire cost of increasing VAT rates. Recent empirical studies confirm this: while VAT cuts are often perceived by the companies that cash them in the form of an increase in their profits, they are however advised to pass on the increase in VAT rates to their consumers.

Part of the burden would probably weigh on companies – on the one hand, VAT would reduce the value of their profits do all the benefits of things can buy more expensive – but it is above all a tax on consumption.

And Yang understands that. In his interview with Klein, he justifies the regressive nature of the tax by pointing out that the highly progressive nature of the free dividend compensates for it. He concedes that it would be necessary to put in place a policy for seniors with fixed incomes, who would see their purchasing power drop considerably.

In addition to VAT, Yang would finance the freedom dividend with savings from other social protection programs to which the beneficiaries would have subscribed; reducing the costs of social diseases such as crime, incarceration and health problems due to poverty reduction; and economic growth, citing the Roosevelt Institute, estimates that a basic income, especially if not accompanied by higher taxes, would significantly increase GDP by stimulating consumption.

The rest of Yang's platform

His agenda does not stop there: the Yang 2020 policy page is a concentrate of ideas from the mainstream Democrat (Medicare-for-all, paid family leave, legal marijuana) to Extremely Andrew Yang ($ 100 purchase vouchers for all Americans). nonprofit organizations, an American program of journalism to revive local news, an American Mall Act to find new uses for closed shopping centers, geo-engineering to combat global warming, l & # 39; hiring a psychologist at the White House to "monitor the mental health of employees working in the executive branch").

A group of people fall into the category of "more popular among liberal political bloggers than most politicians," like reviving reservations to make bills easier to pass through or the automatic deposit of bills. income tax.

Then the platform settles in unknown territory (thanks to Jeremiah Johnson, host of The neoliberal podcast and a skeptic Yang, to report them to me). Mr. Yang called for a 15-20% reduction in the federal workforce, saying he "will hire a management consulting firm to identify areas of workforce inefficiency" federal".

This is a strange argument, especially for primary Democratic voters. Under Barack Obama, the federal workforce has fallen to its lowest level as a percentage of total strength since the FDR. There are fewer people working for the federal government than under Ronald Reagan, even though the population has grown by 100 million since then. Low salaries in the public service have resulted in the removal of traditional federal government jobs by private contractors, who are generally significantly better paid for similar jobs. And in any case, provoking massive layoffs in an institution that employs 2 million Americans seems hardly compatible with a "human first" approach.

When pushed on it, Yang's slightly withdrawn. "I'm not saying that too many people work for the federal government as a whole," he told me. "We should hire thousands of people for public works projects and make our infrastructure more sustainable and resilient, but that does not mean you would not want to look closely at the organization you currently have." really think that the government could use some streamlining in existing departments, and additional automation.

He adds, "One of my proposals, which I think would be a big win, was suggested by one of your colleagues: moving several DC agencies, because Washington is a very expensive region, with a lot of traffic and development. … The costs would be lower, jobs and energy would be higher, and the culture of the departments would be modified to get closer to the needs of the population. "

Yang also wants to establish an information and information ombudsman at the Federal Communications Commission to fight false information, with the power to impose "sanctions for persistent and destructive anomalies that undermine the discourse public". You do not have to be a First Amendment absolutist to see how that could go wrong, but Yang thinks the risks of overshooting are manageable. "The real problem is that no one can hear anything about it and that foreign actors make fun of their democracy while they alter our democracy, because nobody can distinguish facts of fiction, "he said.

And then there is the Legion of Builders and Destroyers, the real name of Yang's signature infrastructure proposal. He proposes to siphon:

10% of the military budget – about $ 60 billion a year – to a new national infrastructure force called Legion of Builders and Destroyers. The Legion would be responsible for maintaining the strength of our country by ensuring that our bridges, roads, electricity grid, fees, dams and infrastructure are up to date, healthy and secure. It would also be able to clean abandoned buildings and structures that cause urban burn in many of our communities and respond to natural disasters. … The Legion Commander would have the power to override local regulations and ordinances to ensure that projects start and end quickly and efficiently.

You may think that you have misread, but you have not done so. I asked him where this power would expand – could the Legion commander decide to build a highway through downtown Manhattan, whether residents liked it or not?

"Clearly, consensus and agreement would still be needed. You would not want an autocrat to make decisions that would eventually do something that would be ineffective or negative for a given community at a high level, "he explained. "But we have to face facts that show that the United States has struggled to build things because everyone has their hands tied by bureaucratic processes that have been exaggerated in many cases."

"I'm glad you like the name, because who would not want to join the Legion of Builders and Destroyers?", He adds.

The Yang Meme Gang

If I had never heard of Andrew Yang before and you had asked me: "Who is the natural basis for a candidate who wishes to create a legion of builders and destroyers?", I would say: "Obviously, the memelords on Reddit and 4chan. the prophecy has been fulfilled.

"In recent weeks, Yang has been the subject of frequent positive 4Chan threads, normally a fortress for Donald Trump's most racist fans," write Stein and Sommer of the Daily Beast. "Yang's UBI proposal has been particularly appealing to 4Chan users who adopt the" NEET "lifestyle without change (" No education, job or training ") and prefer to play games video all day long as having a job. The posters of 4Chan began to admire Yang Dividend's proposal entitled Freedom Dividend "NEETbux". "

Indeed, a quick glance at / pol /, 4chan's political discussion forum, reveals several sons of Yang, including one who claims that Bun Bun-esque claims that Yang is Yang, infused with a large dose of orientalist stereotypes ("Yang would have more than 215 IQ, such intelligence on Earth existed only in Tibetan monasteries and in zone 51").

But not all pro-Yang 4chan posters are benign fans of NEETbux. My colleague from Verge, Russell Brandom, notes that some white nationalists were mistaken in making them believe that Yang was on their side. a contributor posted a harmless tweet from Yang about the opioid crisis with the caption, "Andrew Yang cares about whites". At least one prominent fighter of legend with a large platform – Richard Spencer – expressed sympathy for Yang's campaign.

Yang completely rejected any support from white nationalists like Spencer in a statement to Brandom:

I denounce and disavow hatred, fanaticism, racism, white nationalism, anti-Semitism and common law in all its forms. Complete stop. For those who have this agenda, we do not want your support. We do not want your votes. You are not welcome in this campaign. "

So far, Yang's outstanding online follow-ups have put him on the right track to participate in the televised debates. But as Brandom notes, the perception of support from some of the most harmful neighborhoods on the Internet is likely to hurt the reputation of the campaign and unfairly. There are many valid reasons – his inexperience in the government, some of his most extroverted elements – not to support him, but the fear that he is associated with the right is not part of it.

To build the Yang Gang in the future, Yang will have to find a way to exploit his enthusiasm for him on sites like Reddit, without his worst elements tarnishing him unjustly by association.

But his mere candidacy and presence at the debate stage count. In an extremely overcrowded field, candidates need signature ideas that stand out. That's why Julian Castro is trying to become the pro-reparations candidate, why Pete Buttigieg wants to be the runaway candidate for the courts, and why Jay Inslee wants to be the climate nominee.

And Yang's signature idea is arguably the most daring and surprising of the group. This could help Yang stand out – and could help UBI become even more dominant.

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