Who is Andrew Yang and why is he running for President?

YANG2020

Andrew Yang dreams big.

UPDATED April 15, 2019 to include information from Huffington Post interview.

HIS NAME is Andrew Yang and he's running to be President of the United States.

Andrew who?

While 0ther politicians with more familiar names are heming and hawing about throwing their hat in the ring for the 2020 Presidential elections, Yang may be the first to declare his candidacy.

"I’m running for President as a Democrat in 2020 because I fear for the future of our country," said Yang, who was born in New York in 1975 and whose parents immigrated from Taiwan.

There are those who would scoff at Andrew Yang's chances of becoming President because he has never run for political office before, but, reality show host Donald Trump obliterated political experience as a requirement.

One of the most intriguing planks in Yang's platform is providing a guaranteed income for every American between the ages of 18 and 64 -- $1,000 a month.

Yang is an entrepreneur and author who's serious about his bid for President. When Andrew realized that new technology like artificial intelligence threatened to eliminate one-third of all American jobs, he knew he had to do something. 

In 2011 he founded Venture for America, a national entrepreneurship fellowship, and spent the last six years creating jobs in cities like Cleveland, Detroit, Baltimore, and Pittsburgh. 

In The War on Normal People (2018), he explains the mounting crisis and makes the case for implementing a universal basic income: $1,000 a month for every American adult, no strings attached.

"I’m not a career politician—I’m an entrepreneur who understands the economy," says Yang, who studied economics and political science at Brown University.

"It’s clear to me, and to many of the nation’s best job creators, that we need to make an unprecedented change, and we need to make it now. But the establishment isn’t willing to take the necessary bold steps. As president, my first priority will be to implement Universal Basic Income for every American adult between the ages of 18 and 64: $1,000 a month, no strings attached, paid for by a new tax on the companies benefiting most from automation. UBI is just the beginning." 

After getting his law degree at Columbia, he started as a corporate lawyer, but soon realized that career path was not for him.

He founded a national education company that grew to become No. 1 in the country. After getting married, he sold that company used that money to found Venture for America, an organization that helps entrepreneurs create jobs in cities like Baltimore, Detroit, Pittsburg and Cleveland.

VGA was successful. It helped hundreds of new businesspeople and created thousands of jobs. "But along the way, it became clear to me that job creation will not outpace the massive impending job loss due to automation," said Yang. 

One of his key aims is to reduce the income inequality that divides the U.S. into haves and have-nots. 

"New technologies – robots, software, artificial intelligence – have already destroyed more than 4 million U.S. jobs, and in the next 5-10 years, they will eliminate millions more. A third of all American workers are at risk of permanent unemployment. And this time, the jobs will not come back."

"Once I understood the magnitude of this problem, and that even our most forward-thinking politicians were not going to take the steps necessary to stem the tide, I had no choice but to act." 

That led to his decision to enter the world of politics and run for President. You can't say Yang isn't ambitious.

It was growing up in upstate New York, an environment without a lot of AAPI roles models, that helped shape his "go-for-it" attitude.

“It was definitely a struggle to find my own identity as a first-generation Asian-American without a lot of representation in my neighborhood, or prominently in the public sphere,” he told HuffPost.

Yang added: “I think that’s what gave me a drive to relate to and help the underdog.”

Besides UBI, he has positions on other issues, including Medicare for All, paid family leave, fighting climate change, gun control and increasing teachers' salaries.

He's making plans for the early primaries in New Hampshire and Iowa. He says next year, he will implement his guaranteed income that he calls a Freedom dividend of $1000 a month in each of those states to demonstrate how the proposal will work, not to mention the publicity he would get from it. He is seeking nominations for the recipients.

Don't dismiss Yang as a kook. That would be a mistake. With his early start, he might build enough momentum to surprise a lot of people.

"I’m the father of two young boys. I know the country my sons will grow up in is going to be very different than the one I grew up in, and I want to look back at my life knowing I did everything in my power to create the kind of future our children deserve—an America of opportunity, freedom, equality, and abundance."

To find out more about Yang's campaign, volunteer or to donate, click here.

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