Is Andrew Yang for Real?

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Yang has a very specific solution for those who feel displaced: Use the money from taxing companies like Amazon to give every American adult a guaranteed monthly $1,000 check. The idea, known by economists as the universal basic income, or UBI, has been rebranded by Yang as the “freedom dividend.” (“Who can be against the ‘freedom dividend?’” Yang has joked. “What kind of an a-hole do you have to be?”)

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More than that, Yang has sought to position himself as the clear-thinking candidate willing to tackle the age’s biggest problems. He can talk at great length about universal basic income, but his website lists more than a hundred other detailed policy proposals, from reviving Congress’ Office of Technology Assessment to a rural-urban American “exchange program.” When he is talking with someone about how to solve a problem, he frequently mimics twisting a dial on imaginary machinery.

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Already, the tech-triggered economic upheaval had produced what to Yang was the country’s cry for help. “I look at the numbers,” Yang says. “The reason why Donald Trump is our president today is that we automated away 4 million manufacturing jobs in Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Missouri.“

“The only logical solution is to start distributing the economic value much more quickly and broadly, unless you genuinely do want a disintegrating population and trucking riots and the rest of it,” Yang said over pork ribs at Big Al’s BBQ in Des Moines.

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And to pay for it, a President Yang would slap onto Silicon Valley companies and other corporate giants a 10 percent value-added tax, with the rest made up from cuts to federal programs, increased tax revenue from job growth and consumer spending, and reductions in social costs such as incarceration.

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