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Andrew Yang on Jobs

Democratic Presidential Challenger & Tech CEO

 


Trump is the symptom of the disease of job loss

Trump is a symptom of a disease. You know who's been losing this entire time? Our communities have. We've automated away four million manufacturing jobs. We're closing 30% of New Hampshire stores and malls, and Amazon, the force behind that, is literally paying zero in taxes. If we get done the hard work of curing those problems, we will not just defeat Donald Trump in the fall, but we'll actually be able to move our communities forward.
Source: 8th Democrat 2020 primary debate, St. Anselm College in NH , Feb 7, 2020

Help youth get access to trade and technical training

I would invest in technical, vocational, and apprenticeship training at the high school levels. Only 6 percent of American high school students are in technical or trade programs in the U.S. Think how many unfilled jobs would be filled if young people steered towards college would be better served by heading into the trades and technical and apprenticeship programs.

Technology is ramping up faster and faster. It has already eliminated 4 million manufacturing jobs in the Midwest and is in the process of transforming economies right here in New Hampshire and around the country, as Amazon alone closes 30 percent of your stores and malls. Retail clerks, the most common job in the economy, and 30 percent of those jobs are disappearing as we speak.

Source: CNN Town Hall 2020: Presidential/NYC Mayoral race , Feb 5, 2020

OpEd: Yang wrong that automation causing massive job loss

Mr. Yang used the piece to repeat his claim that automation is leading to massive job loss. Yang goes on to use his piece to present data showing the bad economic condition of much of the U.S. workforce. He is certainly right that most workers have not been doing well for the last four decades. However, there is no evidence to support his claim that automation is the main factor behind stagnating incomes for most workers.
Source: Counterpunch magazine on 2019 Democratic primary , Nov 20, 2019

Trickle up: create jobs by giving people buying power

Q: Are we going to be in this situation where we have too many people and not enough work?

YANG: We're in the midst of the greatest economic transformation in our country's history. Putting buying power into our hands will build a trickle up economy and allow us to create hundreds of thousands of jobs because that money doesn't disappear. This is the way we rejuvenate main street America.

Source: NBC Meet the Press on 2019 Democratic primary , Nov 3, 2019

Federal job programs are not the answer to changing economy

I am for the spirit of a federal jobs guarantee, but you have to look at how it would actually materialize in practice. Most Americans do not want to work for the federal government and saying that that is the vision of the economy of the 21st century is not a vision that most Americans would embrace. If you rely upon the federal government to target its resources, you wind up with failed retraining programs and jobs that no one wants.
Source: October Democratic CNN/NYTimes Primary debate , Oct 15, 2019

Most new jobs are gig, temporary, or contractor

Why is it that a job is 9 to 5 or 10 to 6? Ninety-four percent of the new jobs created in the U.S. are gig, temporary, or contractor jobs at this point, and we still just pretend it's the '70s, where it's like, 'You're going to work for a company, you're going to get benefits, you're going to be able to retire, even though we've totally eviscerated any retirement benefits, but somehow you're going to retire,'" We're like, 'Oh, it's all right.' It's not all right.
Source: The Atlantic magazine on 2019 Democratic primary , Aug 15, 2019

Empower women entrepreneurs with my $1000 per month plan

I have seen firsthand the inequities in the business world where women are concerned, particularly in start-ups and entrepreneurship. We have to give women the economic freedom to be able to improve their own situations and start businesses, and the best way to do this is by putting a dividend of $1,000 a month into their hands. It would be a game-changer for women around the country, because we know that women do more of the unrecognized and uncompensated work in our society.
Source: July Democratic Primary debate (second night in Detroit) , Jul 31, 2019

We're terrible at retraining; give people resources directly

We certainly need to invest in the retraining of the American people, but we also have to be honest that we're terrible at retraining. The success rates for federally funded retraining programs for the displaced manufacturing workers in the Midwest were between zero and 15 percent. And pretending that we're somehow going to become excellent at retraining Americans is lying to the American people. We need to put the resources directly into our hands, the hands of the American people.
Source: Fox News Sunday interviews in 2019 , Jul 28, 2019

Leave the minimum wage up to the states

Andrew Yang on Minimum Wage: Leave the minimum wage up to the states. No candidates have similar views.

Andrew Yang, an entrepreneur pushing a universal basic income of $1,000 per month, opposes the federal minimum wage, and instead favors hourly wage minimums to be set by the states. A universal basic income, Yang has said, makes a wage minimum "much less necessary."

Source: Politico "2020Dems on the Issues" , Jul 17, 2019

Monthly stipend would help us through technological changes

We've automated away 4 million manufacturing jobs in Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Missouri, Iowa. We need to think about how we're going to help Americans transition through this time. My flagship proposal is a freedom dividend of $1,000 per month for every American adult. It would help tens of millions of Americans transition through what is the greatest economic and technological transformation in our country's history, which we're going through right now.
Source: CNN Town Hall: 2020 presidential hopefuls , Apr 14, 2019

I'm a huge union fan

I'm a huge union fan. When I sit with union leaders and I say, you know what's going to help your union membership is if you have a dividend of $1,000 a month [as in my flagship proposal] because it ends up making it possible for unions to negotiate much harder, since then they have something they can fall back on? So this is a very pro-union plan. I'm fan of the right to organize.
Source: CNN Town Hall: 2020 presidential hopefuls , Apr 14, 2019

Universal payments to all adults would have no stigma

We have to solve the problems that got Donald Trump elected in 2016, and to me the main driver of his victory was that we automated away four million manufacturing jobs. We're in the third inning of the greatest economic and technological transformation in the history of the country, and we need to evolve to the next form of our economy. This has been in place in Alaska for almost 40 years, where it's universal. And because it's universal, there's no stigma attached.
Source: ABC This Week 2019 interview of presidential hopefuls , Apr 7, 2019

Fight for equal pay for women, and women of color

The tech entrepreneur is running a very long-shot campaign full of policy ideas, and one of them is that he wants to fight for equal pay, according to his campaign website. Yang notes that women make less than men, and that women of color make lower still--something that he would solve by working with states to implement salary disclosure laws, requiring federal contractors to pay employees equally and launching new studies around pay equity in the federal workforce. One of Yang's signature policy ideas is that he wants to create a universal basic income of $1,000 per month for all Americans, which he says would give women more economic independence.
Source: Abigail Abrams in Time magazine on 2019 Democratic primary , Apr 2, 2019

Pay equity for women and minorities