Universal Income vs the Robots: Meet the Presidential Candidate Fighting Automation
Seven questions with Andrew Yang, the 2020 US presidential candidate pushing for basic income
By Erin Winick
Andrew Yang announced he is vying for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination back in February. His mission? Preparing America for automation.
But how is he going to do that? I got the chance to sit down with him at the Work Awesome conference in New York yesterday to ask him about his stances on trucking automation, AI policy, and, his favorite topic, universal basic income (UBI).
Erin: Why focus on automation and UBI? They aren’t common topics for presidential candidates.
Andrew: The reason why I’m focused on this issue is I’m convinced it’s driving the social, economic and political dysfunction we are seeing. The reason why Donald Trump is our president today is we automated away four million manufacturing jobs in Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Missouri, and Iowa, all the swing states he needed to win and did win. And everyone who works in technology knows full well we are about to do the same to millions of retail workers, call center workers, fast food workers, truck drivers and on and on throughout the economy.
