communications director for president trump will talk about in current political climate the u.s. and how to restore civility. live on c-span two. president trump will hold a campaign rally in kentucky. life here on c-span. you can follow all of our coverage online. for listen in with the free c-span radio app. remarks by 2020 democratic presidential candidate andrew yang version he held a town hall meeting with voters at a local united auto workers union in marshalltown, iowa. [applause] mr. yang: thank you all, so much for being here. i feel like this mic is unnecessary. we can pretend it is a stadium very hello all, i am running for

president as a democrat. how many of you have seen me speak before? so many of you very that is fantastic i suppose. so i am going to give a combination of remarks for the people who have hurt me before and the people who came here because they are curious. i would love to take advantage of the fact it is a relatively small group of us to take questions and get to know and have a sense for what brought you here. we are here in iowa, and here politics is a combination of sporting events and community gathering and education all in one. i have been joking that iowans are a special breed because this is one of the only places where democracy still functions the way it is intended. this is cbs. someone help him? i will help them. thank you. that is iowa nice.

--re most americans look up most americans look up in despair and say there is not much i can do about that. here in iowa, you all are very, -- it is an amazing power you have. it is the and the of the rest of the country. you are accustomed to it. you don't know about that yang fellow, he only met him one time. you are used to having people in their living -- your living

room. you see us in a way back and hopefully gives you better insight into who we are and what makes us tick. what makes me tick is the fact that i see what lies ahead not just here in iowa, but around the country, and i felt compelled to do something about it. how did i arrive at that? my parents -- i'm going to go down memory lane. even pre memory lane. my parents immigrated and met in grad school at berkeley in california. my father is a physicist. he generated 69 patents for ge and ibm. my mom got a masters in math and statistics so i was a very, very nerdy kid. when i was growing up, i thought everyone's dad had a phd. "what is your dad's phd in?" i learned the hard way. i grew up a very nerdy kid in upstate new york with a older brother. we were told get good grades, do well in school, that was the

path to success. so i did my best to follow that advice and went to college in new england, studied economics. didn't know what to do so i went to law school, became a corporate attorney for five months. thought that was a really crummy job. i know that sounds lofty like -- what i tried to explain to people is at least the legal job i took, the main focus was trying to imagine what would go wrong. imagine going into an office and think of the worst thing that could happen so you could contract against them. "why am i in this office thinking about all the worst things that could happen? i should be trying to do something positive and build something." so i left that job to start a business. how many of you have started a business or a club or mailing list or anything under the sun?

if you say it is not going great, they don't want to join that club. or to buy from you. you are always like, it is going great. my business went great until it failed. my parents were telling people i was still a productive lawyer because they are asian. it was an easier story. my business crashed. i owed school loans, about six figures because it is not like that disappeared. you go to law school, the loans are still there. i had been so invigorated that i was trying to start a company even though i failed. i said i have to try and get better at this. one question is how do you get better if you have just failed? so to me, i said i should try to find someone better than me at this and become that person's

sidekick. i found an entrepreneur who had more experience than me and became his sidekick for four years and then i became the head of another company, grew to be number one in the united states and was bought by another company in 2009. how many of you were here in this part of iowa in 2009, 10 years ago? i can't believe the financial crisis was 10 years ago. can you believe that? . -- can you believe that? it was a hard time in this part of iowa because it was a hard time in most of the country, people were losing their homes all over the place. i thought i had some insight why the economy crashed. it was because all of these wannabe whiz kids -- i had gone to college and wall street with had gone to wall street to create these financial instruments that crashed the economy. so i said "ok, that is terrible. we have to have something better for people to do than that."

i quit my job and started a nonprofit with the goal of helping young people start businesses in detroit, st. louis, cleveland, birmingham, baltimore and other cities around the country. as someone who had started a business and failed, i thought it is way too much to ask to move to a new city and start a business. that would never work. but i felt what would work is to send them or train them in a new city not to start a business, but to work at a business that was just getting its legs under it. and if they could work at that business a couple of years, they would grow the way i had grown. when i was a sidekick or apprentice, i learned a ton. essentially the vision was to try to get everyone the chance to learn under the wing of a more experienced company, builder, or entrepreneur. so i quit my job to start this organization, venture for america. is there a kid here? yay. i am a parent as well.

i've got two boys, seven and four. when i hear a kid crying, i have the same thought every parent here does which is, is that mine? [laughter] mr. yang: in this case i'm like, no, it's not. so i quit my job to start this nonprofit venture. how many of you have worked in a nonprofit in some context? so you have a sense as to what that looks like too. so i quit my job to start this nonprofit, and i started calling rich friends and asking them, do you love america? and then the smart among them said, what does it mean if i say yes to this answer? and then i said at least $10,000. and then 12 of them said i love america for $10,000. so i raised a couple hundred thousand, put some of my own money in and we launch this nonprofit that grew and grew to the millions, helped create several thousand jobs in 15 cities around the country. detroit, st. louis, etc.

so much that i was honored by the obama administration as a champion of change. and i got to bring my wife to meet the president. so my in-laws are very excited about me for a week. look at these pictures of our daughter with the president. my main story about president obama was he has very large hands. you shake his hands, and his hand like envelopes you. oh, i thought i had a normal sized hand. this is what i did for seven years. most people think of me as a business guy. i have actually been a nonprofit guy for the last seven years. i grew up in upstate new york, went to school in new england, i had never been to ohio, and louisiana, and alabama, and missouri, and all these places that venture for america brought me. and during those seven years, i was blown away by the gulf between different parts of this country in terms of the way the economy has evolved. where if you fly between

michigan and manhattan or st. louis in san francisco, you feel like you are traversing decades rather than time zones, sometimes. but i was still surprised when donald trump became our president in 2016. some of you i'm sure were less surprised than i was because you saw many of your friends and neighbors and family members, who were very excited about donald trump's candidacy. being a numbers person and also looking -- you are shaking your head, you are not happy about it. we are in an environment, i imagine the majority of you reacted -- how did you all react when donald trump won? >> cried. mr. yang: tears, shock, disappointment. >> outside of philadelphia, we used to go to atlantic city and he destroyed that town. mr. yang: he has left a path of destruction. >> it is exactly the same thing. mr. yang: yeah. >> doesn't change. mr. yang: and to me, the giant lesson, the red flag was that tens of millions of our fellow americans were so fed up with the system and business as usual

that they decided to take a bet on the narcissist reality tv star. they said it cannot get worse than this current set of institutions that is not actually solving problems. i'm going to take a bet on this guy. i don't think most americans had any illusions. you know, donald trump wasn't really like putting on a different type of show. i mean like we kind of knew what we were getting. i obviously did not vote for him. i was a bernie guy in 2016. but still donald trump won. and so i said ok, stop the press. i had been getting medals and awards and accolades for helping to create thousands of jobs around the country, and i have had a sinking feeling that my work is like pouring water into a bathtub that has a giant hole in the bottom. i have felt that honestly for months before donald trump wins. and then donald trump wins and i'm like, holy cow, this is actually heading in the other direction much faster than even

i had thought. and i started digging into the numbers. if you were to turn on cable news and ask why donald trump won, what is the explanation we are getting offered by the journalists and cable news channels? >> racism. >> russia. mr. yang: facebook. fbi. hillary clinton. dnc. electoral college. hillary again. so these are the reasons we are being offered by the press. but when i dug into the numbers, i found a very, very clear factor that, to me, drove donald trump's victory including his victory here in iowa by eight points. the reason why donald trump won is that we automated away 4 million manufacturing jobs in michigan, ohio, pennsylvania, wisconsin, missouri, and 40,000 right here in iowa. there is a straight line up between the adoption of industrial automation in a

voting area and the movement to trump. when a factory closes or a plant closes or cuts back in a town, blue goes to red in the community. you see not just a plant dry up, but what dries up as well? the shopping centers, the property taxes, the entire community starts to go into a downward spiral. and then blue goes to red. so this has happened here in iowa and in all of the other swing states that donald trump needed to win and did win. and unfortunately, what we did to the manufacturing jobs is now just picking up speed. how many of you have noticed stores closing around where you live here in this part of iowa? or wherever -- some of you are from out of town. why are so many of your stores closing? >> amazon. mr. yang: that's right, amazon. amazon is soaking up $20 billion in business every single year, closing 30% of america's stores and malls including here in iowa. the most common job in most of

the state is working as a retail clerk. the average retail clerk is a 39-year-old woman making between $9 and $10 an hour. if 30% of america's stores and malls close, -- what is that retail clerk's next move? it is not going to work for another store because the store across the street is not exactly hiring and booming. how much did amazon pay in federal taxes last year? zero. that is the math. $20 billion out. zero back. 30% of stores and malls closed. how many of you have seen a self-serve kiosk in a fast food restaurant like a mcdonald's? they are going to be in every location in the country by 2021. two years from now. food service and food prep, third most common job in the u.s. to me the rubber hits the road when we automate truck driving. my friends in california are working on robot trucks that never need to stop. they tell me they are 98% of the way there. how many of you all know a truck

driver here in iowa? that's the most common job in over half the states in the country. there are 3.5 million truckers in the united states making about $46,000 a year, average age, 49. 94% men. i've talked to a bunch of truckers, and i know when they drive a truck, they have to stop after 14 hours to get out and go to sleep. i also know that only 13% of truckers are unionized. that is not an industry where everyone is in a union. 87% are part of generally small mom-and-pop businesses. many of the truckers you know took out massive loans to lease their cars, their trucks. so imagine if you owed $80,000 on a truck, and then you saw the robot truck hit the highway that never needs to stop. like what is your next move going to be? smash your truck into that truck. [laughter] mr. yang: i mean, this is real, there was a protest in dc by a series of truckers the other

week where they showed up and said, you cannot automate our jobs away. but you know what the financial incentives are to automate freight? $168 billion a year in cost savings. and that's not just labor. that's equipment utilization, fuel, fewer accidents, they say. i'm going to dig into this because i think it is important. so they say they are 98% of the way to robot trucks. that sounds impressive, but having a 2% error rate is very problematic when you are talking about semi trucks. you can't have semi trucks smashing into things and say, we were mostly right. [laughter] that is not going to work very well. and the trucks are really bad with snow because when it snows, the road markings get covered up and the computer cannot see it, and they don't know what to do. that is one reason why they are testing the robot trucks in arizona. because -- and california. where there is not a whole lot of snow.

the question is how can they get over that last 2%? do you remember the last time you saw tv on your cell phone? do you remember that? first time you did that? that is 3g. we are now rolling out 5g around the country. the vision they have for the robot trucks is to equip the truck with a tele-operating software so when the truck gets confused and doesn't know what to do, it alerts a tele-operator who is sitting in a warehouse in nevada or arizona who then beams into the truck and drives it like a videogame. you know what i mean? because there are cameras in the front. it is like you are sitting there, and you can see out the front of the cab. you take it over. and then when the computer is like ok, i know what to do again, you beam back out. what do you think the ratio will be between tele-operators and the 3.5 million americans who drive a truck for a living right now? 1 to 10, 2% -- it is certainly not going to be one to one. what will that mean for the truckers or the 7 million plus

americans who work in truck stops, motels and diners that rely upon the truckers getting out and having a meal? i was at iowa 80 in davenport. how many of you all have been there? they say 5000 people stop there every day. what happens when that number starts to drop because the truckers are robots, and they do not need to get out and have a meal? they tell me this is five to 10 years away. ups just invested in one of these companies. $168 billion a year is enough money to move mountains. particularly in a country like ours where everything revolves around the almighty dollar. now this is not a donald trump problem. he is a symptom of the fact that we are going through the greatest economic transformation in the country's history. what people are calling the fourth industrial revolution. here in iowa, it started on your farms which got gobbled up by mega farms and automated. and then it moved to the factories. you lost 40,000 manufacturing jobs.

factories around the state. now it is heading to your main streets as your stores start to dry up. and then it is going to hit your highways when the robot trucks come. these waves of automation and innovation are pushing more and more of us to the sidelines. and that is why donald trump is our president today. so this is what i had unpacked in 2017. he wins, i have like a crisis of conscious where i'm like ok, this is not a situation where i should keep doing what i'm doing. what entrepreneurs do in the best possible case is we solve problems. the problem i was trying to solve was the fact that i did not believe that our economy was generating enough small business entrepreneurship and job growth. and then i realized the problems are even bigger. i said how do you solve that set of problems? so i went to washington, dc with my facts and figures, and book

and my powerpoint deck. and i said to them, what are we going to do to help our people manage this transition? first we had to explain to the american people it is not immigrants that are causing these problems. if you go to a factory in michigan, it is wall to wall robot arms and machines. it is not wall-to-wall immigrants. the same is true in amazon fulfillment centers. those things are also wall-to-wall robots. that is what is closing the malls and stores. what do you think the folks in washington, dc said to me when i asked what are we going to do? >> nothing. mr. yang: i mean, nothing. essentially it was nothing. the three answers i got were these. number one, we cannot talk about this. that is verbatim. isn't that great? number two, we should study that further. number three, we must educate

and retrain all americans for the jobs of the future. and i said ok, that one sounds halfway responsible. i looked at the studies and the numbers, do you know how effective the government-funded retraining programs were for the manufacturing workers who lost their jobs in the midwest? 0% to 15%. that is right. total dud. when i said look, the numbers say we are talking about 15%, 20%, 25% tops, you know what the next response was? i guess we will get better. that is what passes for responsiveness out of dc. and one person in washington, dc said to something that sent me here today. they said andrew, you are in the wrong town. no one here will do anything about this because fundamentally washington, dc is not a town of leaders, it is a town of followers. and the only way we will do anything about it is if you create a wave in other parts of the country and bring that wave crashing down on our heads. i heard this and said challenge accepted. i'll be back.

like arnold, i'll be back. >> [laughter] mr. yang: i didn't say it like that. i didn't say it arnold style or anything. you would think i was making it up, some kind of made up movie super villain speech. it is a dc lobbyist speech. turns out they are kind of similar. but it's real. this is what he said. and when he said this to me, i actually got that feeling you have when someone tells you a deep and important truth. because he's right. washington, dc will do nothing about this. the only way anything will change is if we create a wave in other parts of the country and bring it crashing down on their heads. and that is why iowa is such an incredible place because this is a place where you all have outsized power to actually change the course of history and bring a different vision to the rest of the country just like that. that's why i love being here. you go a lot of other places, people don't think they can make

that kind of difference. but here, you know you can. so the question is how do you actually help the american people manage this economic transformation, this fourth industrial revolution? and those of you who are here today, at some point, you heard that there is an asian man running for president who wants to give everyone $1000 a month. remember that? the first time you heard that you were like that's a gimmick, that will never happen. but this is a deeply american idea from our founding. thomas payne was for it, he called it the citizens dividend. martin luther king fought for it in the 1960's. called it the guaranteed minimum income for all americans. 1000 economists endorsed it in the 1960's. it was so mainstream, it passed the house of representatives twice in 1971 under richard nixon. called the family assistance plan. and then 11 years later, one state passed a dividend where everyone in the state gets between $1000 in $2000 a year, no question asked. what state is that? >> alaska. >> and how do they pay for it?

>> oil. >> what is the oil of the 21st century? >> technology. mr. yang self driving cars and : trucks. a study came out and said our data is worth more than oil. how many of you saw that study? it was in a netflix documentary, it was called i believe the big hack. great hack? anyone know the name? you can probably find it. how many of you have netflix? [laughter] mr. yang: i should say access to a netflix password. i know how it works. [laughter] mr. yang: it is a pretty good documentary. i enjoyed it. that was one of the studies in the documentary. it says our data is worth more than oil. now one question i'm asking is who got their data check in the mail last month? and obviously, none of us did. follow those data checks are going to facebook, amazon, google and the big tech companies. they are taking it up to the tune of tens of billions of dollars. when you subscribe to the services, you never read that boilerplate.

you just say, get out of my way, i consent, i agree. i consent, i agree. we all do that. we are not crazy. what else are you going to do? all of this consent, agree, consent, agree, they are taking our data and then they are packaging it and selling it and reselling it, and occasionally they get hacked. then you see the headline being like hey, yahoo! got hacked. or this person got hacked. then you are like, oh man, does that mean i have to change my password? all right, that is it. sometimes you do, sometimes you don't. what's the worst that can happen? [laughter] and then you have this hodgepodge of passwords. every time they ramp up their protocol, it is probably because they had a problem. honestly. your show up to a company, we think you should consider changing your password. make it really complicated. you should know that probably means they lost their stuff. [laughter] mr. yang: seriously. that is what is going on. and this is the world we live in in the 21st century where we

traded our data for convenience and these services. it seemed like a great deal because you are like it's free. i'm here to tell you it is not free. there is a lot of money changing hands, and we are not seeing any of it. it is becoming fundamentally even more dangerous because they now know so many things about each of us that they can actually lead us like with these little breadcrumbs towards actions that you do not realize it is happening. you are like i always wanted to go to bermuda. [laughter] turns out somehow, they have been sending you things to get you to bermuda. politics is obviously fundamentally more corrosive. so this data dividend, one of the proposals i'm championing is that our data should be ours. if we lend it to the tech companies, it doesn't mean it is theirs, not ours. and if they are profiting from it, they need to tell us and share it with us. also they need to let us turn it off if we want.

those are some of the big proposals that i'm championing as part of this campaign to try and balance the scales because we are completely outgunned by the tech companies right now. and the only way to balance it is through the government. the government has to make sure amazon does not pay zero in taxes, that we are getting a fair share of every amazon sale, every google search, every facebook ad, robot truck mile. this would be enough to fund the $1000 a month dividend for each of us, particularly because when this money comes into your hands in 2021, how are you going to spend the money in real life? >> car repairs. >> bills. >> trips to bermuda. my hidden sponsor, the bermuda tourism bureau. i'm going around in setting people. people.ting

how much money would stay in iowa? a lot of it. not all of it. some of it would float up into the clouds. [laughter] most of it would stay right here in iowa. go to daycare expenses, little league sign up, car repairs you have been putting off. it would end up infusing main street businesses and nonprofits and families with resources that would create and sustain jobs right here in iowa. the trickle up economy from our peoples and families and communities. us all participants and beneficiaries of the 21st century economy. right now there are two sets of rules going on. there are rules for big companies than rules for us. the big companies screw up and it is no big deal but if we

screw up they put you in the ditch. the 21st century economy is evolving and very fundamental ways. i spoke to 70 ceos in new york and asked how many are looking at getting rid of their backend office and replacing them with ai software. all 70 hands went up. fire the ceo if he was not looking at making the deal. that is the nature of the system we have built. we have built a system of capitalism that worships the almighty dollar and the bottom line. if the almighty dollar and the bottom line benefit than we benefit. a point in american history where that was kind of true. aere was a point where if company made a lot of money it would hire more people, invest in more plants, give those

people full-time benefits, care about what happens in its own backyard and we would benefit. it is like when henry ford said " i'm going to pay my workers enough to buy my cars." i can have a vastly profitable company and not hire lots of people. if i do hire lots of people i make them all temps or contract workers, i tell them i'm not going to pay for health care. i don't care about what happens in my own backyard because there is no place i need to look out for anymore. the rules of capitalism are breaking down. to be to try to rewrite them to work for us. i am -- how many of you all have kids? parent you sense that we are leaving a real mess for our kids. we are leaving them shambles.

numbers, if you were born in the 1940's or 50's in this country there is a 93% chance you are going to live a better life than your parents in terms of socioeconomic, income, success. if you were born in the 1990's you are down to a 50-50 shot and that number is dropping quickly. from 93% to 50% and now it is below 50%. the feelings we have but it is the reality. be up to theo folks here in iowa to say enough is enough. we have to try to rewrite the rules. that is why something that has been so dramatic -- sounds so dramatic like a everyone getting you startnth, when digging in you realize it is necessary and inevitable. if we don't take this set of steps the winner take all economy is going to zero out more and more of us.

one of the things i am saying is look, i don't -- it doesn't matter if i am a hard-working conscientious truck driver -- this thing never needs to stop, does not need breaks or to sleep , we have to start evolving. hopefully now $1000 a month seems reasonable. stronger, healthier, mentally healthier, giving our kids a better chance to learn. supercharging our regional economy. trying toece of it is push how we define our own economic success. the questions i asked people is how many of you were excited about gdp when you woke up this morning? corporate profits are record highs in this country, also record highs in the united states are stress, financial ,nsecurity, student loan debt

even drug overdoses and suicide. bad thattten so american life expectancy has declined for three years in a row. when was the last time that happened? 1918, the spanish flu that killed millions. that is the last time american life expectancy declined for three years in a row. now becausehere suicides and drug overdoses have overtaken vehicle debts for the first time in american history. not normal for life expectancy to decline in developed countries. we are falling apart. gdp is hitting new record highs all the time. if gdp and corporate profits are at record highs and we are dying earlier which one do you value? instead of having these corporate profits and gdp on tv supposed toou're feel good about it even though

it has little to do with you. we should ask, what can we measure that would get you excited? >> clean water. mr. yang: clean air and clean water. if that goes up we would be happy. what else? mental health and freedom from substance abuse. right now eight americans are dying of drug overdoses every hour. that is because of capitalism as well. purdue pharma and these companies may tens of billions of dollars by selling opiate prescriptions and hooking people. this spiraled out of control. this is the darkest thing. thate pharma, the company may tens of billions of dollars on oxycodone went around saying it was nonaddictive drug area when their patent was coming do they turned around and said it was super addictive. because then it made more money

for them if they said it was super addictive. then they would go into generics and they started selling a tamperproof version of this because their patent on the original had expired. that is the darkness that is our current system. that saidmeasurements look, eight americans dying of opiates every single hour, that is unconscionable we need to get that down to half. one of them will -- one of the other proposals i am championing is, if this was a public failure at the highest level, which it was, when someone is addicted defense in all, heroine, orrock it wewe catch them with should refer them straight to treatment and counseling and not a jail cell. one of the reasons i realized school because a high senior in iowa told me his classmates had fentanyl patches on their shoulders and were already addicted.

they didn't want to admit their problem because they were afraid of getting into trouble. i heard this and realize he was right. we need to let people struggling with addiction know that if they want to get health they will not end up with a criminal record or in a jail cell. if you are selling or dealing you're going to jail. if you are a struggling addict we should not send you to a prison cell, we should send you to treatment. redefine thee can rules of the 21st-century economy to work for us. this gdp measurement 100 years ago. was ahe inventor set this terrible measurement for national well-being and we should never use it. he said that 100 years ago. here we are 100 years later writing it off a cliff. we need to align our people and the measurements. measurements of economic

progress our health, life expectancy, mental health, clean air, clean water and how our kids are doing. upgradepresident i will gdp to be a new measurement called the american scorecard and i will present these real measurements to you all every year at the state of the union. i will be the first president to have a powerpoint at the state of the union. i hope that is appealing. [laughter] then we can actually see what the real problems are and invest our resources and energy towards moving the country in a way that would be reflected in our own lives. this is the only way out, iowa. we are in a time of unprecedented technological change. if we persist in evaluating ourselves and our own value and worth by what the market says we are worth we are lost. we are going to lose on an epic scale. software that is coming out, i know some of the most advanced

technologists in the country, i am friendly with them. the more they know the more concerned they are. it is not a situation where someone is like " i know what the cutting edge looks like and it is going to be fine." [laughter] those things do not go hand in hand. people who know what the cutting edge looks like our very deeply concerned and very anxious. said to among them have me, look, andrew. an environment where people feel like they are being left behind is bad for everyone. we have to make everyone feel included in some of these innovations that we are working on. i love coming here in iowa because you are some of the only people in the country who can make this statement and make a difference for the rest of our country. the media is not going to help us. it will have to be you. you are the only people that can make this case.

send insage we can february will be so powerful if we actually present this vision to the country, we can write the rules -- rewrite the rules. i would love to take some questions from you all that i will leave on a -- sort of my closing stands up. 2016 he said he was going to make america great again. what did hillary clinton say? america is already great. that did not work on many americans. even though donald trump got many of the problems right his solutions were the opposite of what we need. solutions?is build a wall, turn the clock back, bring the jobs back. iowa we have to do the opposite. turn the clock forward, exxon rate our economy and society as quickly as possible. in the way welve

think about ourselves, our work and our values. candidate because i am the opposite of donald trump, an asian man who likes math. thank you very much, marshalltown. [applause] some people who are wearing math hats. -- matt is an acronym that stands for make america think carter. questions? >> people abroad who are making goods at a low-wage and feeding into the system, ai and high-tech readily go, the second question is what is stopping my landlord from raising my rent to what i am paying with the $1000? why not use an algorithm to locally determine wage rather than $1000 across-the-board? what is: if you look at happening internationally with automation of america is somewhere in the middle in terms

of the expected impact. the fact that we are a wealthier country works against us because the incentives to automate labor are much higher. you have a worker getting paid $17 an hour on the factory floor in america, and indonesia maybe they are getting two dollars an hour. in indonesia you are like yeah whatever. in america -- the technology's impact will be uneven based on the industry, the environment, and the cost of labor. your question about trying to scale it and tailor it based on where someone is and what the cost is, there are not many benefits -- there are many benefits to have it be -- it would be hard to administer if you very up by cost of living. we know how americans operate. there would be a lot of people in one place -- is why

we borrow our friend's netflix password because we can save a couple dollars. about your rent question. there are three sources of inflation in american life. number one is housing. number two's health care. education, those are the big three. ofyou look at the cost things like clothing, food, media and electronics, most of those things are relatively stable. another data point, we printed $4 trillion for the wall street banks 10 years ago. fiasco.was such a it affected me so profoundly i quit my job and started a nonprofit. that was totally broken. we chose the banks over our people. we had the choice to either keep people in our homes or bailout the banks and we chose the banks.

this time we will choose our people. these costs are all going up for all the different reasons based upon each market. to first thing you're going do if someone threatens to raise your rent is you will see if there is another landlord. let's say all the landlords try to do that. ifsome point you would say, there are two adults in your household and you are getting another $2000 a month, the landlords are being jerks, let's try to find a fixer-upper or some property we can take possession of. maybe you get some whether people -- other people and you have $4000. the income dividend comes with you no matter where you the income and dividend comes with you no matter where you are in the country.

one of the reasons why landlords can stick it to us is because we have to live near certain places for employment. this $1000 a month makes us much harder to push around, makes us more mobile and dynamic because if they push us too far, we can take the money and put it to use in terms of pooling to buy a property. one of the reasons i'm confident about this is this idea not only was it from martin luther king and thomas payne, a guy named andy stern championed this idea, and he is one of the reasons i'm running for president. he was part of a union, remember andy stern? andy stern was one of the people that confirmed for me that this automation of labor problem was worse than anyone was letting on. all of these technologists wrote a book saying we will automate our way out of the jobs. people tended to look at it and say yeah, of course you think

that. andy stern who ran the biggest labor union in the country said hey, we will automate away all the jobs. i was like, wait a minute, the labor guy is saying that and the tech guy is saying that, then it is probably true. when i dug into the numbers, i was like, yeah, it is true. it makes workers and tenants harder to push around. you have this income coming in that is yours and it goes with you wherever you go. for union members, how many of you are union members? some people here. what andy stern said was this would be a built in strike fund for all union members because imagine if your union leadership goes to press for higher wages or better benefits. the company knows you are all getting this passive income that enables you to at least scrape by. it is not like you will dip 100% into savings if you go on a strike. do you think your leaders would be able to negotiate harder? yeah. this was andy stern's rationale behind the freedom dividend. he said it actually empowers workers. it also recognizes the kind of work my wife does. my wife is at home with our two boys, one of whom is autistic.

right now, the market values her work at zero. we all know that is totally messed up. that work is among the most important and challenging work being done. it supercharges our ability to negotiate on our own behalf and recognizes the work being done in our homes and communities everyday. i like to go man-woman in these. you guys know each other? all right. fire away. >> holding all things constant excluding betsy devos in your answer and excluding anything with active shooters, what are you going to do for the pre-k-12 public education system when you become president? mr. yang: are you an educator? >> yes, elementary. mr. yang: good for you. my younger sons in public school, and there are so many things i feel we should do to help kids like my son and

students around the country and the teachers. number one, we need to pay teachers more. that is not just a feel-good thing, the data clearly shows a good teacher is worth his or her weight in gold. the best way to enlist teachers is to compensate them more. the data also says having higher teacher to student ratios is good for the students. if you have classrooms of 30 kids and the teacher often has two do more behavior management then education, -- than it is not as ideal for the kids. we should hire more teachers. those things go hand-in-hand. the third thing is we should deemphasize the sats and standardized tests that make it so that teachers are constantly having to teach to the tests instead of doing what they think is best for the kids. do you know that we invented the s.a.t. during world war ii as a s.a.t. during world war ii as a way to identify who not to send to the front lines? [laughter] mr. yang: you are laughing, it's true. now we treat our kids like every year is more time, and it

stresses them out. it distorts your behavior in the classroom. at this point, it is doing as much harm as good. we need to let our kids know that there are other ways to evaluate than filling out the scantron sheets. we have to acknowledge the fat -- that college is not for everyone and stop overselling college at the k-12 level. we say college is for everyone but only 33% of americans are going to attend college and graduate. what we need to do instead is we need to invest in apprenticeship, vocational, and technical training. only 6% of american high school students are in technical tracks right now. in germany, that is 59%. think about that. a lot of those jobs are the jobs that are much harder to automate. can you imagine what it would take to make a robot plumber? that is going to be human plumber for a long time.

it is actually easier to automate away someone with basic, like accounting, rules-based stuff than it is technical work like hvac repair and plumbing. it is more costly to educate our kids in the trade so we take the easy way out. let's throw some textbooks and over prescribe college. it is one of the reasons why kids are going to college, they feel like that is the only path to success. we burn them with 1.6 trillion dollars in student loan debt. college has gotten 2.5 times more expensive. it has not gotten 2.5 times better. we need to try and scale that back, stop overselling college, and if you imagine that high school is meant to train citizens as people as much as citizens and college students, then you want to introduce different subject areas like financial literacy and social and emotional learning.

you know what corresponds to success in life? arts education. the first thing they cut is arts. the data shows the opposite to be true. these are the things we should be trying to invest in teaching our kids. our kids have this sinking feeling that they are learning a lot of stuff that is not relevant to their futures, learning stuff that they can look up on their smartphone. so we need to teach them things that are more relevant and useful for them, not just in this academic track, but really in life. there are a lot of things i would do in k-12, the biggest thing after i said all of that is the data shows that two thirds of our kids' academic performance is determined outside of the school. educators like you know this. we say, teach our kid. and you say, i can only control one third of your kid's performance. the two thirds is from parental time spent with the child and

words read to them before they showed up to school on day one, stress levels in the household, types of neighborhood, type of right now, we are holding teachers to an impossible standard. then we are pumping money into our schools at a national level and being light, why isn't this working? the reason it is not working is because the other two thirds is where we should be putting the resources. if we put money directly into the parents'and families' hands, then the kid will show up with a much better chance to learn and give our teachers a better chance to teach. that is actually the biggest thing we can do in addition to the other things that i i have mentioned. i'm very passionate about that because we have let it stagnate over a long period of time. thank you for being an elementary school teacher. let's give her a round of applause. [applause]

>> i just want to start by saying i've been working with machine learning. i agree, it's scary. mr. yang: really? >> doing machine learning, doing the software stuff. mr. yang: machine learning is like training artificial intelligence algorithms. >> right, the ai stuff. the automation. it's all scary. the other big issue i've heard you address is big agriculture in the monolithic system and how we need to get away from that and how we can get back to doing local agriculture. more nutrition, less pesticides, less hormones. it is so much healthier for everybody. i love the freedom dividend because it is going to help people in rural america. you could speak a little more

about that -- it is so great -- one of the big things coming out lately is monsanto. all the court cases. mr. yang: that company is so evil. they are so bad. >> they are offering $8 billion for cancer victims. mr. yang: sounds like something they would do. >> we've got a chance to start doing things the right away and realize these are incentives. i've read through your plan, and i think it's great. if you could share more about that. mr. yang: i would love to. thank you for that. i have not seen the camo yang gang hat, that's so cool. where do you even get that? i haven't seen that before. what has happened to your farms is an emblem of what is going on

in the country. the giant corporations have gobbled up the family farms. americans still have this out of date perception of a farm as a place where animals are running around on people. you know what it looks like in real life. it is this freaking giant industrial operation with pesticides. it is very hard for a multi-generational farming family to pass it onto the next generation because they say, is this the family's future? it is having a profound effect on our health, environment. this is how we are worshiping the almighty dollar, and it chips away at our well-being over time. the goal has to be to try and redo our food and nutrition chain. the first big thing, and people said this, we make unhealthy food so much cheaper and easier to get in this country. my younger son loves mcdonald's. he calls it old mcdonald's. [laughter] mr. yang: we drive by it and he goes, can we go to old mcdonald's? i grew up in the 1980's, i love mcdonald's. we go into old mcdonald's and he's running around.

then i'm like, you can buy four mcnuggets for a dollar? what? that is the pricing that existed when i was growing up. how the heck is the price the same, 25 years later? that is the set of incentives we've created for families where the cheapest food is the worst for you and the worst for your kid. the single biggest way we can try and improve our own food supply and food chain is if you put buying powers into our hand and families can make different choices. if you are in a food desert or a produce desert, which many communities are in, if people have more buying power, maybe the fresh grocery actually opens in your neighborhood because you can afford some kale or romaine lettuce or fresh fruit. i'm a big structural incentives guy.

i think what has gone wrong in america today, we have the worse incentives for everybody. and then we pretend they should do the right thing. i will give you a basic example. i run businesses. we say it is like you should treat your workers well. you should make them full-time employees, give them health care coverage. but all of your incentives are in the other direction. all of your incentives are to say, those uber drivers are not really employees, doesn't matter how many hours they drive. they do not need health care coverage. all of your incentives go in the direction. -- go in that direction. it is the same with food and parenting and treating our kids and getting the right food supply chain. hey, you should do the right thing, but we will make it much easier for you to do the wrong thing. the question is how do you actually make the incentives match up to what we would want for ourselves? it starts by giving us a share

in the 21st century economy so we can make meaningful choices. right now, we are pretending we can make meaningful choices, but we are cash strapped and living paycheck-to-paycheck, borrowing from peter to pay paul. we are pretending we have choices when a big tech is concerned. hope they are not abusing us. back to the food supply, i'm passionate about this because what has happened on your farms in iowa is happening in industries across the economy. it is like the mega consolidation. monsanto is a very bad actor. unfortunately, every industry has its monsanto. that was a bit of a tirade. it's you. >> i am curious about your proposal to rein in the price

increases on life-sustaining drugs such as insulin. andrew yang: i have heard so many heartbreaking stories of americans given up food or heating oil for life-saving drugs. it should not be happening in this country. to break the backs of these companies that are gouging us at every level. the government is not allowed to negotiate lower drug prices because the lobbyists are so powerful. we can negotiate for lower prices, number two, they have to --rge us with a change charge citizens of other countries. we subsidize the drug development in the first place. imagine this. we pay for the drug development.

drugs morese the cheaply overseas. number one, we negotiate for lower prices. number two, you have to charge us what you charge of countries. number three, if you fail number two, we can appropriate license of that drug. number four, we can manufacture that drug in a public facility to save consumers money. do you think that drug companies would all of a sudden get prices under control if these were the tests? it's the same thing where you say to them, do the right thing. drug companies don't care about us. they don't care about health. they don't care about making heartbreaking choices. they just care about the bottom line. so you have to tie doing the right thing to the bottom line, and behavior will change. they will say this is on -- unacceptable because these incentives, we will not be able

to make money, and not be able to invest in research of new life-saving drugs. and there are kids here, so i will call bs on both of these things. their profits are at record levels right now. beyond anything that anyone has ever seen in the industry. number two, they don't even do their own drug research anymore. they don't. this inventing thing, too hard. so you know what they do now? they buy the drugs from biotech startups after they pass a certain level of examination and approval. they are essentially financial operators at this time. the use to have a bunch of phd's in the lab. they don't do that anymore. at any time there is a problem drug in the pipeline, we snap it up and buy it for $.40 on the dollar, and then market the heck out of it.

you know what else i would do away with? some of you might not like this. i would do away with tv advertisements for drugs. the only two countries that allow those advertisements, us and new zealand. the other countries are like, you know what? you need a drug, your doctor will tell you about the drug, and he will get a prescription. that's what happens in every developed country in the world instead of here and new zealand because here, we are going to put tv ads. anyway, don't get me started. that's how we get the prescription drug prices down. yeah. >> my friends are concerned about public support systems being withdrawn after the ubi is implemented. leading to worse outcomes for those in need. how do you address this concern?

mr. yang: the freedom dividend has been popular in a deep red conservative state that doesn't love taxes. they would accept higher taxes to fund the dividend. it is a freedom for everyone, but there are still going to be problems all under the sun around mental health and housing and the environment and our food supply. they way i would liken it, if you have a foundation, you don't stop building. you put the foundation down and then start trying to build a structure to solve the various problems. the thing i am most excited about is that, just the way the petroleum dividend has stood for decades across administrations, the freedom dividend would sustain as well, and would actually, if anything, make the public appetite for ways to solve these problems higher because here is what is going on

right now in america. i say, that person is getting something. they say, that person is getting something? maybe that means i can't have it because we are in a zero-sum game. in this world, everyone is getting a certain amount. the mindset of scarcity naturally mixes thinks that if someone is getting something, i am losing out. if you see someone else is getting something, maybe it doesn't bother you as much. this is one of the things that's resulted in alaska, that you had this constant dividend that is helped reduce income inequality. if you reduce income inequality, your sense of collective desire to have policies that solve problems -- you wind up with much more class division and strife and struggle. if you have lower income inequality, hopefully we can come together on some of the

solutions. i don't think it is going to somehow got the appetite for other programs and solutions. yes. >> hi, andrew. i was a bernie sanders supporter in 2016, and i still love him to this day, but i think after having trump for president for the last several years, i'm more of a realist. the reason i am not with bernie is because i am not sure that his ideas can actually be passed. i just don't see it actually happening as much as i would love it. how will you get your policies, especially the freedom dividend, through congress and the house? mr. yang: thank you for the question. i was a bernie fan, too.

i think he's a hero. i am so glad to see him doing so well. i was next to him on the debate stage. you seem really strong. it was great. i think one of the things that happened because of bernie's health episode if they have really cut back on his appearance schedule in a way that i think is very positive. before, i think -- anyway, that is aside. so here is the vision. my campaign raised $10 million last quarter in increments of only $30 each. there's no corporate pack money. it was all ground roots support. it's one of the reasons people feel like i'm a good bet to break the back of the drug companies. there's no corporate money behind the campaign. imagine the grassroots revolution comes up.

we win iowa. they are like, who just won iowa? and then democrats and progressive look up and go, wait a minute, is a strong bit to be donald trump. i'm one of only two candidates, and the other one is bernie sanders, that in one poll, 10% of trump voters said they would support and a general election. i'm peeling off trump supporters and independents ends the rotarians because they since i'm not ideological -- independents and libertarians because they sense i'm not ideological. so then i run against him, we win, and then i come into d.c., january, 2021 and everyone knows how i won.

americans want that freedom dividend. democrats and progressives will be like, i love the dividend because it is going to make children and families stronger and healthier. but then the republicans in congress are going to say, wait a minute, this helps rural areas. this helps red states on the interior. this helps places blasted by automation loss in manufacturing jobs. am i really against the dividend? can you imagine mitch mcconnell standing there and saying, this cash is going to hurt you? [laughter] mr. yang: it is really hard to make that argument. you go to kentucky. this will be the fun part. i'm your president, thanks to you all. i'm like, hey, let's rebuild our economy from the ground up. then mitch mcconnell is in kentucky being like, i don't like it. then i go to mitch's district in kentucky, and we have a gathering. do you know what his offices and phone lines are going to look

like? people are going to be like, you are standing between us and the dividend. what are you doing? republicans and conservatives do not mind the dividend. in alaska it was passed by a republican governor. what they hate is big government making your decisions for you. at what conservatives hate. conservatives do not hate freedom, and people current decisions. i do not need 80% of congress to pass the freedom dividend. i just need the majority. so then you get that majority. you pass the dividend. the american people have this very unfamiliar feeling. i really like this. then i look at the republicans and say, ok, let's see what else we can get done. and republicans actually see me as someone they can work with because i am not ideological. i will have a bipartisan team. i will not just a point democrats up and down. and we can get things done.

i made the joke about the opposite of donald trump as an asian man who likes math, but the opposite is just a person who was to solve problems and work with anyone. people have described me as a real liner because a lot of the things i am advocating for don't fall strictly along one party or the other. i am very data driven. i just want to solve problems. this is a way of saying i believe i can get the dividend past and get solutions across the finish line. yes sir. >> i really appreciate your ability to enthuse your speech with humor because i think politics is not only a battle of ideas, but a battle of showmanship and being able to defeat trump.

i don't see that in a lot of the other candidates. a lot of the problems with your ideas so far is one of the ways you're going to pay for your freedom dividend is anybody who's already receiving such assistance from the government, like food stamps or disability, will not be qualified, or it will detract from their ability to get the freedom dividend. the second one is that you support nuclear reaction to fight climate change. those are my two problems with being able to really fully support you. >> thank you, first, for the humor aspect. [laughter] >> it's necessary. you have to have the charisma and the ability to be able to put on a more appealing display of the person then trump does. mr. yang: well, thank you. i do agree that i think that is going to be very important. donald trump, we all know he is very blustery and combative. if a democrat goes in and tries to out serious him, it may not go that well.

hillary clinton i thought beat him in the debates on the merits, but stylistically, that sort of thing. as i believe me against donald trump, i believe i would make him seem somewhat ridiculous. [laughter] mr. yang: i do think there are certain existing programs that do have incentives attached to them that are not great. when i talk to people who are in these programs, they are constantly somewhat anxious about having those benefits reduced or taken away. because their various administrative requirements accompany them. i would not touch a single program. you are right that if you opt

into the freedom dividend, you'd be forgoing certain benefits. >> don't those people need it the most? mr. yang: to me, yes, this is a foundation. i am open to expanding the programs and helping all those. it's a legitimate point of view. hello i don't disagree with you. the second thing is, how many of you are concerned about climate change? everyone. if you don't have your hand up, you should. not that concerned about it. [laughter] mr. yang: we will work on him after. if we are in a crisis, we need to consider all options on the table. that includes considering next-generation nuclear energy as a way to manage our energy consumption. thorium is superior to uranium as a fuel source on many levels. it's not intrinsically radioactive. it degrades faster. you can't make weapons out of it. to me, if we don't explore this technology, we are leaving a solution off of the table.

but i understand the perspective on it because some people dislike anything with the word nuclear in it. i understand that. thank you so much for all three of your comments because i don't disagree with any of them, really. one last question, then selfies. [laughter] mr. yang: if anyone wants those. we have goodies and books or anything else for the good people here? i wrote a book. i don't know if we have copies. i love being in iowa so i can give my book away like it's candy. as an author, it makes me very happy. >> thank you. would you consider a transfer period for people who receive other public support when they opt into ubi in order to ease that transition? mr. yang: it's a very similar question that he'd asked. 100% yes. i don't want to pull the rug out from anyone. it could be that there was an

overlap period, where you can try out the dividend, you have a transition period, and then you can say, it turns out i preferred some other suite of programs. i am someone who wants to do more, not less. the task ahead of us is to rewrite the rules of the 21st century economy to work for us. and to let our fellow citizens know, the biggest lie in america is that we don't have the wealth or the money. i have done the math. we are up to $21 trillion in gdp. we have the money. do you remember them complaining about where the money was when they wanted to bailout wall street to the tune of $4 trillion? i don't remember that. no one was like, do we have the money for this? they pulled the lever and hoped we didn't notice. they called it quantitative easing. who knows what quantitative easing is? nobody. you guys don't.

so now it is time for us to build a trickle up the economy, where people are looking at each other like we don't have the money for this. we want to rebuild our communities and families. we have the resources to help people in need solve those problems. let's make history together in 2020. thank you so much, marshalltown. i love iowa, because you have the power. let's use it. let's use it for our future generations. thank you so much. [applause] mr. yang: it's picture time. where am i going to be? [laughter] mr. yang: that makes sense.

[indiscernible] >> you want to get in there? mr. yang: thank you both for being here. >> yes, one second. you are in the background of the photo. [laughter] >> you are the background of his photo. >> 1,2,3. one more. 1,2,3. [indiscernible] mr. yang: thank you, thank you. hello. [indiscernible] mr. yang: you definitely could. can we get the books here if we have them? where did they take them to? i will see you soon. [indiscernible] mr. yang: it's going to have to be the election after that somehow. [laughter] mr. yang: thank you, preston. thanks for being here. >> good to see you again.

mr. yang: you, too. thanks for being here. >> i love everything you do. mr. yang: thank you. you were on ubi before me? you probably were. i wasn't that early to it. >> i've seen technology grow. it's pretty crazy. mr. yang: it's crazy. how are you. how old are you? >> i'm 15. >> he may become. mr. yang: rick -- he made me come. mr. yang: really? thank you. [laughter] >> thank you. mr. yang: that's how the magic happens. >> i just want to thank you for actually answering people's questions. i went to a kamala panel last night and she dodged a bunch of questions. mr. yang: i only know one way of answering questions. just try to answer. >> i hope you feel he did right by bringing you. mr. yang: did you have a camera? i will get my picture with you.

>> i can put this next to my bernie picture. mr. yang: good. [laughter] >> we got together one time. mr. yang: bernie is a great patriot. thank you both for being here. >> i will vote for your reelection. mr. yang: i like it. >> if on the off chance you don't happen to win the presidency, will you regroup in 2024? mr. yang: the plan is to win. the plan is to solve the problems. unfortunately the problems aren't going anywhere, and neither am i. and neither are my kids. >> that means you're coming back. mr. yang: that means i'm going to keep grinding until the problems are solved. >> keep going, man. mr. yang: thank you. >> hello. [indiscernible] >> thank you for coming. >> thank you for following me on twitter. mr. yang: no problem.

>> i have to give a shout out to the yang gang. we love you. we have to get one more. [indiscernible] mr. yang: do me a favor and dm may. i owe you something. >> i will see you in a bit. mr. yang: thank you. [indiscernible] mr. yang: congratulations. were you near my wife, by chance? if i was here and the cameras were here, my wife was there. did you guys have a wedding date? >> no, not at the moment.

[laughter] mr. yang: that's beautiful. did i spell your name right? janet, here you go. thank you, janet. [laughter] [indiscernible] mr. yang: thank you for all you do. mr. yang: they will hire 1000 people then they start bringing in the robots.

that's their playbook. great to meet you. thank you. >> thank you. [indiscernible] >> thank you. mr. yang: thank you, sir.