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Democrats Government Math United States Politics

Andrew Yang Drops Out of Presidential Race (washingtonpost.com) 329

Andrew Yang, tech entrepreneur and founder of Venture for America, will end his campaign for president after a disappointing showing in the New Hampshire primary. The Washington Post reports: "I am a numbers guy," Yang said in an interview before addressing supporters at Manchester's Puritan Backroom. "In most of these [upcoming] states, I'm not going to be at a threshold where I get delegates, which makes sticking around not necessarily helpful or productive in terms of furthering the goals of this campaign. If I become persuaded that there's a particular candidate that gives us a superior chance of beating Donald Trump, and I think it's important to make that opinion known, then I would consider it for sure," Yang said. He also said he would be open to becoming another candidate's running mate or joining a presidential Cabinet.

In his stump speech, Yang warned of the societal and economic changes automation would continue to bring to the United States. He proposed countering it by implementing universal basic income in the form of a $1,000-a-month "Freedom Dividend" for U.S. citizens. His sometimes bleak message on the campaign trail was contrasted with his upbeat, irreverent style of campaigning: Yang once crowd-surfed at a candidate forum and sometimes challenged other celebrities to pickup basketball games. He half-danced onto just about every stage to the '90s Mark Morrison R&B hit "Return of the Mack" and spawned a loyal following of supporters who dubbed themselves the "Yang Gang." They often showed up at his events wearing trademark "math" hats, a nod both to his self-described emphasis on facts and research and to the geek culture that surrounded his candidacy. "This is the nerdiest campaign in history," Yang told The Washington Post last year.
Yang was also the first presidential candidate to use campaign funds for a pilot program meant to resemble his universal basic income proposal. "He told CNN on Monday that the concept of a freedom dividend was 'not going anywhere,' and emphasized on Tuesday that he had forced a new idea into Democratic politics," reports The Washington Post. "He made that point with math."

"Now, 66 percent of Democrats support a universal basic income," Yang said. "It's got 72 percent of young people, aged 18 to 34."
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Andrew Yang Drops Out of Presidential Race

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  • We need UBI (Score:5, Insightful)

    by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Tuesday February 11, 2020 @08:36PM (#59717916)
    but we need Universal Healthcare and Universal higher education first. There's still a _lot_ of work to do. We need to get off fossil fuels, for environmental reasons yes but also for political & economic reasons (we can't keep fraking, we're destroying our groundwater and that stuff is getting scarce). If the 1% won't step up and fulfill their duty as job creators then we should do it ourselves, like FDR did all those years ago

    Once we have a strong social foundation in place then comes UBI. We need that or the rent seekers will just buy up everything and suck it right back out of us.
    • Before you can even start in with any of those plans, you need to fix the entire government first. The federal government can just *barely* run the VA hospital system. Military spending is out of control. There are no financial controls to speak of on any executive branch agency to speak of. If a private business were run like most governmental agencies the CFO would be in prison. Institute GAAP and regular external audits, get the bureaucracy under control, THEN you can start talking about instituting enor

      • Indeed! Slash the military budget by 50-75%, ban health insurance companies, slash drug company profits by 50-75%, then MAYBE you would have a start to some of these universal programs. Who is going to pay for them?!? Not the 1% because they never do, it will be the middle and upper class and then they will be fucked even more. They already pay nearly all of the taxes. Maybe itâ(TM)s time to start taxing owning capital. Any entity (business or person) that owns or leases over 10 million in capit

    • by blindseer ( 891256 ) <blindseerNO@SPAMearthlink.net> on Tuesday February 11, 2020 @09:55PM (#59718152)

      We need to get off fossil fuels, for environmental reasons yes but also for political & economic reasons (we can't keep fraking, we're destroying our groundwater and that stuff is getting scarce).

      What do you propose as an alternative? I liked Yang because he did the math and saw that without hydroelectric and nuclear power we will not get off of fossil fuels. We have people like Bernie and Warren that want to close all the nuclear power plants and tear down all the dams. If you want to see an economic and environmental disaster then getting rid of nuclear and hydro power would do that.

      I did see Warren concede that we should keep existing nuclear power plants open and this simply destroys her argument against nuclear power. If nuclear power is not safe then we should be closing them all down as soon as possible. If there is a problem with the disposal of the radioactive waste then the longer they run the more waste gets produced. If this is a matter of solar and wind being cheaper than nuclear power then we should close them down for cost reasons alone.

      Yang didn't buy into this bullshit on the "Green New Deal" which called for abandoning nuclear and hydro power, and that's one big reason I liked him in the race. With him gone who is left to bring sense to this debate on national energy policy? It looks like "Mayor Pete" might be supportive.

      I'm seeing a lot of Democrats running that still think gun control is a good idea, it is not. Voters aren't screaming for gun control as most are simply neutral on it, the rest is either a very small (if perhaps quite vocal) minority or pro-RKBA. This is just a losing policy. Also a loser is abortion, and this was demonstrated in a recent rally Mayor Pete held where he was asked about where pro-life Democrats fit in the party.

      The Democrats would be doing far better right now if they backed off on the loser issues and actually did what they said we should do, that is "listen to the science". Science tells us how to get off fossil fuels but they are not listening to the ecologists, economists, physicists, meteorologists, geologists, and so on. All they seem to listen to are the "climate scientists" which is just a bunch of people that self selected into thinking on one problem with one solution. That's not listening to the science if the outcome is predetermined and then going out to look for evidence to support it.

      This is even assuming that things are as bad as they are claimed. Right now the environment is very clean, and the USA has been lowering it's CO2 output for years. This will not continue with the policies from many of the Democrats running for POTUS now.

      I saw polling that Yang could win against Trump in the general election, with far better chances than all the others running right now. The Democrat party though is increasingly being run by socialists, and that doesn't sell well with the general public.

      • Just because Yang's opponents are clueless on energy, doesn't mean he has a clue. POTUS does not and will not have the power to change our energy infrastructure in such dramatic ways without vast amounts of unprecedented cooperation. So can we just ignore that nonsense already?
  • by blindseer ( 891256 ) <blindseerNO@SPAMearthlink.net> on Tuesday February 11, 2020 @08:50PM (#59717952)

    I liked what Yang brought to the debate. I believe his idea of a universal basic income is just a fantasy but he at least had some basic understandings on how the world works that the professional politicians, university professors, and lawyers, that he ran against did not understand.

    He's young enough that we could see him again.

    • by Ambvai ( 1106941 )

      I think he focused on discussing a few specific points too much (his autistic son, robots, UBI) while the rest of his platform was pretty solid and reasonable... though 'solid and reasonable' isn't really the kind of thing that gets people riled up and eyes on you. I'm betting if he sticks at it, he can land a government position and climb into the political spotlight again. As long as he doesn't talk about UBI too much. That thing is like a political lead balloon, whether or not you're in favor of it or no

    • by imidan ( 559239 ) on Tuesday February 11, 2020 @11:42PM (#59718436)

      I liked what Yang brought to the debate.

      I think Yang is a smart guy, and I think he understands enough about both math and politics that he knew that his chance at the nomination was about a snowball's chance in Hell. But he ran to draw attention to UBI, to automation and AI, to a green economy requiring nuclear, and a few other things. And maybe he ran to get a hand up from whoever becomes the nominee, possibly to step into a cabinet position. So while I also like Yang, I suspect he's about where he expected to be at this point, if not a little better off. I'd like to see him the cabinet, and continue to see him in the future.

  • .. And a big thank god. Now let's wait for Bernie and Warren to waive the white flags.. One can hope, can't he ?
    • Liz's weak stance on Medicare for All makes me want Bernie at the top of the ticket but she knows how to get Wall Street under control like nobody else. Imagine a world where the entire US economy didn't collapse every 10 years... It'd be glorious.
  • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

    Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • Way easier to just pay a living wage to everyone.
    • by jrumney ( 197329 )

      We''d be better off spending the money on education, obviously.

    • * Current SS recipients and government pensioners don't get it

      Why do people have a massive problem understanding the U part of UBI. If it's not universal then it's not UBI and you're therefore talking about something else.

    • by twocows ( 1216842 ) on Wednesday February 12, 2020 @12:05PM (#59720010)
      Wait, how'd you get those numbers? I calculated it out and got over an order of magnitude more.

      Google says we're at 290m adults. That times 12 months in a year times $1000 per month for UBI comes out to 3,480,000,000,000, or $3.48 trillion per year. I don't think that's manageable with the current state of our economy. Even if we generously exclude everything you said and guesstimate that we'd only have to pay a third of that, that's still over a trillion per year.
    • You're off by a factor of ten on cost. It would take $2,400,000,000,000/year (2.4 Trillion) to give 200,000,000 (200 Million) people $12,000/year.

  • What kind of moron votes against getting a free $1,000 per month? It was literally free money. Everyone says "money doesn't grow on trees" but a vote for Yang was like planting the seed of a money tree. $1,000 is 1,000 things from the Dollar Store - who would vote against that? I could've bought 16 more Switch games per month. I could've been swimming in funko pops. But no, you had to vote for Grabby Joe or Commie Bernie or that Butt guy. Maybe Pocahontas. You had to vote against me getting $1,000 p
  • There are a LOT of people suffering from PAINFUL undiagnosed medical conditions that are just waiting till they can finally see a doctor without going bankrupt or giving up their dreams. This includes many poor T voters who developed problems over the past few years.

    Just like a lot of people quietly voted DT in '16, I expect they will quietly vote BS in '20. Every broke republican with a toothache is a closet Bernie supporter.

    I don't think they can get away with blatantly rejecting Sanders a second time, an

    • Every broke republican with a toothache is a closet Bernie supporter.

      Ahhh... huh? What's your reasoning there?

  • ... release 4710, service pack 4.

  • "I am a numbers guy," Yang said in an interview

    Really? Because you effed up on the math for your $1,000/mo FREEEEEEEEDOM Dividend. No way your 5-10% VAT is going to come even CLOSE to paying for that.

    • Cutting the bureaucracy and waste out of current welfare systems would pay for a lot of it. Then, you can also redirect taxes that are being wasted on needless wars and fighter jets to pay for the rest.
      • So let me get this straight Yang's VAT tax has zero chance of paying for his 'Freedom Dividend' (dumbest name ever) and your plan is to to cut bureaucracy, cut waste, end wars AND stop paying for a military, things that every single administration in forever has been unable and/or unwilling to do?

        (in best Moran Freeman voice): Good luck.....

      • by twocows ( 1216842 ) on Wednesday February 12, 2020 @12:14PM (#59720066)
        At a glance on Google, it looks like the yearly gross federal revenues are about $3t/yr. I genuinely want to know: how do you expect to budget a program that would take anywhere from 1/3 to 3/3 of our yearly gross revenues? That's not even taking into account our existing spending.
  • by Albinoman ( 584294 ) on Wednesday February 12, 2020 @01:46AM (#59718672)
    Universal basic income is a silly idea because it would cause abrupt inflation. When every property owner, grocery store, and telecom knows we're getting an extra thousand bucks we can be damn sure they'll want a piece of it and we'll be ok with it cause, hey it's an extra thousand bucks. It's 4 trillion dollars invented out of thin air every year. Where does it go? Nowhere, the economy has a value and we're just dividing it into more pieces that way. The people and companies best positioned to take over that new money will just get even richer.

    UBI will only be a thing if there is ever a time that so much is automated that there are just not enough jobs by a large margin and decent standard of living is cheap to maintain, and it wont really be in the form Yang is proposing.
    • It's 4 trillion dollars invented out of thin air every year

      Wrong, it isn't invented out of thin air, it is simply a redistribution of money. You're moving money from a generally fairly inactive part of the economy to a very active part of the economy (local consumer spending by working and lower middle class people generally does much more than the foreign investments of the upper class people). See also the concept of the diminishing marginal utility of money. Redistribution (to a certain extent) increases total utility with the same amount of money.

      The people and companies best positioned to take over that new money will just get even richer.

      Actually, the

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