Andrew Yang's Pitch to Asian Americans
November 3, 2018 by Morgan Xin
On Nov.2, 2018, Andrew Yang delivered a speech to Asian American Community in Silicon Valley. As the first Asian American who runs for 2020 presidential candidate, Yang shared his real insights into the reason why Americans are getting more impulsive, more racist, and more xenophobia. He put forth three solutions, which sound bold but not completely unrealistic.
Yang started the speech with a serious question “How did you all feel when you saw the Synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh last weekend?” He believes that there were very deep problems in this country, “that obviously is targeting Jews, but we are one generation away from that happening to Asian Americans in this country if we don’t come together as a society, because right now, America is not doing well in many many parts of the country.”
Yang started the speech with a serious question “How did you all feel when you saw the Synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh last weekend?” He believes that there were very deep problems in this country, “that obviously is targeting Jews, but we are one generation away from that happening to Asian Americans in this country if we don’t come together as a society, because right now, America is not doing well in many many parts of the country.”
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Picture 1. Andrew Yang's book, published in 2018 Picture 2. Andrew Yang with Asian Americans at fundraising party
Yang's personal experience
Before addressing the problems in the country, Yang shared his personal experience with attendees.
His parents met at UC Berkeley in the 1960s. They were graduate students at that time and both from Taiwan. His father acquired a doctorate in Physics and then generated 80 U.S. patents over his career for IBM and GE. His mother is an artist. She got Master’s Degree in Statistics at Berkeley.
Yang was born in 1975 in Schenectady, New York and grew up in Westchester County. He went to Brown University in 1992 and graduated with BA in Economics. He then went to Law School at Columbia and earned JD in 1999.
Yang identifies himself as an entrepreneur. His .com company didn’t survive the Internet bubble around 2000. After that, he worked for another entrepreneur at a healthcare software company for a number of years. And then he became the CEO of an education company that helped people get into the best business schools and law schools in the country. That company became number one in the United States while he was CEO for those six years, and was acquired by the Washington Post in 2009.
2011 marked the beginning of his journey to reconstruct America. He quit his job to start Venture for America (VFA).
“Young smart people in this country should be starting businesses in places like Detroit, Cleveland, St. Louis, Baltimore, and New Orleans and other cities around the country. I donated 120,000 of my own and started calling wealthy friends asking, ‘do you love America?’ and then the savvy people said, ‘what does it mean? If I said yes’, and then I said, ‘at least $10,000’, and the 12 of them said, ‘Yes, I love America for $10,000’. So we launched with a budget of around $250,000, and then the budget grew and grew to this year. It's around six and a half million dollars.”
There was a documentary called Generation Startup on Netflix. It told stories of Yang and his organization VFA. At the end of the documentary, Yang said,“ It’s about entrepreneurship and companies and jobs, but also it’s about giving America that spirit and character that it once had. ” Right now, VFA has supported youth entrepreneurs in 18 cities around the country.
His parents met at UC Berkeley in the 1960s. They were graduate students at that time and both from Taiwan. His father acquired a doctorate in Physics and then generated 80 U.S. patents over his career for IBM and GE. His mother is an artist. She got Master’s Degree in Statistics at Berkeley.
Yang was born in 1975 in Schenectady, New York and grew up in Westchester County. He went to Brown University in 1992 and graduated with BA in Economics. He then went to Law School at Columbia and earned JD in 1999.
Yang identifies himself as an entrepreneur. His .com company didn’t survive the Internet bubble around 2000. After that, he worked for another entrepreneur at a healthcare software company for a number of years. And then he became the CEO of an education company that helped people get into the best business schools and law schools in the country. That company became number one in the United States while he was CEO for those six years, and was acquired by the Washington Post in 2009.
2011 marked the beginning of his journey to reconstruct America. He quit his job to start Venture for America (VFA).
“Young smart people in this country should be starting businesses in places like Detroit, Cleveland, St. Louis, Baltimore, and New Orleans and other cities around the country. I donated 120,000 of my own and started calling wealthy friends asking, ‘do you love America?’ and then the savvy people said, ‘what does it mean? If I said yes’, and then I said, ‘at least $10,000’, and the 12 of them said, ‘Yes, I love America for $10,000’. So we launched with a budget of around $250,000, and then the budget grew and grew to this year. It's around six and a half million dollars.”
There was a documentary called Generation Startup on Netflix. It told stories of Yang and his organization VFA. At the end of the documentary, Yang said,“ It’s about entrepreneurship and companies and jobs, but also it’s about giving America that spirit and character that it once had. ” Right now, VFA has supported youth entrepreneurs in 18 cities around the country.
Yang's insights into the reason of rising social anger, racism, and xenophobia
Yang has now been around the country for the last seven years with his organization VFA. He found many, many parts of this country not doing well at all, Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Alabama, Louisiana...Yang came to a realization in 2017 that America is now going through a big economic and technological shift.
“America right now is going towards being majority minority in 2045, It’s 27 years from now. There are very rare examples in world history a dominant ethnic group utterly sharing, or giving up dominance to other groups. That is not a historical norm. So, what you'd expect to happen over the next 27 years is rising racism, rising racial tensions, and rising economic steroid, especially as we decimate the most common middle class jobs in this country, which we are in the midst of doing right now.
I dug into the numbers, and there's a very, very clear explanation for why Donald Trump became president in 2016. If you look at the data in every voting districts, there's a direct correlation between the adoption of industrial robots in a voting districts in the movement towards Donald Trump over the last four or eight years.
Americans seem so upset is that the labor force participation rate is now down to 62.9%, which is the same levels as El Salvador, Dominican Republic.”
Yang pointed out the fact that , 57% of American adults, between the ages of 18 to 64, cannot afford not expecting $500 bill.
"What happens when you're in a mindset of scarcity like that, and I have studies in my book (The War on Normal People) that you're affected with IQ down by 13 points. And for those of us in the room, it might not be economic scarcity, but might be time scarcity. You can feel your self-restraint lowering. So, it seems like Americans are getting dumber, more impulsive, nastier, more racist, more Xenophobic, and more misogynist. That is because scarcity is sweeping this country and we need to reverse it with a sense of abundance.”
“America right now is going towards being majority minority in 2045, It’s 27 years from now. There are very rare examples in world history a dominant ethnic group utterly sharing, or giving up dominance to other groups. That is not a historical norm. So, what you'd expect to happen over the next 27 years is rising racism, rising racial tensions, and rising economic steroid, especially as we decimate the most common middle class jobs in this country, which we are in the midst of doing right now.
I dug into the numbers, and there's a very, very clear explanation for why Donald Trump became president in 2016. If you look at the data in every voting districts, there's a direct correlation between the adoption of industrial robots in a voting districts in the movement towards Donald Trump over the last four or eight years.
Americans seem so upset is that the labor force participation rate is now down to 62.9%, which is the same levels as El Salvador, Dominican Republic.”
Yang pointed out the fact that , 57% of American adults, between the ages of 18 to 64, cannot afford not expecting $500 bill.
"What happens when you're in a mindset of scarcity like that, and I have studies in my book (The War on Normal People) that you're affected with IQ down by 13 points. And for those of us in the room, it might not be economic scarcity, but might be time scarcity. You can feel your self-restraint lowering. So, it seems like Americans are getting dumber, more impulsive, nastier, more racist, more Xenophobic, and more misogynist. That is because scarcity is sweeping this country and we need to reverse it with a sense of abundance.”
Humanity First solutions
When interviewed by BGC, Yang said that he is a big fan of Teddy Roosevelt. He admires the way Roosevelt fought for the little guy and then helped take a government that was heading the wrong direction and turn it to the right direction.
Yang put forth three big policies to help the American people get through this economic transition. The core of his plan is Humanity First.
His first big move is freedom dividend. He also calls it universal basic income.
"We have to start putting some kind of resources in the hands of Americans, they can start making effective transitions so they can move, so they can possibly retrain, so they can provide for their own basic needs and the needs of their family, independent of whether or not they can find a new retail job or part time job.
The freedom dividends are paid $1,000 free and clear into the hands of every adult between the ages of 18 to 64, no questions asked. And that would be an incredible boon to millions of Americans."
His second policy is to build our economy around more human centered measurements. From Yang's point of view, GDP will not have any need for unemployed cashiers, truck drivers, call center workers, etc.
“We need to create new measurement that everyone can participate in things like childhood success, mental health, community engagement, infrastructure, environmental sustainability, arts and creativity to create more goals than more Americans been participating as we transition to an economy where machines and software are more and more important.”
Yang's third solution is called universal healthcare. The current healthcare “makes it harder to start a business, harder to grow business, harder to change jobs, harder to leave your jobs. It makes entire labor market much less dynamic, so we have to do is we have to get the healthcare off the backs of American families and businesses. I'm really excited to do to help streamline it and also made the cost lower and use technology to deliver better charity.”
Yang put forth three big policies to help the American people get through this economic transition. The core of his plan is Humanity First.
His first big move is freedom dividend. He also calls it universal basic income.
"We have to start putting some kind of resources in the hands of Americans, they can start making effective transitions so they can move, so they can possibly retrain, so they can provide for their own basic needs and the needs of their family, independent of whether or not they can find a new retail job or part time job.
The freedom dividends are paid $1,000 free and clear into the hands of every adult between the ages of 18 to 64, no questions asked. And that would be an incredible boon to millions of Americans."
His second policy is to build our economy around more human centered measurements. From Yang's point of view, GDP will not have any need for unemployed cashiers, truck drivers, call center workers, etc.
“We need to create new measurement that everyone can participate in things like childhood success, mental health, community engagement, infrastructure, environmental sustainability, arts and creativity to create more goals than more Americans been participating as we transition to an economy where machines and software are more and more important.”
Yang's third solution is called universal healthcare. The current healthcare “makes it harder to start a business, harder to grow business, harder to change jobs, harder to leave your jobs. It makes entire labor market much less dynamic, so we have to do is we have to get the healthcare off the backs of American families and businesses. I'm really excited to do to help streamline it and also made the cost lower and use technology to deliver better charity.”
Asian Americans need stand up
Yang said that even though most of Asian Americans are not driving trucks and are not going to be the victims of the displacement caused by automation, the destiny of Asian Americans is very, very much tied up with the destiny of this country. And if America does not do well over the coming years, there will be rising anti-Asian sentiment and Asian Americans will not be in position to do well.
He pointed out that Asian Americans have a tendency to work their way up within organizations, and to be strong workers, and think that will be rewarded, but "I'm here to share with you all politics does not work that way. And if we wait, and we think if we have an Asian American mayor, or Congressman, or even governor or senator, that that person will just be anointed president because they do good work, that will never happen. That is not the way this country functions. And in order for there to be an Asian American president, first of all, one of us has to run."
From Yang's perspective, Asian Americans have a very, very specific and special role to play in the years to come. He inspired Asian Americans with his statistics: “Asian Americans are 5.8% of the US population, that does not sound like a lot, but we have this historic opportunity because of this democratic race coming up, there are going to be 20 to 25 national candidates. And so, if there was an Asian American presidential candidate that got 4 or 5% of the vote, that would be enough to make me a tier one candidate in a very crowded field and would get me on the national debate stage next summer.”
Yang closed his speech with a sense shared by all Asian Americans that "we are somewhat diminished or marginalized or second class citizens. I have been around the people that are supposed to run our country, and we are as smart, as good, as educated, as moral, and we love this country and our families just as much as anyone else, and there's no reason why none of us cannot be the President of United States in 2021!"
He pointed out that Asian Americans have a tendency to work their way up within organizations, and to be strong workers, and think that will be rewarded, but "I'm here to share with you all politics does not work that way. And if we wait, and we think if we have an Asian American mayor, or Congressman, or even governor or senator, that that person will just be anointed president because they do good work, that will never happen. That is not the way this country functions. And in order for there to be an Asian American president, first of all, one of us has to run."
From Yang's perspective, Asian Americans have a very, very specific and special role to play in the years to come. He inspired Asian Americans with his statistics: “Asian Americans are 5.8% of the US population, that does not sound like a lot, but we have this historic opportunity because of this democratic race coming up, there are going to be 20 to 25 national candidates. And so, if there was an Asian American presidential candidate that got 4 or 5% of the vote, that would be enough to make me a tier one candidate in a very crowded field and would get me on the national debate stage next summer.”
Yang closed his speech with a sense shared by all Asian Americans that "we are somewhat diminished or marginalized or second class citizens. I have been around the people that are supposed to run our country, and we are as smart, as good, as educated, as moral, and we love this country and our families just as much as anyone else, and there's no reason why none of us cannot be the President of United States in 2021!"