Thread by @willyuwaychang

1/ Who is the Asian man running for president who wants to give everyone $1,000 who won't wear a tie?

👇To prepare for @AndrewYang's third qualified debate, like and retweet this thread to share with everyone that doesn't yet know! #Yang2020 #YangGang

2/ @AndrewYang built nonprofit Venture for America and ran it for 7 years. Trained entrepreneurs to help create jobs in cities like Detroit, Cleveland, St Louis, Birmingham, New Orleans. Was given awards by Obama Administration and had documentary made by Netflix.

3/ Yang discovered there was a deeper problem. Every job he helped create, he realized we lost a thousand. “I saw that we were pouring water into a bathtub that has a giant hole ripped in the bottom.”

4/ “We are in the third inning of the greatest economic transformation in the history of the world. Trump won because we automated away 4 million manufacturing jobs in swing states Michigan, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Wisconsin, Missouri, Iowa.”

5/ Almost half have left the workforce and almost half of these workers filed for disability. Labor force participation is at 63%. The same level as Ecuador and Costa Rica with almost 1 out of 5 prime working age men out of the workforce.

6/ Suicides, drug overdoses, anxiety, depression, financial insecurity are at record highs 📈. Business formation, labor force participation, interstate migration, marriage, childbirths are at record lows 📉. Life expectancy has declined for the last 3 years 📉.

7/ “Donald Trump is the symptom, not the disease. The disease is economic insecurity caused by a changing economy that is leaving people behind."

8/ 5 most common jobs in US: administrative and clerical work, retail and sales, food service and prep, trucking and transportation, and manufacturing. 32% of Americans graduate from college, so a majority of high school graduates has one of these jobs. These jobs are next to go.

9/ Retail employs 1 in 10 workers, 14.5 million Americans. Average age 39, majority female, $12/hour. 30% of malls are closing in next 4 years due to Amazon and retail jobs are going away.

10/ 2.5 million call center workers in the United States making $14 an hour—typically high school graduates. Artificial Intelligence will outperform the average call center worker very soon.

11/ Truck driving is most common job in 29 states in America. 3.5 million truck drivers in US and 7.2 million workers who serve those drivers. Self-driving truck technology is rapidly becoming sophisticated enough to replace these drivers.

12/ Government-funded retraining programs of displaced manufacturing workers had a success rate of between 0 and 15%. When we suggest retraining, we’re saying the market doesn’t value you anymore and we'll push you towards something the market does value. We need better metrics.

13/ By focusing on GDP, we’ve promoted production over all else. @AndrewYang wants to start measuring economic prosperity using human indicators: Quality of life, life expectancy, happiness, well-being, mental health, consumer and student debt, work/civic engagement levels, etc.

14/ #FreedomDividend kickstarts #HumanCenteredCapitalism. $1k/month to every American adult. Enables all Americans to pay bills, get education, start businesses, stay healthy, relocate for work, spend time w/ children, take care of loved ones, and have a real stake in the future.

15/ Putting money into the hands of American consumers would grow economy. Roosevelt Institute projects it would grow by $2.5 trillion and create 4.6 million new jobs. This would generate $800 billion in new revenue from economic growth and activity.

16/ #FreedomDividend is not a new concept. It has been proposed by Thomas Paine at the founding of the country. Martin Luther King Jr was for it. Nobel prize-winning economist, Milton Friedman, supported it.

17/ Alaska has had the #FreedomDividend for 37 years where everyone gets $1k-$2k/year from oil. Technology is the oil of the 21st century. We can tax companies that are benefiting most from automation - every Amazon transaction, every Google search, every robot truck mile.

18/ Amazon's sucking up $20 billion in business every year and pays $0 in taxes. Big companies and rich people are excellent at moving things around to avoid taxes – Amazon, Google, and other companies funnel hundreds of billions in earnings overseas.

19/ A Value-Added Tax (VAT) is a tax on the production of goods or services a business produces. It is a fair tax and it makes it much harder for large corporations, who are experts at hiding profits and income, to avoid paying their fair share.

20/ To pay for the #FreedomDividend we’ll implement a Value-Added Tax at 10%, half the European level. VAT will become increasingly important to capture the value generated by automation in a way that income taxes would not. Staples would be excluded; luxury goods, a higher rate.

21/ The #FreedomDividend would not cause inflation. In monetary economics, inflation is based on changes in the supply of money. This plan has minimal changes in the supply of money because it is funded by a Value-Added Tax.

22/ In studies where cash is given to the poor, there has been no increase in drug and alcohol use. Decision-making has been shown to improve when people have greater economic security. Giving people resources will enable them to make better decisions to improve their situation.

23/ Research on cash transfer programs have found that the only people who work fewer hours when given direct cash transfers are new mothers. $12,000 a years is barely enough to live on. To get ahead meaningfully, people will still need to get out there and work.

24/ By giving to everyone, the stigma for accepting cash transfers from government disappears. Additionally, it removes the incentive for anyone to remain in certain income brackets to receive benefits. A wealthy person will pay more into the system than he/she gets out of it.

25/ “In an ideal world, we wouldn’t fear automation. It should be something we celebrate, as new technology makes our lives easier. We’re each shareholders in the richest country in the history of the world. Since everyone contributes, everyone should receive the dividend.”

26/ "I'm not running for President because I've fantasized about ever being President. I'm running for President because I'm an American and a Parent. I can see the country we will leave to our children, it is not something I'm willing to accept." -@AndrewYang #Yang2020 #YangGang