EVERY SPOKEN WORD
150 min read · 30,037 words- 0:00 – 2:40
UBI as a presidential platform: why automation changes the conversation
- AYAndrew Yang
To me-
- JRJoe Rogan
Five, four... We'll talk about it.
- AYAndrew Yang
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Three, two... (laughs) Yes! And we're live. Hello.
- AYAndrew Yang
Hey, Joe.
- JRJoe Rogan
Welcome. Thank you.
- AYAndrew Yang
Oh, it's great to be here. Thanks for having me.
- JRJoe Rogan
My pleasure. Um, Sam Harris sends his regards.
- AYAndrew Yang
Yeah. Sam's a beautiful man.
- JRJoe Rogan
He is. I love that guy. Uh, and he's one of the reasons why you're here. Um, so universal basic income. This is what this is all about.
- AYAndrew Yang
Yes.
- JRJoe Rogan
Joe-
- AYAndrew Yang
Yeah, that's what my campaign for president is all about.
- JRJoe Rogan
That's a... an interesting, like, uh, focus of a campaign. And, and... very unusual. And, I mean, four years ago, you'd never even thought that that would have a chance at all, but this is a subject that has been gaining momentum and it g- it made a... I made a big shift 'cause, uh, I had my friend, Eddie Huang, on once, and he was the first person to bring it up. And, uh, my initial knee-jerk reaction was, "Get the fuck outta here." Like, universal basic income? Just gonna give people money. They're just gonna be lazy. Nothing's ever gonna get done. That's a terrible idea. And then I started paying attention to the rise of AI and automation and how many jobs are gonna get taken-
- AYAndrew Yang
Yes, yes.
- JRJoe Rogan
... away from p-... And then, once you see the actual numbers, it's pretty staggering.
- AYAndrew Yang
Yeah, and that's how I got there, Joe. Like, I spent the last seven years running an organization that I'd started called Venture for America, and we helped create about 3,000 jobs in Detroit, Cleveland, St. Louis, Birmingham, New Orleans, other cities around the country. And I saw that we're pouring water into a bathtub that has a giant hole ripped in the bottom, and that for every 5, 10, 50 jobs that my entrepreneurs were gonna create, we're gonna lose 5, 10, 50,000 jobs.
- JRJoe Rogan
It's not something that people intuitively suspect could be a real issue either. It's, it's one of the o-... the ones where you kinda have to, like, go ha-... shake people. Like, "Hey, look at this. This is coming. There's a cliff. We're going towards this cliff."
- AYAndrew Yang
It's, it's darker still in that... So, uh, when I was digging into the numbers, I found that it's not this cliff that we're heading towards. It's actually more of a curve that we're on. Uh, what I've been telling people is that we're in the third inning now, where one of the main reasons why Donald Trump won in 2016 is that we automated away four million manufacturing jobs that were based in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Wisconsin, Missouri, Iowa, all the swing states he needed to win in the center of the country. And a lot of that was just manufacturing work, and if you go to a factory, you'll see, it's just giant robot arms as far as the eye can see.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- AYAndrew Yang
So it's not just that you have artificial intelligence on the horizon, it's that we've been eating away at the most common jobs in the US economy, uh, for almost 20 years now, and it's just now hitting a point where it's pushing more and more unskilled men, in particular, out of the workforce.
- 2:40 – 7:44
Why retraining isn’t enough: truck drivers, ‘learn to code,’ and the limits of STEM
- JRJoe Rogan
Now, uh, are there other alternatives that you've considered other than just universal basic income, like educating people about this being a real issue and perhaps pushing them or directing them towards other occupations?
- AYAndrew Yang
Yeah. So that, that's the, uh, recipe that most people are attracted to. So I just wanna unpack the numbers a little bit more, so people have a sense of it. I was just with a bunch of truck drivers in Iowa last week, and there's a guy, Dennis Bogoski, that gave me a ride from Altoona to Grinnell in Iowa, where I've been campaigning. And the, the truth of it, Joe, is that there are three and a half million truck drivers in this country right now. It's the most common job in 29 states. And the average trucker's a 49-year-old guy with a high school education, maybe ex-military like Dennis was, uh, they're making, like, $50,000 a year. So then, if you say, "Hey, I'm gonna retrain half a million truck drivers," for what, exactly, is like issue number one.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- AYAndrew Yang
And that these guys didn't love school 30 years ago. It's not like driving a truck has made them really excited about the idea.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- AYAndrew Yang
And then the new job you're training them for... I looked into the data as to how good we were at retraining, let's say, displaced manufacturing workers in the Midwest when we started decimating their jobs, and we're terrible at it. Like, according to independent studies, government-funded retraining programs had a success rate of between 0 and 15% in real life. Like, this is what-
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- AYAndrew Yang
... actually happened to the workers of Michigan and Indiana and Ohio. And so, if you say we're gonna retrain these people, then you also have to come up with a, a g-... a way for us to become amazing at something that, right now, we're really, really bad at. And if you were an employer, which you are, would you rather employ a 50-year-old former truck driver with health problems who got some certificate program, or would you rather hire a 25-year-old kid who went to community college, is probably cheaper, has lower expectations, uh, and his skills are natively gonna be a little fresher? I mean, if you were an employer, you'd probably choose number two.
- JRJoe Rogan
Uh, I agree. Um, but I, I'm... I mean, I'm trying to look at this through rose-colored glasses, I guess.
- AYAndrew Yang
Well-
- JRJoe Rogan
I'm trying to think if, if there's a way that these people can adapt.
- AYAndrew Yang
You know, I mean, some will, for sure. You can retrain and reskill some people. But if you look at even the conversations we're having around this where people legitimately talk about retraining coal miners to be software engineers.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- AYAndrew Yang
Stuff that, on the face of it, makes no sense. But the, the reason why we're stretching for that is because we're looking for some kind of retraining-oriented solution when the numbers show that that's just not going to be the recipe, therefore actual success.
- JRJoe Rogan
And this is where, where this whole learn to code controversy is coming out online, where, uh, people are actually getting banned for writing "learn to code." It's, uh, really a hot subject on Twitter, and I... it's very confusing, too, and I haven't really gotten an explanation for why that's such an offensive thing to say, but people are getting banned for even-
- AYAndrew Yang
Yeah, journalists. I know, uh, ****** about this.
- JRJoe Rogan
... joking around, saying "learn to code." Um, it's re- very weird, but-
- AYAndrew Yang
The-
- JRJoe Rogan
... idea behind it is that it's kinda preposterous to ask someone who doesn't have an education to do something that's as difficult as code, computer language.
- AYAndrew Yang
Yeah. And unfortunately, we're gonna get to a point where AI can do some basic coding at a certain level. So i- if you think about the impulse to say "learn to code," what it's really saying is, "You need to do something that the market values."
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- AYAndrew Yang
It's like, hey, being a truck driver, the market's not gonna value that much when the trucks start driving themselves in the next five to ten years, so what does the market value? And then people are like, "Well..."... coding, and STEM, and, and, uh, engineering skills. And so, there's a drive to try and push people in those directions. But if you look at the numbers, uh, about 8% of American jobs right now are in STEM fields, like in technology, engineering, math, et cetera. So you're talking about 92% of the population that is not in those fields, and it's unrealistic to expect that 92% to somehow shift into the 8%.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right. And there even being places for them there. Mm-hmm.
- AYAndrew Yang
Yeah. No, that, that, that's true too.
- JRJoe Rogan
Even if they perfectly seamlessly transition, there's too many people for those jobs.
- AYAndrew Yang
Yeah. So, uh, I've been driven to universal basic income, in part because I've been looking at the numbers. The five most common jobs in the United States right now are administrative and clerical work, retail and sales, food service and food prep, truck driving and transportation, and manufacturing. Those five jobs comprise about half of all American jobs. Only 32% of Americans graduate from college. So the average American's a high school grad, doing one of these five jobs. And if you look at it, technology is already doing a number on each of these jobs. Like, the first, administrator and clerical, includes call center workers, and AI is in the process of, uh, taking over that job. Retail and sales, 30% of malls are closing in the next four years. So, the, the danger here is to think of it as artificial intelligence is coming. It's actually already eating up the most common jobs in our economy, and it's driving Americans, uh, into distress in various ways in the numbers.
- 7:44 – 11:14
The Freedom Dividend: defining the $1,000/month plan and the funding math
- JRJoe Rogan
Now, when you're talking about universal basic income, two qu- there's two questions that come up. How much money, and where is it coming from?
- AYAndrew Yang
Yeah. So first, I wanna say that if you look at the heritage of universal basic income, it, it's a deeply American idea, where Thomas Paine was for it at the founding of the country, and then Martin Luther King was for it, Milton Friedman, the godfather of conservative economists, was for it. And one state has had it in effect for 37 years, where everyone in that state gets between 1 and $2,000 a year, no questions asked.
- JRJoe Rogan
And it's Alaska.
- AYAndrew Yang
Yeah, it's Alaska, and they fund it with oil money.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- AYAndrew Yang
And what I'm going around telling people is that technology is the oil of the 21st century. So, I, I know you spoke to another guest about, "Hey, how do you get, let's say, approximately $3 trillion a year to fund universal basic income?" And a great thing is that it's... Well, the first thing is it's not actually 3 trillion. And the reason why it's not 3 trillion is that if you look at what we're currently doing, we have, uh... We're spending about 1.5 trillion right now on 126 welfare programs and social security. And so if you show up to someone's door and say, "Hey, here's a dividend of a thousand dollars a month, but if you're already getting more than a thousand dollars in stuff, we're not just gonna stack it on top. Uh, you know, we're gonna just gonna say you're guaranteed a thousand, and if you're already getting more, then this doesn't touch you, you can keep your current stuff. If you're getting 700 in food stamps and whatnot, then you can just get 300 on top." So, the 3 trillion actually shrinks a lot very fast, because of the fact that about half of Americans are already getting various, uh, income support from the government. So the real price tag is closer to about 1.8 trillion, if you say everyone who's 18 and up. Now for context, the entire US economy is now 20 trillion, up five trillion in the last 12 years, and the federal budget's four trillion. So you're looking at 1.8 trillion. It's a lot of money. Uh, but it's actually manageable. And one of the things that, uh, I haven't heard discussed here with you is that when you put money into people's hands, the money doesn't disappear. Like, if I gave you a thousand bucks a month, it probably would not make a big difference in the economy, 'cause it would just go into your account somewhere and, you know, nothing would happen. But we all know that right now, most Americans are living paycheck to paycheck. 57% of Americans can't afford an unexpected $500 bill. So you put a thousand dollars a month into their hands, it's gonna go right back into the economy. They're gonna spend it on food, childcare, car repairs they've been putting off, the occasional night out. And then all of those businesses end up hiring more people, and then we end up getting some of the money back as tax revenues. So of the 1.8 trillion, you, we're gonna get back, let's call it 400 billion in new tax receipts, because everyone's gonna be spending more money. We're gonna save one to 200 billion on things like incarceration and homelessness services and emergency room healthcare. I was in New Hampshire, uh, last month. And a prison guard said to me, it was a prison guard. He said, "We should pay people to stay out of jail, because we waste so much money when they're in jail." Like, he sees all the waste in the system. So if you imagine a society where everyone's getting a thousand bucks a month, that's like a... It's a great incentive to try and stay out of jail because, you know, you stop getting it if you wind up in jail. (laughs) Uh, and it re- reduces recidivism, 'cause when you come outta jail, at least you have, you know, a thousand bucks a month waiting for you, and then you're less inclined to, to commit a crime and head back in.
- 11:14 – 17:55
Second-order benefits and skepticism: crime, health, and social stability
- JRJoe Rogan
How much crime do you think you'd actually prevent though, by giving people a thousand dollars a month? I mean, think most of the people that are doing crime, whether it's thieve, uh, thievery or assault, they're not thinking this out, you know? This is, this is just either a way of life for them. Either, you know, their, they've got real mental issues or a, a pattern of behavior that they can't break. I really don't think that a thousand dollars a month is gonna fix any of that.
- AYAndrew Yang
Well, it's not gonna fix all of it, for sure. I mean, we'll still have jails. It's not like, you know, silver bullet.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- AYAndrew Yang
Uh, but at the margins, would it keep like, that person who's falling through the cracks and feels like they have no place in society?
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- AYAndrew Yang
Uh, and maybe they, you know, it's like the people around them are also like, "Hey, you know, you don't have any value," and they, you get a thousand bucks a month, maybe, like, it keeps them off at the margins. And everything we're talking about is at the margins, I mean, everything's like this statistical curve, and you're taking the people who are, let's call it like, the last 10 to 20%.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- AYAndrew Yang
But if you reduce our incarcerated population by 10 to 20%, I mean, that's billions and billions of dollars. So you...You're saving money on a bunch of things we spend like a- about a trillion dollars on right now, like healthcare, incarceration, homelessness services. And then the- the magic is that if you have a thousand bucks a month, and you're a parent so you feel this, that studies have shown that your kids are healthier, better nourished, more likely to graduate from high school and get further education. Mental health improves, uh, relationships improve, domestic violence goes down, hospital visits go down, and your worker productivity goes up. I mean, uh, you're, uh, an entrepreneur and CEO so you know when you run a company you say, "I'm gonna invest in my people. I'm gonna, like, treat them well and try and train them and give them resources." 'Cause you know that'll increase your productivity as an organization. In the public sector, we have the opposite approach where, like, if I can just avoid spending money on you, (laughs) then- then- then, you know, I'm gonna somehow save money. When we end up spending that money in very, very dark, costly, counterproductive ways in the back end 'cause they wind up, you know, uh- uh, in our institutions. In our institutions just spend a- a truckload of money. So if you look at the cost savings and the value gains and the economic growth, that actually gets you back about a trillion dollars or the 1.8. This is like the trickle-up economy 'cause none of the money disappears. It goes right back into the economy. And the way you get the last 800 billion or so is related to what we think is happening with AI and all these advanced technologies 'cause if you look at who's gonna win with AI and, uh, self-driving cars and trucks, the- the savings from robot trucks are estimated to be 168 billion dollars a year just from that one thing. So the problem is that the American public is gonna see very little of that money, uh, because the winners are gonna be the trillion-dollar tech companies that are great at just not paying a lot of taxes. They'll move it through Ireland. Amazon will say it didn't make any money this quarter, no reason to pay taxes. And so what we need to do is we need to put in a new tax that actually gets the American public a slice of every robot truck mile, Amazon transaction, Facebook ad. A- and every other industrialized country already has this tax. It's called a value-added tax. And because our economy is so vast at 20 trillion, a value-added tax at even half the European level generates about 800 billion in new revenue, and that gets you all the way there. So this is much more achievable and affordable than most people think, uh, when they start unpacking how the numbers, uh, work out.
- JRJoe Rogan
So essentially it would be the biggest corporations, the- the companies that gain or that c- have the largest revenue, they're gonna be paying most of this.
- AYAndrew Yang
Yeah, but they're gonna get some of that money back obviously.
- JRJoe Rogan
How are they gonna get it back?
- AYAndrew Yang
'Cause one of the things I say to the CEOs, it's like if everyone in Missouri is getting a thousand bucks, you know Amazon's gonna see some of that because they're just gonna buy more stuff.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- AYAndrew Yang
That's true for all of the big companies. What I say to CEOs, and I've spoken to groups of dozens of CEOs, what's really bad for your business is when people don't have money to spend. (laughs) Wha- what's good-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- AYAndrew Yang
... for your business is when they do. So they're gonna give up some money at the top end but then just gonna end up getting it back, uh, when their consumers end up spending a bit more.
- JRJoe Rogan
And has this been actually fleshed out, like the- the real numbers or the projections of how much they're gonna get back?
- AYAndrew Yang
Yeah, yeah. Uh, like the... So the Roosevelt Institute studied this plan of everyone getting a thousand bucks a month and projected it would create two million new jobs, uh, and grow the economy by 8% to 10%. And then you can model out what that means to each business because in that climate they're gonna see a similar uptick in revenues.
- JRJoe Rogan
Did they factor in all the jobs that are g- gonna be lost?
- AYAndrew Yang
So one of the things that's a misconception about universal basic income is that, uh, it somehow will, like, facilitate job loss.
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, for job losses though is the reason for universal basic income in the first place, right?
- AYAndrew Yang
Yeah, yeah, which we're in the midst of right now. Like right now as we're sitting here together, the labor force participation rate in the United States is 63%, uh, which is the same levels as El Salvador and the Dominican Republic. That's right now. Like, uh, 94 million or so Americans have left the workforce over the last number of years. Now a lot of that's natural demographics, a lot of that's people in school, but about five million of it is unskilled men who've gotten pushed out of the workforce. So, uh, so again this is not like, uh, you know, we're gonna solve a problem that's coming down the pike. Like we're actually in the middle of this problem. So if you put a thousand bucks a month into people's hands, it actually grows the economy and creates jobs, uh, because of more economic activity.
- JRJoe Rogan
Now when you say a problem that's coming down the pike, what- what are the projections in terms of, like, the timeline for-
- AYAndrew Yang
Yes, so, uh, there... A lot of the projections are actually pretty consistent with each other, which means they're probably right. (laughs) So the, uh... So Bain says you're looking at, uh, between 20 and 30% of jobs subject to automation by 2030, which is pretty soon. It's like 11 years-
- JRJoe Rogan
Wow.
- AYAndrew Yang
... from now. McKinsey says about 25%. Uh, the Obama White House, literally like their last day in office they issued a report saying, "Hey guys, we're gonna automate away all the jobs and then, like, you know, cl- turn the lights off." Um, they said 83% of jobs that make less than $20 an hour will be subject to automation by 2030. MIT is saying the same thing. Uh, and so we have 11 years to try and accelerate meaningful solutions, and this 11 years it's not like it all happens on 2030. It's gonna happen between now and then progressively according to all of the major institutions that have looked at this.
- 17:55 – 1:14:04
Robot trucking as the case study: efficiency vs social shock
- JRJoe Rogan
Now when you take a guy who's working as a truck driver and he's making $50,000 a year and you tell him that automation is gonna take away his job but good news, we're gonna give you $12,000 a year, that's a substantial loss in income. And-
- AYAndrew Yang
Yeah, it's a problem.
- JRJoe Rogan
... it leaves them... And it al- yeah, it also leaves them with this feeling of uselessness or hopelessness that they're not contributing, you know. I think one of the things that people enjoy is, uh, earning their own way, you know. They- they... People don't... It sounds counterintuitive, people don't like free money.They like a feeling of satisfaction, of a job well done, that they've created something, that they've done something.
- AYAndrew Yang
Yeah. Yeah, you're 100% right. It's one reason why we call this the freedom dividend. We say, "Look, it's not money for nothing. You're an owner and shareholder of the richest country in the history of the world." Just like when I buy Verizon or Microsoft, they send me a dividend. Like, I don't complain about that. Like, you are now a shareholder in this great nation and you get a dividend. But when I was with Dennis, the trucker who owns his own trucking company in Iowa, uh, the, the role that jobs play in, in truckers' lives is vital. A- and again, I'm a very data-driven guy, where men deal with joblessness very, very poorly.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- AYAndrew Yang
By the numbers, we spend, uh, between 40 and 75% of our time on the computer playing video games or doing other things. Uh, w- our substance abuse goes up. Our volunteering in the community goes down, even though we have more time.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- AYAndrew Yang
And we generally spiral into antisocial and self-destructive behaviors. Now, this is not something that's, uh, experienced by women in the same levels. Like, women and joblessness, women actually are more adaptable. They're more likely to go back to school and volunteer. They don't spend all their time on the computers the way that we do. So there's a real problem. Uh, and the purpose of universal basic income is not meant to be a job replacement for those truckers. Because right now, those truckers... And when I talk to the truck drivers... So I've, I've been campaigning for president now for a number of months, so I spent a lot of time in Iowa, which is a really huge trucking hub. And you go to them and say, "Hey guys, you worried about robot trucks taking your jobs?" They're like, "There's no way a robot could take my job." Like, that, that's, you know, that's like totally matter of fact. They're like, they're like, this is not something that they worry about.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- AYAndrew Yang
Their attitude has transitioned from that somewhat to, uh, "We should make robot trucks illegal," or, "We should make it so that a robot truck cannot, uh, displace me." So that's been a big shift, because a year ago, they were like, "It's impossible."
- JRJoe Rogan
The idea that a, an American would say, "We should make a, a robot job illegal," like it's y- we should s- have some laws that keep you from being free to use robots for your business instead of person, like you should be forced to hire, like mandatory unionization or something, that sounds pretty ridiculous.
- AYAndrew Yang
Well, that's where a lot of them are, Joe.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- AYAndrew Yang
Uh, so only 13% of truckers are unionized. Um, so 87% are like Dennis where they're small, independent firms.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- AYAndrew Yang
And a lot of them actually, uh, bought or leased their own trucks. Uh, so they took out tens of thousands of dollars in the equivalent of a mortgage to get this truck. And so if they have to compete against a robot truck that doesn't stop-
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm.
- AYAndrew Yang
... that's like, you know, that's existential level stuff.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- AYAndrew Yang
And right now, truck drivers have time use regulations where they cannot drive more than 14 hours a day. Uh, so you can't, you literally cannot compete-
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- AYAndrew Yang
... because the robot truck's just gonna keep going hour 15, 16, 17-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- AYAndrew Yang
... eh, et cetera. So these guys make, some of them make really good money. Like, some of them make 70, 75, $80,000. It's one of the higher paying jobs for, um, men without a, you know, college degree. And so if you look at what they're facing, it's not so crazy that they're like, "Hey, you need to make the robots illegal," because for them, what is the next best economic alternative if the robot trucks take over that job? Like, where are they gonna go from?
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, it's not... Yeah, it's not crazy for them, but it's a crazy idea to tell a company that they can't do something that's more efficient, safer, and probably economically more viable.
- AYAndrew Yang
Oh, yeah. Again, the savings from automating truck driving are estimated to be $168 billion per year, and not just labor savings, but also equipment utilization 'cause the trucks never stop, fuel efficiency because the trucks can daisy chain together so there's less wind resistance.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- AYAndrew Yang
Fewer accidents, 'cause right now truck accidents kill about 4,000 people a year. So you'd probably save lives. There's a very, very powerful argument for the fact that we should be trying to automate this stuff.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- AYAndrew Yang
But on the other side, you have literally three and a half million truckers who rely upon this for their livelihoods to support their family, and there's gonna be a lot of passion, a lot of resistance to this. Anyone who thinks that truck drivers are just gonna shrug and be like, "All right, I guess I had a good run, I'm just gonna go home and figure it out," that's not gonna be their response.
- 32:11 – 35:32
Economic distress, politics, and ‘deaths of despair’ as present-day evidence
- JRJoe Rogan
This is something that I- I'm just becoming aware of over the last year or two. Um, how... When, when you were out on the campaign trail and you know, you're talking to media and you're discussing this with people, uh, how many people have no idea that this is coming?
- AYAndrew Yang
Well, what I say to people, Joe, is I say, "Hey, have you noticed stores closing on your main street?" And then they say, "Yes." And then I ask them, "Why is that?" And then they reflect for a minute, and then they say, "Amazon." And I'm like, "Yeah, that's right." (laughs) You know...
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- AYAndrew Yang
... Amazon's getting $20 billion of commerce every year.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- AYAndrew Yang
And it's now tipping your malls and main street stores into oblivion.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- AYAndrew Yang
And like, is that gonna get better or worse? 'Cause... So... So some people say it's like how the robots, like the robots are years away. And then you're like, "No, it's not robots actually, like, walking around your neighborhood." I mean, of course, that's unlikely. But Amazon soaking up the business that used to go to your mall, if you go to their fulfillment center, it's robots as far as the eye can see. If you go to their, uh, their warehouse, you know, it's also robots as far as, far as the eye can see. So when you ask how aware are people that this is happening, it's one of those truths that as soon as you point it out, they're like, "Oh, yeah. Like, I... I... I knew that was what was up." It's just for whatever reason, I'm like the only person just laying out the facts and being like, "Guys, it's not your imagination." Like, we actually are getting rid of the most common jobs in the US economy filled by high school graduates and then replacing them with a handful of jobs for higher skilled people in different places. And then we're pretending that the first population is somehow gonna access the new opportunities when the odds of them getting up and like moving to Seattle or whatnot and becoming a web designer or like logistics manager or, uh, big data scientist or something like essentially near zero. And so this is what gave rise to a lot of the anger that got Donald Trump elected because they looked around their communities and were like, "Hey, I used to work in this manufacturing plant. This manufacturing plant no longer exists. For whatever reason, like I'm being told that it's somehow like my fault that I wasn't (laughs) adaptable enough." Like I didn't... you know, I didn't somehow, uh, become a coder or... or... or... or something ridiculous. And I have to say, Joe, and this is like something that I've picked up from Dennis in part. So I'm with this trucker in Iowa, and he says to me, he says like, "I don't think that Democrats care about people like me." Uh, and he says that to me while I'm in his truck. And I'm just like, "I can understand why he feels that way," but that's incredibly destructive-
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- AYAndrew Yang
... because there's a point at which Democratic Party used to be very, very heavily aligned with working class Americans.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- AYAndrew Yang
And there's now some kind of, uh, pathology that if the person who's suffering is a white man of a certain background, then the suffering somehow is like, somehow like diminished. (laughs) Like, it doesn't count as much if they're a trucker. Uh, and that's something that I find really destructive. It's like we have to start acknowledging the source of the problems. One thing I'm saying to people is like, "Look, it's not immigrants that are taking these jobs away." Like just facts. It is not immigrants. It is the fact that technology is pushing our economy in a direction that makes it harder and harder for many Americans to get by based upon this current I trade my time for money model.
- 35:32 – 38:21
Which jobs get hit next: call centers, back office, insurance, medicine, and radiology
- JRJoe Rogan
Now, truckers seem to be the big one, right?
- AYAndrew Yang
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Uh, cashiers are another one.
- AYAndrew Yang
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Um, what are the other job... uh, jobs that are gonna be killed by automation?
- AYAndrew Yang
So the... uh, the next obvious one is call center workers.
- JRJoe Rogan
Ah, of course.
- AYAndrew Yang
Where there are two and a half million call center workers still in the United States, generally high school graduates that make about $14 an hour. Now when you and I call a company, we're like pounding keys trying to get a human because the AI is so annoying.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- AYAndrew Yang
You know, it's like, "Hey..." You know, just like, "Give me a... Give me a person."
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- AYAndrew Yang
Uh, but over the next number of months, AI is going to become indisting- indistinguishable from a person.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, like the new Google answering service-
- AYAndrew Yang
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... that comes with their Pixel phones. It's amazing.
- AYAndrew Yang
Yes. And so that two and a half million call center population is gonna shrink a ton because after you get AI software that's better than one of them, you know, it can beat most all of them, you know?
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- AYAndrew Yang
That's not like 5,000 jobs. That's potentially 500,000 jobs.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- AYAndrew Yang
I was at a conference of CEOs and I asked, "How many of them are looking at having AI replace back office workers, like various clerical functions?" Every single hand went up. There's gonna be a lot of, uh, clerical work having systems talk to each other that's gonna disappear. And one...... CIO type of, like, a major bank said that his estimate was that it's about 30% of the bank's workers fall into that category. So you're looking at call center workers, you're looking at back office workers, you're looking at insurance brokers. Insurance is a very highly automatable industry, 'cause it's a lot of information getting passed back and forth. Cashiers, as you said, truck drivers, delivery drivers, Uber drivers, uh, that, that, that population-
- JRJoe Rogan
I heard that it goes even as far as medical procedures. There was a, a recent automated, uh, medical procedure where they did surgery on a grape.
- AYAndrew Yang
Yes. Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Did you see that?
- AYAndrew Yang
Yeah, I saw that. And China's already had just a com- complete automated dental implantation-
- JRJoe Rogan
Phew.
- AYAndrew Yang
... 'cause China actually has a real shortage of surgeons. And so, their incentives to try and automate this are very, very high. Now, the interesting thing here, Joe, is that let's say I made a robot surgeon tomorrow that was awesome, could do better work than a lot of people-
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- AYAndrew Yang
... um, right now, the economic incentives still are not necessarily for everyone to use my robot surgeon, because the regulations aren't there yet in the US. And so healthcare is a really interesting one. Another one that's very clearly going to get taken up by AI is radiology and looking at tumors on a film, because it turns out that AI can see shades of gray that a human eye cannot.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm.
- AYAndrew Yang
And it can reference millions of films, where the most experienced doctor can probably reference thousands. And so radiology, I'll tell you, medical students are running from radiology as fast as they can-
- 38:21 – 47:32
From scarcity to meaning: why money helps but doesn’t fully solve purpose
- JRJoe Rogan
Man, this is a, such a bleak forecast. It's very strange. When we stop and think about all the different things that human beings find value in as far as their occupation, like, "Hey, I'm a this, I'm a that, this is what I do," and th- the idea that these things are all gonna go away is very, it's kinda disturbing.
- AYAndrew Yang
Oh, it, and when I was digging into the research, Joe, it's been happening and it's tearing us apart. I mean, I reference the fact that... So here are some things that are all ti- at halt- all-time or multi-decade highs right now in the United States of America: suicide, drug overdoses, uh, anxiety and depression, mental problems, uh, financial insecurity, people being unable to pay their bills. All of these things are at record highs. And one thing I, I, I know you've talked about in the past that I think you'd really find fascinating, so there's been s- there have been studies as to what happens to your mind when you can't pay your bills. And, and when you can't pay your bills, you're like stressing out. It's like, "If I pay this, I can't pay that," and there's like always the time-money trade-off. It's like, "Oh, if I spend extra time commuting, maybe I can save a, a couple bucks." Uh, and so what it does is it actually constrains your bandwidth to a point that your functional IQ goes down by 13 points, or one standard deviation. So just if you say to someone, "Hey, here's a bill you can't pay," and then you give them an IQ test, uh, their score actually goes down by 13 points, a lot.
- JRJoe Rogan
Hm.
- AYAndrew Yang
That's like a really huge effect.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- AYAndrew Yang
And so what we're doing right now, Joe, is we're actually making our population less rational, less reasonable, more impulsive, more subject to bad ideas, nastier, more subject to things like racism and misogyny, too. Because it turns out what happens with most of us is you need executive functioning to resist, like, racist and misogy- uh, misogynistic impulses. And so if I make you cash-strapped and make it so you can't pay your bills, you're actually more likely to be like, "Yeah." (laughs) You know, like, like, "Yeah," like, "Blame them." So what, what you're, what we're talking about, again, it's not this speculative future. It's that we've been doing this for years, and it's actually pushing our population into a mindset of scarcity, of nastiness. And that's why universal basic income is so crucial, because it gets the boot off of people's throats and it replaces the mindset of scarcity with a mindset of abundance and rationality and optimism and capacity. Like, I'm an entrepreneur. You're an entrepreneur. I'll tell you, very, very few entrepreneurs start businesses out of scarcity, where they're like, "Oh, I can't pay my bills. I guess I'm gonna, like, start a new company." (laughs) You know? Like the, the, like most of them-
- JRJoe Rogan
Right. But $1000 a month isn't even enough money for most people to pay for their rent.
- AYAndrew Yang
Well, the great thing is, again, this $1000 is yours no matter what. So right now, let's say you're, you're doing a normal job, um-
- JRJoe Rogan
So if you make a million dollars a year, you still get $1000 a month.
- AYAndrew Yang
Yes. Yes, you do. I mean, it's opt-in. So you could opt in and, and take it, which most Americans would, because it's still 1000 bucks a month.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah. People get greedy. (laughs)
- AYAndrew Yang
Yeah, for sure. (laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
So, yeah, $1000 to get my nails done. Yeah.
- AYAndrew Yang
Yes.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- AYAndrew Yang
Uh, or give it away if they were, they, you know, they felt like it.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- AYAndrew Yang
Yeah, but, uh, the, this, so those are the things that are at, like, all-time highs is, like, all these negative social indicators.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- AYAndrew Yang
Here are things that are at all-time lows: getting married, starting a business, having a kid, moving for a new job. All of those things are at historic lows in the United States of America.
- JRJoe Rogan
Having children? Really?
- AYAndrew Yang
Yeah. We're at record low birth rates right now. And it's largely because people feel too strapped to have kids. I mean, that's literally where we are.
- JRJoe Rogan
When, when you say record low, by like what percentage?
- AYAndrew Yang
You can look up right now... Jamie, I dunno if you wanna look this up. Uh, but stories have come out over this last year saying that Americans are now at, uh, the lowest rate of childbirth that has been the case in, uh, decades or ever.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, that's a conversation that I have with people whenever they say that, uh, they're worried about population, that the population is growing so fast and overpopu- Here it goes. 1.80 births per woman 2016. What does that mean? That's just the chart. I'm just, just looking at the chart. So it's dropping. Yeah, just... From 1970 at a high to... Three. 1964. Yeah. Well, it seems fairly, fairly similar from 1980 to today.
- AYAndrew Yang
Now, that's still, I mean, that's, that, that's actually-
- JRJoe Rogan
In fact, it's actually above...
- AYAndrew Yang
If it goes from 1.8 to, like, uh, if it goes from-
- JRJoe Rogan
It's 2016 so...
- AYAndrew Yang
... even something like 1.9 to 1.8 is, like, a pretty significant drop. There it is.
- 47:32 – 57:38
Yang’s origin story: from entrepreneur and nonprofit founder to running for president
- JRJoe Rogan
Now g- coming from a place of being a serial entrepreneur to this presidential candidate who's kind of warning people about the upcoming technological apocalypse as it were, um, how did you make that transition and what, what, what was your motivation to get involved in this to the point where you're actually running for president on this platform?
- AYAndrew Yang
Yeah, so, uh, so I sell the company in 2009 and that was the financial crisis, like Wall Street had crashed the economy. And I had personally taught these kids who had worked at Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley and, and McKinsey and I was like, "Man, we need smart kids to do something other than just head to Wall Street and Silicon Valley. We need to have them go to Detroit, St. Louis, Baltimore and New Orleans and start businesses." So I quit my job, I donated, um, low six figures to so- start this new organization and then we trained hundreds of entrepreneurs and helped create several thousand jobs. So that was like my wholesome give back, I was like, "Hey, I'm like the, you know, the guy who just believes in entrepreneurship." 'Cause just like you, I freaking love entrepreneurs and I was like ... So here's the joke I used to tell. I went to law school, I was an unhappy lawyer for five months.
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- AYAndrew Yang
Uh, and so what, what I tell people is like if you're a clueless, ambitious 22-year-old who came out of college and you say to your parents, "Hey, I'm gonna go to law school." They're gonna say, "That's great." Uh, it's really easy to find the law school 'cause they're just there, you just apply to it. And the government will give you $100,000 loan, no questions asked. And then if you say to your parents, "Hey, I wanna be an entrepreneur." Your parents will think, "That's stupid, it's hard to find and no one's gonna give you $100,000 loan." So we have this huge over supply of indebted, uh, law school graduates and a huge under supply of entrepreneurs, was my thinking. And so I was like, "Okay, how do we fix that?"... so I started this organization Venture for America to try and fix that. And so imagine being this guy getting medals and awards for helping create jobs around the country, and then realizing that automation's coming like a tidal wave, and that your efforts that you're getting applauded for are really not gonna do the trick. And then Donald Trump wins the election in 2016, and for whatever reason, in my opinion, the media is just not being honest about all the economic drivers. They're blaming racism, Russia, Facebook, the FBI. And if you look at the voter district data on a district by district basis, there's a straight line up between the adoption of industrial robots in that voting district and the movement towards Trump.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm.
- AYAndrew Yang
Like it's a straight economic story, where we blasted away four million manufacturing jobs in the swing states, and Donald Trump is our president. So imagine being me and then seeing that and being like, "Okay, I get it. This is an economic technological story." And then I went to people in Washington, DC. I was like, "Hey, guys, what are we gonna do? We're in the third inning of the greatest economic and technological transformation in the history of our country, and the third inning has brought us Donald Trump. The fourth, fifth, sixth innings are gonna be horrific. What are we gonna do?" And then the answers I got were somewhere between disappointing and horrifying, where if you go to mainstream politicians and you're like, "What are we gonna do?" the answers I got were literally, number one, "We cannot talk about that." Number two, "We should study that."
- JRJoe Rogan
"We cannot talk about that."
- AYAndrew Yang
That was, that's verbatim.
- JRJoe Rogan
Really?
- AYAndrew Yang
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
And why were they saying that?
- AYAndrew Yang
Because it seems alarmist, like anti-progress or, like, you know, y- you're like, uh, you know, throwing stones at, uh, like, like big tech companies. And it's like, "I'm not throwing stones at anyone, I'm just pointing out the facts." So number one is, uh, so number one was, "Can't talk about it," number two was, "Need to study it," and then number three was the point you made o- originally, which was we must educate and retrain Americans for the jobs of the future. And then when I was like, "Hey, we're terrible at that by the numbers,"-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- AYAndrew Yang
... then they'd literally be like, "Well, I guess we'll learn to get better at it, then." And then I, so I came back to, to my home in New York City and I was like, "Oh my gosh, like, we are so backward and far gone as a, as a, certainly as a government." Um, and so then I was grappling with it, and I'm a parent like you are. And I looked at my kids and I was like, "Am I really gonna bring them up in this shitshow? Like (laughs) is, is this really the-"
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- AYAndrew Yang
... "Is this really the plan?"
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- AYAndrew Yang
And so then I was like, "Okay, how would you actually solve this problem if you, if you had to do so?" And so then I, I said, "Okay, universal basic income, rebranded the freedom dividend after we did a bunch of tests," 'cause it tests much better, um, as the freedom dividend than universal basic income. And, (laughs) and then, uh, try and make the, the rules of the economy work better for more people as fast as we can before this automation wave really crescendos.
- JRJoe Rogan
What do you mean by that?
- AYAndrew Yang
Well, to me, like, you know, what I'm saying is, like, retail and truck driving are the two major, major obvious sectors that are gonna get displaced. Being a retail worker is the most common job in the United States right now. The, the average retail worker's a 39-year-old woman with a high school education making between $11 and $12 an hour. So what do those workers do when 30% of the malls and stores close in the next five years, you know? And then truckers are next in line, you know, by the five to ten year mark. So it's like we have to get our acts together before these populations end up getting displaced. And we know Americans don't have a ton of savings to fall back on. It's not like they'll be like, "Oh, like, you know, let me take a month off to, like, think about it," you know? (laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- AYAndrew Yang
Like, that's not, that's not the real-life situation most, uh, Americans, uh, live and experience. So, so this is all 2017 where I'm, like, doing the data research and saying like, "Okay, like, what's the plan?" And then when I went to various politicians, I was like, "There is no appetite for making this case. There's no appetite for anyone even talking about this. So the only thing I can see that would have a realistic chance of accelerating meaningful solutions to this automation wave in a five to ten year timeframe is if I run for president and I either win, which is very doable, I can win, um, or I mainstream this set of considerations to a point where other politicians are willing to tackle something like universal basic income and make it a reality in that timeframe."
- JRJoe Rogan
Um, anyone can win, right? I mean, it is possible. I mean, there are voters, people are voting, but do you really believe that you can win?
- AYAndrew Yang
Well, Joe, uh, you wouldn't r-
- JRJoe Rogan
Uh, I wouldn't be running if you wouldn't, right? I believe that. But, but if you were not you.
- AYAndrew Yang
(laughs) Uh, no, I, I appreciate the question, and I've been very upfront the whole time, is that if my ideas and policies become front and center and we get this done, then if I'm not president of the United States, like, I'm perfectly happy with that. Like, and I'm on the record as being like, "I'm just trying to solve problems. I'm an entrepreneur trying to solve a problem." That said, uh, I'm already polling at 1% nationally. I'm tied with Kirsten Gillibrand and other national politicians right now as we're sitting here.
- JRJoe Rogan
I have no idea who Kirst- do you? Kirsten Gillibrand?
- AYAndrew Yang
She's a senator from New York.
- JRJoe Rogan
I, I, I know but-
- AYAndrew Yang
So that was supposed to be, like, a na- national politician.
- 57:38 – 1:14:18
Broader platform: healthcare, redefining measurements, and student debt reform
- AYAndrew Yang
Sure. So the, the three big policies I'm running on are, one, the freedom dividend, 'cause a lot of Americans s- are seeing their paychecks not keep up with their expenses. Number two is we need to get healthcare off the backs of businesses and families and move towards a single payer system, Medicare for all, because as an entrepreneur, it makes it harder to hire people. When you do hire people, you wanna make them contractors and not full-time employees. It makes it harder for people to start businesses 'cause they're concerned about keeping their healthcare for their families. So we gotta get healthcare off the backs of businesses and families and, and try and make the economy more dynamic. And we spend twice as much on healthcare as other countries do, to worse results. Like it's, right now we're in, like, the worst of all worlds. And the third thing, uh, is, and I, I reference my wife when I talk about this. Uh, my wife is at home with our two boys, six and three, one of whom is autistic, and what I say is, like, "What is her work valued at in GDP?" And then people think about it and they're like, "I don't know," and I'm like, "Zero," 'cause GDP, like, doesn't consider that actual, uh, economic contribution. Uh, and then I say, "We, we have to do is we have to actually evolve from GDP as a measuring stick, uh, because it actually doesn't work for us. It's a- almost 100 years old. We made it up during the Great Depression. Self-driving trucks are gonna drive GDP way up, but it's gonna be very, very bad for many people and communities. So we have to actually change the measuring sticks to something that would actually make our economy work for us, make, make it so that the market serves us instead of all us being inputs to the market. Because if we're all inputs to the market, we lose to robots and AI, hands down.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm.
- AYAndrew Yang
And it's not, like it doesn't matter if you were, like, a really conscientious, hardworking truck driver or like a really lazy, sloppy one. It doesn't matter. (laughs) Like, you know, it doesn't matter if you were, like, a really diligent radiologist or, like a, it doesn't matter. So we have to shift the market's emphasis to actually fuel our well-being and change from GDP, which is again this archaic measurement we made up, to, to things that would actually correspond to how we're doing, things like health, how are childhood success rates, environmental quality.
- JRJoe Rogan
How do you quantify that? How do you, how would you quantify that in a way that would be translatable to the average voter?
- AYAndrew Yang
Yeah, so we have measurements for most of these things. And, and again, if you look at our numbers right now, you'd see it's like, what, like how many people listening to this know that America's life expectancy has declined for the last three years. You know, that to me would be like a pretty important measurement, but like most people don't know.
- JRJoe Rogan
And you think that's because of, is it 'cause of suicide, is it because of drug overdose, is it because of obesity, diet, what is it?
- AYAndrew Yang
The, the two causes that p- people point to the most are that drug overdoses and suicides have overtaken vehicular deaths as, as the most frequent deaths, uh, in the United States.
- JRJoe Rogan
I didn't know that suicide was on that list. I knew that drug overdoses had taken obesity, but suicide has overta- overtaken obesity as well?
- AYAndrew Yang
Suicides have overtaken, uh, car accidents. I'm not sure about obesity.
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh, I'm, I'm sorry. I meant, I meant car accidents. I misspoke. So w- s- car accidents used to be number one?
- AYAndrew Yang
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Suicides are higher than car accidents now?
- AYAndrew Yang
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
So suicides, drug overdoses, and then car accidents? Like or, or suicides and drug overdoses, like equal?
- AYAndrew Yang
I think drug overdose is number one.
- JRJoe Rogan
Number one.
- AYAndrew Yang
And then suicide is number two.
- JRJoe Rogan
Wow.
- AYAndrew Yang
Uh, and so that's why life expectancy has declined for the last three years.
- JRJoe Rogan
And you think that the sui- and very much likely there's at least some of the number of the suicides are related to, uh, economic disparity?
- AYAndrew Yang
Oh, yeah. I mean if you look at the suicide rate in, it's particularly pronounced in 50 to 50 year old, 50 to 54 year old white Americans, which are the population, I mean you resemble that.
- JRJoe Rogan
That's me.
- AYAndrew Yang
Yeah, that's you. Which, uh, resembles the population that right now is just reaching a point where they're like, "Hey, my job skills don't have any," uh, you know, like...... utility, uh-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- AYAndrew Yang
... in the marketplace, and then they go home and they just, like, you know, start looking around and being like, "What am I doing?" (laughs) I mean, it's, it's really dark. It's punitive, it's punishing, and, and we've put our citizens in this situation where we all see ourselves as economic inputs, what the market says we're worth is what we're worth, and if we're worth less, then it's our fault. And so the next move is to say, "Okay, I guess, you know, this place, uh, th- there's no place for me here."
- JRJoe Rogan
I don't mean to sound skeptical, but I just don't believe that $1000 a n- a month is gonna fix that. It seems like that would be a, a good thing, certainly not moving in the wrong direction, certainly moving in the right direction. But it seems that there needs to be some sort of a massive rethinking of civilization itself. If, if you're gonna have that many things that are gonna be automated, that many people that are gonna be out of jobs, and feeling that the world that they prepared for no longer exists-
- AYAndrew Yang
Yes.
- JRJoe Rogan
... it seems like we need a step further, another move.
- AYAndrew Yang
100%, brother, and that's one reason why the Freedom Dividend's not like a s- like a ... It doesn't solve the problem.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
Episode duration: 1:52:02
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