Skip to main content

Yang 2020: Humanity First

Andrew Yang, the candidate:

Like Marianne Williamson, Andrew Yang is not a politician. Yang has worked as a corporate lawyer and entrepreneur, and that, he argues, has provided him a unique vantage point to study and understand the economy. From his campaign website:


I’m Andrew Yang, and I’m running for President as a Democrat in 2020 because I fear for the future of our country. New technologies – robots, software, artificial intelligence – have already destroyed more than 4 million US jobs, and in the next 5-10 years, they will eliminate millions more. A third of all American workers are at risk of permanent unemployment. And this time, the jobs will not come back.

Yang's fear for our economic future forms the basis for his big policy proposal: Universal Basic Income (UBI). Yang has positions on a large variety of other political and economic policies, but he is only truly running on UBI. He is proposing to give every American over the age of 18 $1000 dollars per month, no questions asked, that would be funded by a new Value Added Tax on corporations. 

He explains why he is so passionate about this policy in stark terms. From his website:


Andrew Yang wants Universal Basic Income because we are experiencing the greatest technological shift the world has ever seen. By 2015, automation had already destroyed four million manufacturing jobs, and the smartest people in the world now predict that a third of all working Americans will lose their job to automation in the next 12 years. Our current policies are not equipped to handle this crisis. Even our most forward-thinking politicians are unprepared.
As technology improves, workers will be able to stop doing the most dangerous, repetitive, and boring jobs. This should excite us, but if Americans have no source of income—no ability to pay for groceries, buy homes, save for education, or start families with confidence—then the future could be very dark. Our labor participation rate now is only 62.7% – lower than it has been in decades, with 1 out of 5 working-age men currently out of the workforce. This will get much worse as self-driving cars and other technologies come online.
Thus, I will not include the traditional top-5 list of policy positions for Yang, because he is the UBI candidate. That is all you need to know. On to the cocktail!

Our discussions of how best to distill the essence of Yang's candidacy in a boozy drink centered around the idea of robots taking jobs away from hard-working Americans. But how to present that idea in drink form? Brandon suggested robot oil. My brain immediately went to Futurama:



But we can't use actual oil in a cocktail, so we went with chocolate!

Andrew Yang, the cocktail:


First, drizzle chocolate syrup on the inside walls of a pint or hurricane glass. Then add:

4 scoops chocolate ice cream
2 ounces of bourbon creme
1 & 1/2 ounces dark creme de cacao
1 ounce amaretto
1 cup ice

To a blender and blend until smooth. Pour into the glass. Sprinkle with metallic and black and white sprinkles. Garnish with a $1000 UBI allowance. Sip and enjoy!
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Warren for President: Persist

Elizabeth Warren, the candidate: Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren's  campaign website  asks the question What will Elizabeth Warren do? And it answers:  This is the fight of our lives. The fight to build an America that works for everyone, not just the wealthy and the well-connected. It won’t be easy. But united by our values, we can make big, structural change. We can raise our voices together until this fight is won. This basically sums up Senator Warren's campaign, and also her stance on all the issues. She has positioned herself as the  Rupert Giles to the American voter's Buffy the Vampire Slayer:   that is, she's the older, wiser, more studied mentor that we need to help guide us through our struggles. She's The One With The Plan.  And Elizabeth Warren has a LOT of detailed plans. Where other candidates campaign in more broad strokes without the details (Beto O'Rourke and Bernie Sanders come to mind), or are staking their candi...
Post a Comment
Read more

Cory 2020: We Rise

Cory Booker, the candidate: Democratic New Jersey Senator Cory Booker has a fascinating biography and progressive credentials to spare. His campaign website is  here.  Before he was Senator, Booker was mayor of Newark, during which time he became famous for being the kinds of hands-on politician who shoveled snow off his constituents' driveways and once, amazingly,  rescued a woman from a burning building.  As a senator, Booker is renowned for his lofty, impassioned speeches and morality-based worldview. Given all of this, it's probably not surprising that the New Jersey Senator has a reputation for being something of a superman. Policy Positions Common sense criminal justice reform (Introduced as a piece of legislation called  The Next Step Act ): This is a sweeping proposal that would include such things as banning solitary confinement for juvenile offenders in federal facilities, sentencing reform, and prohibiting federal employers from asking...
Post a Comment
Read more

Kamala Harris for the People!

Kamala Harris, the candidate: Democratic Senator from California, Kamala Harris has a deep background in public service and roots in activism. The Senator has written about the fact that her parents met while  protesting for civil rights at UC Berkeley.  Racial justice is something that the candidate feels intrinsically connected to. Her father, a professor of economics at Stanford, is Jamaican and her mother was an Indian immigrant. A transcript of Senator Harris's speech delivered at her  campaign launch  speaks to these roots:  We were raised in a community where we were taught to see a world, beyond just ourselves. To be conscious and compassionate about the struggles of all people. We were raised to believe public service is a noble cause and the fight for justice is everyone’s responsibility. In fact, my mother used to say “don’t sit around and complain about things, do something.” Basically I think she was saying. You’ve got to get up...
Post a Comment
Read more