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Andrew Yang

Twitter: @ANDREWYANG
Andrew M. Yang (born January 13, 1975) is an American entrepreneur and former presidential candidate. Originally a corporate lawyer, Yang began working in startups and early stage growth companies as a founder or executive from 2000 to 2009. In 2011, he founded Venture for America (VFA), a nonprofit organization focused on creating jobs in cities struggling to recover from the Great Recession. He then ran as a candidate in the 2020 Democratic presidential primaries. The son of immigrants from Taiwan, Yang was raised in New York. He attended Brown University and then Columbia Law School. Dissatisfied with his work as an attorney, Yang began working for startups during the dot-com bubble before spending a decade as an executive at test preparation company Manhattan Prep. In 2011, Yang founded VFA, which recruits top college graduates into a two-year fellowship program at startups in developing cities across the United States. The Obama administration selected him in 2011 as a "Champion of Change" and in 2015 as a "Presidential Ambassador for Global Entrepreneurship". Yang left VFA in 2017 to focus on his presidential campaign. In 2018, he authored The War on Normal People, which outlines several of his campaign's central ideas. On November 6, 2017, Yang filed with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) to run for President of the United States in the 2020 election. Yang's campaign largely focused on responding to the rapid development of automation, which is increasingly leading to workforce challenges and economic instability in the United States. His signature policy is the "Freedom Dividend," a universal basic income (UBI) of $1,000 a month to every American adult, a response to job displacement by automation, one of the primary factors that he claims led to Donald Trump's election in 2016. Considered a dark horse candidate throughout much of the primary, Yang received significant popularity online, with The New York Times calling him "The Internet's Favorite Candidate". News outlets described Yang as the most surprising candidate of the 2020 election cycle, going from a relative unknown to a major competitor in the race. Yang qualified for and participated in seven of the first eight Democratic debates, and has been credited with elevating discussions on UBI, automation, and autism to the national level, as well as for engaging Asian Americans in presidential politics. Yang's campaign was noted for its happy-go-lucky and "tech-friendly" nature. His supporters, informally known as the "Yang Gang", included several high-profile celebrity endorsements and were noted for their ideological and political diversity. Yang suspended his campaign on February 11, 2020, shortly after the New Hampshire primary, pledging that he and his movement are "just getting started". On February 19, Yang joined CNN as a political commentator. On March 5, Yang announced the creation of the nonprofit organization Humanity Forward, dedicated to promoting the ideas he campaigned on during his run.

Positions

“Puerto Ricans overwhelmingly want to be a state, and we should endorse this and make it happen. We need to provide all Americans with full representation if we want the American people to have faith that all Americans are represented in our federal government.”
Former U.S Presidential Candidate
18 October 2020
https://www.yang2020.com/policies/puerto-rican-statehood/
“Thirty percent or more of Americans couldn’t afford housing costs last month, and that’s with extended unemployment benefits and other measures. So we need to think much bigger about how we can make this economy work for so many Americans. And to me, that starts with putting economic relief directly into their hands.”
Former US Presidential Candidate
29 July 2020
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/29/why-andrew-yangs-push-for-a-universal-basic-income-is-making-a-comeback.html
“By restoring full voting rights to felons during incarceration, who have not deprived someone else of their right to vote, and ex-felons who have completed the entirety of their sentence, we’ll increase their engagement with society. This will improve their lives drastically, for obvious reasons. It will also make the rest of us safer, as some studies have shown that ex-felons who vote are half as likely to reoffend. By giving these individuals a larger stake in society, we make our entire country stronger.”
Presidential Candidate
13 July 2020
https://www.yang2020.com/policies/restore-voting-rights/
“6.1 million Americans cannot vote due to a felony conviction and are therefore denied the right to cast their vote in an election. Felony disenfranchisement exacerbates racial disparities. 1 in 13 black Americans have lost their right to vote vs. 1 in 56 white Americans.”
Presidential Candidate
13 July 2020
https://www.yang2020.com/policies/restore-voting-rights/
“Election day is a holiday in many other countries. It should be in the U.S, as well.”
American Entrepreneur & Former Presidential Candidate
1 January 2020
https://www.yang2020.com/policies/election-day-holiday/
“Our economy functions much better when we have money to spend, where we can participate in the market, where businesses are responsive to us...We'll start more businesses. We'll be able to change jobs more easily. So, the money doesn't disappear in our hands. It creates a trickle-up economy from our people, our families, and our communities up.”
2020 Democratic Presidential Candidate
15 November 2019
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-freedom-dividend-inside-andrew-yangs-plan-to-give-every-american-1000/
“Cancel culture has really become sort of a source of fear for many Americans where we live in a culture that you are somehow afraid that if you say the wrong thing that your life could be changed forever...We humanize the consequences of some of these impulses not just in terms if who hears the expression but who is losing a livelihood as a result.””
21 September 2019
https://thehill.com/hilltv/rising/462383-yang-cancel-culture-has-become-source-of-fear-for-americans
“Cancel culture has really become sort of a source of fear for many Americans where we live in a culture that you are somehow afraid that if you say the wrong thing that your life could be changed forever.”
Presidential candidate, Democratic party
20 September 2019
https://thehill.com/hilltv/rising/462383-yang-cancel-culture-has-become-source-of-fear-for-americans
“The reason I'm talking openly about geoengineering is that it seems highly unlikely that we're going to reverse the trend of emissions. Even if we became extremely aggressive and forward-thinking in terms of our energy consumption, we would still experience the worst effects of climate change if the rest of the world didn't join us.”
Presidential Candidate
4 September 2019
https://www.businessinsider.com/andrew-yang-thinks-geoengineering-could-lead-to-war-2019-4
“Committing a crime shouldn’t make you a non-citizen including your right to vote.”
Presidential Candidate
23 April 2019
https://twitter.com/AndrewYang/status/1120824654686408706
This page was last edited on Friday, 24 Jul 2020 at 09:10 UTC