Yang, an entrepreneur, was interviewed by Rolling Stone this week about his under-the-radar campaign, where he explained why he was running for president.
“I was stunned when I saw the disparities between Detroit and San Francisco or Cleveland and Manhattan. You feel like you’re traveling across dimensions and decades and not just a couple of time zones,” he said. “None of our political leaders are willing to acknowledge the elephant in the room that is tearing our communities apart, in the form of technological change.”
He additionally outlined a key component of his platform: a universal basic income of $1,000 per month for all Americans 18 and older, which would be funded by a value-added tax, explaining: “If you have a town in Missouri with 50,000 adults and they’re all getting $1,000 a month, that’s another $50 million in purchasing power that comes right into that town’s local economy — into car repairs, tutoring or food for your kids, the occasional night out, home repairs. And that money ends up circulating all through that town.”
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