Democratic U.S. presidential hopeful Andrew Yang hosts a campaign rally at the Lincoln Memorial April 15, 2019 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)

(CNSNews.com) - Entrepreneur Andrew Yang, one of many people running for the Democrat presidential nomination, is fond of numbers, statistics and technology.

At a rally near the Lincoln Memorial in Washington this week, Yang promised that as president, he will ignore gross domestic product, which "means nothing" and concentrate instead on "numbers" that really matter, such as "our own health and mental health," clean air and water, and average income and affordability.

So we have to shift the measurements to something that will actually reflect how we are doing. And as president, I going to reflect on these numbers. I'm going to present them every year at the State of the Union. I'm going to have a PowerPoint deck. I'm going to be the first president to use PowerPoint at the State of the Union. That's right. You're going to actually get something out of the State of the Union instead of these bizarre theater performances we're subject to every year. And then people are all trying to stand up and clap and not clap, like, what is this? It's so weird. Numbers, that's right, I'm going to show the numbers. So this is how we can advance to the next stage of our economy.

Yang says just as automation sent U.S. manufacturing into a tailspin, Amazon will drive retail workers out of business and artificial intelligence will do the same thing to fast-food workers, call center workers and truck drivers.

To ease the economic dislocation he anticipates, Yang is proposing what he calls a "Freedom Dividend" -- $1,000 a month for every American adult starting at age 18. "What they are doing in Alaska with oil money we can do for everyone around here with technology money," he said.

As he spoke to a small crowd of mostly young people, Yang wore a "MATH" hat -- MATH stands for "Make Americans Think Harder," he said.

Yang said he wants to "accelerate our economy and society. I want to prepare us for the true challenges of the 21st Century, and I am the right man for the job," he said. "Because the opposite of Donald Trump is an Asian man who likes math," he joked.