In an interview with The Hill in August, Andrew Yang said, “I’m a big fan of Teddy Roosevelt, because he seemed very bipartisan and solutions-oriented.” Andrew Yang also happens to be the godfather of Teddy Roosevelt’s great granddaughter. Furthermore, Andrew Yang has an understanding and command of the current moment in history that seems very similar to the understanding and command of ideas that Franklin Roosevelt had in his time. If you read old quotes from Teddy and Franklin Roosevelt, they sound very similar to what Andrew Yang is communicating today. Consider these Roosevelt quotes and some of Andrew Yang’s policy proposals.

“True individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.” — Franklin Roosevelt

This sounds like the argument that Andrew Yang has been making that the current president was elected because we automated away four million manufacturing jobs in Midwestern states. And, the solution he is communicating is economic security and independence. As we lose more jobs to automation, the economic security that Andrew Yang is advocating for in the form of a Freedom Dividend will become necessary. Andrew Yang’s campaign website is very direct about the trends he is seeing.

“Technology is quickly displacing a large number of workers, and the pace will only increase as automation and other forms of artificial intelligence become more advanced. ⅓ of American workers will lose their jobs to automation by 2030 according to McKinsey. This has the potential to destabilize our economy and society if unaddressed.” — Excerpt from Andrew Yang’s Campaign website

“The point in history at which we stand is full of promise and danger. The world will either move forward toward unity and widely shared prosperity — or it will move apart.” — Franklin Roosevelt

If you’ve watched any interview with Andrew Yang, you know he is very realistic and blunt about the data he’s communicating and his outlook on the future. His campaign slogans, “Humanity First” and “Not Left. Not Right. Forward,” are characteristic of his view on how we have to move forward. The notion of moving forward together to create widely shared prosperity is deeply rooted in his campaign and agenda.

“Our aim is not to do away with corporations; on the contrary, these big aggregations are an inevitable development of modern industrialism. … We are not hostile to them; we are merely determined that they shall be so handled as to subserve the public good. We draw the line against misconduct, not against wealth.” — Teddy Roosevelt

Here is another excerpt from Andrew Yang’s campaign website.

We need to move to a new form of capitalism — Human Capitalism — that’s geared towards maximizing human wellbeing and fulfillment. The central tenets of Human Capitalism are:

Humans are more important than money The unit of a Human Capitalism economy is each person, not each dollar Markets exist to serve our common goals and values

In some ways, Andrew Yang is the modern Teddy Roosevelt. He is not interested in doing away with corporations, but rather simply making them serve the public good. Andrew Yang’s Value Added Tax would fund the Freedom Dividend that guarantees companies contribute to societal well-being.

“It is a bad thing for a nation to raise and to admire a false standard of success; and there can be no falser standard than that set by the deification of material well-being in and for itself.” — Teddy Roosevelt “The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.” — Franklin Roosevelt

One of the pillars of Andrew Yang’s agenda is to replace GDP with an American Scorecard. Instead of focusing on materialism and stock prices, he wants the country to prioritize health, education, and the environment. And, in order to do that, we need to remove GDP from its pedestal and stop using it as a singular measure of economic success. Here is one more excerpt from Andrew Yang’s campaign website:

The concept of GDP and economic progress didn’t even exist until the Great Depression. It was invented so that the government could figure out how bad the economy was getting and how to make it better. Economist Simon Kuznets, upon introducing GDP to Congress in 1934 remarked that “Economic welfare cannot be adequately measured unless the personal distribution of income is known. And no income measurement undertakes to estimate the reverse side of income, that is, the intensity and unpleasantness of effort going into the earning of income. The welfare of a nation can, therefore, scarcely be inferred from a measurement of national income as defined above.” It’s almost like he saw income inequality and bad jobs coming.

Our economic system must shift to focus on bettering the lot of the average person. Capitalism has to be made to serve human ends and goals, rather than have our humanity subverted to serve the Marketplace. We shape the system. We own it, not the other way around.