EXETER�� 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang presented two drastically different futures to more than 1,000 Phillips Exeter Academy students during a speech held last Friday in Assembly Hall.

One was the violent dystopia outlined in �Mad Max,� the other the prosperous and space-aged science fiction world of �Star Trek.�

The 1992 graduate returned to PEA for the first time since leaving the school. He told current students that unless a critical and sober analysis of the effects automation of many industries in the next several decades is brought into the mainstream consciousness, Americans will risk massive unemployment and a potential workforce devoid of the skills required to work the remaining jobs or will lack the wherewithal to create new ones.

And the situation is already dire, Yang said. Currently, the 78 percent of Americans living paycheck to paycheck and the 57 percent who cannot pay an unexpected $500 bill cause all other issues plaguing greater society to take a back seat when they use the majority of their mental capacity worrying about personal finances and time.

�How many of you would agree with this statement? The United States feels like it�s getting dumber, less rational, more impulsive and more subject to really bad ideas,� Yang asked the students. �My answer to that is yes we are. The reason we�re doing those things is because we�ve introduced pervasive financial insecurity into our population.�

Yang said it was a �beautiful� experience to be able to return to New Hampshire and stroll around the school that played a huge role in his personal development.

�When I meet people from New Hampshire and I tell them I went to high school here, there�s a real excitement,� he said. �They know I understand what it�s like to live here and I�m not here just to milk votes."

Yang graduated from Brown University and afterwards obtained a law degree from Columbia University. He started an unsuccessful website but was later offered a job at Manhattan Prep from a friend of a PEA classmate and eventually rose to become the company�s CEO before it was acquired by the Washington Post.

Yang then founded the non-profit Venture for America, so he could take the entrepreneurial skills from individuals in the most economically vibrant parts of the country, such as Boston, New York and San Francisco, and use their talent to reinvigorate parts of the country decimated by off-shoring of jobs and the automation of certain manufacturing work, like the Rust Belt. So far Venture for America has created 2,500 jobs in cities like Cleveland and Detroit.

Yang challenged the students from the elite prep school to set out to accomplish more than simply working a high paying job in finance, for instance, in a major city and help build new economic opportunities in forsaken places.

�What do smart kids do in this country? Finance, medicine, law, technology, consulting and academia. We do them in New York City, Boston, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Chicago, but here�s the problem we only do those things in those places,� Yang said. �I started Venture for America because I thought we could do better than this. Perhaps if young people had a real choice they might move to Detroit, New Orleans, St. Louis, Birmingham or Baltimore and start a business or help a business grow.�

Yang has authored several books on entrepreneurship. One of his works �Smart People Build Things� was read in PEA senior Josiah Paintsil�s imagining the future course. Paintsil told his friends in the audience they were looking at their next president when Yang was introduced.

�Before I read his book, I really didn�t know what my future would be like,� Paintsil said. �While I was reading it, I began to imagine my future and he encouraged me to go off and hopefully build something of my own one day.�

�

�

�