Why he believes a universal basic income would be beneficial to the country.

Meet Andrew Yang - a self-described family man, son of immigrants, attorney and entrepreneur by trade, and, he hopes, future President of the United States.

“We need to start fixing this economy so it works for us, for human beings," he said.

Yang is running as a Democrat on the platform of universal basic income, a form of social security that guarantees a certain amount of money to every citizen.

Under Yang's plan, every American would get $1,000 dollars each month - with no strings attached, no tests and no work requirement. The sole requirements - just U.S. citizenship and a minimum age of 18.

The money, he claimed, would come from consolidating some current welfare programs and creating a value-added tax of 10 percent on goods and services. It's a plan that Yang said would make it harder for corporations to avoid paying their fair share.

He told 11Alive's Jennifer Bellamy it is a solid foundation for a stable and prosperous society that is neither communist or socialist.

"This is actually very, very capitalist. It's the future of capitalism," Yang said. “Consumer markets work much better when people have money to spend and that's good for businesses as well."

But why have a universal basic income at all? Yang believes in the next decade or so, 1-in-3 Americans will be at risk of losing their jobs to new technology, and replacement positions wouldn’t appear quickly enough to fill the gaps.

It is a solution tech giants Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg have both commented on as well, saying the idea is inevitable or necessary.

11Alive political analyst Dr. Andra Gillespie said getting Americans on board would be a hard sell.

"I think, for a lot of people, the idea of guaranteeing income for Americans is something that they're not accustomed to, and it's something that people would actually probably be likely to oppose," Gillespie said.

Still, Yang is all-in on the plan that he said would build a trickle-up economy and a system meant to make life easier.

"What can a president do that's actually going to impact your day-to-day lives and the lives of you family," he asked. "There's nothing your government can do that would be better than sending every adult $1,000 a month ... Reorganize the economy around us, the owners and shareholders of this, the richest country in the history of the world."