We're talking with presidential candidates in the runup to the 2020 election. Check out all of our conversations.

2020 Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang says the U.S. is in the midst of the largest technological and economic transformation in its history, and that he's the right person to lead the country through it.

"I want to become the next president to start solving the problems that got Donald Trump elected in 2016," Yang, a former technology executive, tells Here & Now. "The reason he's our president today is that we automated away 4 million manufacturing jobs in Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Missouri and Iowa, and my friends in technology know that what we did to those jobs we will now do to the retail jobs, the call center jobs, the fast-food jobs, the truck-driving jobs and on and on through the economy."

Yang (@AndrewYang), founder of Venture for America, a nonprofit for entrepreneurs, has become synonymous with one of his signature campaign planks: universal basic income. His proposal would create a "dividend" paying each American $1,000 per month, in an effort to offset looming job losses some have predicted as a result of automation.

Money for the program would come from tech giants like Amazon, a company that made news over its $0 federal income tax bill in 2018, Yang says.

"If we have a new mechanism to harness the gains from all of these incredible innovations around the country, we will give the American public a tiny slice of every Amazon transaction, every Google search, every Facebook ad, every robot truck mile and it's enough to pay for a dividend of a thousand dollars a month," he says.

Interview Highlights

On people who question whether he is a serious candidate

"I've made the Democratic debates in June and July. I'm on the way to making it in September. I'm top 10 [according to] CNN, top six or top eight in other rankings and by any objective category, I'm one of the top contenders for the White House. So I'm completely serious about solving the problems of the American people and becoming the next president."

On how he plans to get Congress to pay for his universal basic income plan

"When I'm president in 2021, the Democrats will be so exultant from having beaten Donald Trump they'll be thrilled to put more money into the hands of children and families to make us healthier and stronger, and then Republicans will look up and say, 'Wait a minute, this is a win for rural areas, my constituents and states in the interior,' where they've lost job due to automation, and we don't need 81 percent of Congress to pass a dividend. We only need 51 percent. It's one of the first things I'll do as president.

"There's one state that's already had a dividend for almost 40 years, and that state is Alaska. It was passed by a Republican governor. It's wildly popular in a deep-red state. Everyone in Alaska gets between one and two thousand dollars a year right now through oil money. And what I'm saying is that technology is the oil of the 21st century, and we can do this for all Americans."