I admit it, until this week, I had never heard of Andrew Yang. But he is running for President of the United States (apparently he announced last November), so I will profile him in this series. For new readers, this series profiles the “life experience” of announced 2020 Democratic candidates for President of the United States (at least, announcing an exploratory committee). The plan was to profile one candidate per week every Friday, but the speed of announcements has led me to double up and give 2 last Friday, 2 this Friday, 2 Saturday, and 1 on Sunday.

Previous profiles in this series include Elizabeth Warren, Julian Castro, Tulsi Gabbard, Kirsten Gillibrand, Kamala Harris, Jay Inslee, and John K. Delaney. Tomorrow (Sunday), I will profile Pete Buttigrieg, the Mayor of South Bend, IN. Hopefully, this allows a return to the “1 every Friday” schedule, but with the rate of announcements, we’ll have to play it by ear.

Early Life and Personal Info.:

Andrew Yang (Chinese: 楊安澤) was born 13 January 1975 (44 years old) in Schenectady, NY. His parents were both immigrants from Taiwan who came to the United States for graduate school. Because Yang is new to politics, there is little about him on the web, and so I have been unable to find his parents’ names, despite several sources saying that his parents met at the University of California, Berkeley. According to his campaign website, his father earned a Ph.D. in physics and worked in the laboratories of IBM and GM, registering 69 patents. His mother earned a Master’s degree in statistics and later became an artist.

I have found little concerning his family life or even whether or not he has siblings. This is a direct result of Yang not previously being involved in politics or other aspects of public life. If his campaign takes off, this will change, but, I am forced to be bare bones in this profile.

Yang is married and his wife’s name is Evelyn. They have 2 sons and live in New York City.

Obviously, one aspect of his life would be a huge contrast with Trump, representing a clear choice for voters: He is Asian-American and the son of immigrants. As with Sen. Kamala Harris, Yang’s visible personage would be a rebuke of the xenophobia, isolationism, and white supremacist ideologies that fuel Trumpism.

Education:

Yang had an elite education. In fact, this is the area in which he looks most like a “standard politician.” For secondary school, Yang graduated from Phillips Exeter Academy, a co-ed boarding school in New Hampshire. Phillips Exeter Academy (not to be confused with the equally elite Phillips Andover Academy) is one of the oldest secondary schools in the nation, pre-dating the public school system. Its alumni include Daniel Webster, Robert Lincoln (35th Secretary of War and son of Abraham Lincoln), Franklin Pierce, U. S. Senator Claiborne Pell (who gave us Pell Grants, which financed much of my undergraduate education), Jay Rockefeller, etc. The education at Phillips is known as the “Harkness system” and involves much student independent work and research with minimal teacher interaction. It is designed to promote active learning, intellectual curiosity, and collaborative research—all skills that an effective POTUS would need.

Yang earned a B.A. in economics from Brown University in Providence, R.I. Brown is part of the Ivy League, but it is considered the “laid back Ivy” which does everything possible to avoid a culture of pressure cooker competition—except students competing with themselves for excellence. Brown has no core requirements and students each design their own majors with the aid of faculty advisers. This is an approach that Yang would have felt is similar to how he learned at Phillips Exeter. At Brown learned to approach economics from a social justice perspective.

From Brown, Yang went on to earn a Juris Doctor (in the U.S., the basic law degree), from Columbia University Law School in NYC, the alma mater of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, as well as Theodore Roosevelt, FDR, (neither Roosevelt graduated, but were posthumously awarded J.D.s), Eric Holder, Jeh Johnson, Harlan F. Stone, Benjamin Cardozo, Charles Evans Hughes, and Willaim O. Douglas.

Career:

Yang briefly worked in a law firm after graduating from Columbia Law in 1999, but has spent most of his career as an entrepreneur of start-up firms.

In 2000, Yang launched Stargiving.com promoting celebrity-driven philanthropy. It folded in 2001. One can learn from failure, often more than from immediate success, and it is clear that Yang already had an other-directed focus on helping people, even if I, myself, am skeptical of celebrity “star power” as the best model for effective philanthropy.

From there, Yang joined a healthcare software start-up called MMF Systems, Inc. as its Vice President and third hire. He worked at MMF Systems for 4 years.

He then left to join his friend, Zeke Vanderhoek, at Manhattan Prep, an educational test preparation company. It helped prepare students for the GMAT, SAT, ACT, GRE, and LSAT. In 2006, Vanderhoek asked Yang to take over as CEO. He was CEO until Manhattan Prep was acquired by Kaplan, Inc. in 2009. It was during this time that Yang became disenchanted with an educational system that increasingly focused on standardized testing.

In 2011, Yang founded Venture for America, a non-profit venture capital start-up. Sometimes described as “Teach for America for entrepreneurs,” Venture for America focuses and training and equipping entrepreneurs to build innovative start-up companies and create jobs. As outlined in his 2014 book, Smart People Should Build Things, Yang argues that our nations top universities recruit bright and talented people from small towns across the nation and train them to work at a handful of mega-corporations. Instead, Venture for America, recruits top talent and deliberately wants to spread it around the nation, giving tools, resources (and capital) to build start-up companies and rejuvenate innovation and success nationwide. Venture for America was successful enough that Barack Obama named Yang “White House Champion of Change” in 2012 and

”Global Ambassador for Entrepreneurship” in 2015. In 2016, a documentary was made on Venture for America called Generation Start-Up. Yang stepped down as CEO of Venture for America in 2017 in preparation for his presidential run.

Writer:

Yang is the author of two books. The first, Smart People Should Build Things, I mentioned above. The second book gives the impetus for his campaign. It is called The War on Normal People. Yang argues that the revolution in automation and artificial intelligence will soon lead to massive unemployment. The loss of factory jobs already gave the opportunity for Trump and Trumpism. But Yang argues (with much data to back him up) that A.I. will soon render MANY sectors of the economy redundant for human beings. Driverless cars alone will put a million truck drivers out of work. Sales clerks, librarians, journalists, and far more will soon be made obsolete. To combat this, Yang takes an old economic idea, universal basic income, and makes it the center of his plan to combat poverty (and fascist leaders like Trump). (N.B.: Yes, Trumpism is fueled by racism. But people are more open to having their prejudices inflamed when “economically insecure.” In good times, people can often be persuaded to surmount their fears and prejudices. In hard economic times, racist and xenophobic messages fall more easily on more ears than they would in other times. My 2 cents.)

As far back as his days at Manhattan Prep, Yang noticed that our nation spends enormous amounts of money on preparation and testing to get people out of poverty and into success, when data shows that simply giving a family $3,000 or so a year more would do far more for them with less effort.

Yang is using his own money to test this idea with two families in separate parts of the country.

It is an idea that gathers support that cuts across usual liberal-conservative lines. For instance, many conservatives like it as an alternative to other social service programs because it involves less “social engineering.” Something like Universal Basic Income already happens in AK and Hillary Clinton thought about adopting such a plank for her 2016 platform (but decided against it because she couldn’t figure out a funding mechanism).

UBI isn’t enough to live on in most proposals, but it gives a base to add to whatever other jobs one does. Some worry that it doesn’t speak to the dignity of work that most people need to feel useful and productive. But as A.I. looks to destroy more jobs than it creates—and to do so rapidly—UBI is growing in popularity as part of a solution. Yang is running for POTUS with UBI as the center of his campaign. Yang calls his UBI proposal “the Freedom Dividend” and it would give every adult in the USA $1,000 per month, $12K per year for life.

He has many other policy proposals, including Medicare for All, and what he calls “Human Centered Capitalism.” Indeed, his policy proposals are more wide ranging and detailed than most campaigns have at this stage. It includes a focus on combating climate change, but that is not as central as it is for Jay Inslee’s campaign.

Strengths and Weaknesses:

Yang’s experience creating jobs could well help him connect to voters. He is a “businessman," but, unlike Trump, one who has not worked to profit at others’ expense (not paying contractors, etc.), but focused deliberately at trying to create jobs—and often succeeding.

Yang can speak to the young, to the America of the future, as an Asian-American child of immigrants. He can appeal to tech types and innovators. He can combine business savvy with other-directed, social justice focus.

But he has little to no actual experience in government and the last two years have made that very problematic for me. POTUS is not a position in which there is much time for on the job training. Of course, Yang knows far more about economics and government than Trump, but experience at getting legislation passed may be vital for the success of the next POTUS.

However, as with Inslee, whether or not Yang’s campaign is successful, I hope it catches fire enough to influence the intra-party and national debate and shape the DNC platform and agenda for 2021. Other candidates, including many much more high profile than Andrew Yang, would do well to study his policy proposals in detail. I do not know whether or not he is the right voice, but he has much, at least, of the right message. I want to see many of his proposals become mainstream and quickly.