Source: CNBC

Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang was a former tech entrepreneur who founded a nonprofit to create jobs. He has built his whole democratic campaign on giving every American a guaranteed annual $12,000 income that’s sent on a monthly basis with no strings attached. Even multibillionaires are not excluded from getting this free money.

While there are opposing opinions among tech entrepreneurs on whether it would bring more good than harm, no one actually knows how it would affect the society in our nation. A prominent investor, Naval Ravikant, doesn’t support the idea as it might create a transfer straight into socialism. On the other side, the former president of Y Combinator, Sam Altman, was one of the earliest donors of Yang and his universal basic income (UBI) plan.

Andrew Yang’s universal basic income proposal.

Any American who is 18 or over is eligible to get monthly payments as Yang calls it a freedom dividend. Paying that money would be a huge burden to the government and Mr. Yang suggests paying for it by imposing extra value-added 10 percent tax.

Who supports him?

Mr. Yang became known on the internet following as ‘Yang Gang’, there were many memes and videos created for his presidential candidacy. He has received sizable donations from people in big tech companies such as Apple, Amazon, Facebook, Google, and Microsoft. The fundraising in the third quarter totaled to $10 million which is 257% more than his previous quarter.

Immigrants are backing Yang.

Some of his policies are great for immigrants, especially it resonates well on the people in the in metropolitan cities of US. Silicon Valley is known to have lots of high-skilled, talented programmers who happen to be immigrants.

Yang’s Background.

Born in New York, he studied economics and political science at Brown University and received a law degree from Columbia University. He started working as a corporate lawyer before joining a health care startup where he became a managing director and then CEO at a test preparation company in his 30’s. He was named a Champion of Change in 2011, and a Presidential Ambassador for Global Entrepreneurship in 2015, by then-U.S. President Barack Obama.

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