Andrew Yang, a businessman who is running for the 2020 Democratic nomination for president, said Sunday on ABC's "This Week" that his proposal to provide every American with a $1,000 guaranteed monthly income would help "solve the problems that got Donald Trump elected in 2016."



"To me the main driver of his victory was that we automated away 4 million manufacturing jobs in Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, the swing states he needed to win," Yang said.





"Well, this has been in place in one state, Alaska, for almost 40 years, where it's universal. Everyone in the state gets between $1,000 and $2,000 a year from oil money," Yang explained. "And because it's oil money, there's no stigma attached, it's not a rich to poor transfer, and it's wildly popular in a conservative state."



He added, "So what we have to do is we make it a right of citizenship for all Americans and do what they are doing in Alaska with oil money, with technology money for everyone around the country."



"What we have to do is, we have to join every other advanced economy and have a value-added tax that would fall on the Amazons of the world, and because our economy is now so vast at $20 trillion, up $5 trillion in the last 12 years, a value-added tax at even half the European level would generate over $800 billion in new revenue."