OPINION

His tech-nerd innovations come from a deep compassion for people

The Register's editorial | The Des Moines Register

Zach Boyden-Holmes, DesMoines

Never let it be said that Andrew Yang can’t read an audience. He came to meet with the Des Moines Register editorial board armed with an imaginative remedy for a struggling industry near and dear to our hearts — community newspapers.

Over the next hour, Yang thoroughly charmed editors in the room while laying out innovative and tech-savvy ideas for all sorts of problems. He was so charismatic — incorporating personal stories of himself and others into his policy discussion — that we almost didn’t care when we realized some elements of his plans would never get off the ground.

Yang is the sixth Democratic presidential candidate who has met with the Register since the November 2018 general election. Here are some first impressions:

Who is this guy? Like many voters, we knew little about Yang before starting to prepare for his visit. He was born in New York and lives there now. His parents immigrated, legally, from Taiwan before he was born. He humorously describes his five months as a Columbia-educated lawyer — “Hated it.” He worked at two unsuccessful dot-com businesses — “My parents still told people I was a lawyer, because it was an easier story,” he said.

Zach Boyden-Holmes/The Register

He joined a friend at a small test-preparation firm. With Yang as CEO, the company “grew to become No. 1 in the U.S.,” he said, and was bought out by Kaplan. The new millionaire turned to philanthropy, starting the nonprofit Venture for America, aimed at helping to launch entrepreneurs. He stepped down as CEO when he announced he was running for president.

Giving away money: For someone who professes to be the least ideological candidate in the race, Yang’s signature issue is so far left even Sen. Bernie Sanders doesn’t support it. Yang proposes a “Freedom Dividend” — a form of universal basic income — to every American adult of $1,000 a month. And he makes the idea sound not only dream-worthy but almost doable.

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He sees the plan as a way for the country to transition into a new economy driven by automation — such as self-driving trucks that could displace millions of drivers in the next decade. While the plan would cost trillions, he argues that it would stimulate the economy and save “tens of billions” being spent on things like incarceration, services for the homeless and emergency-room care.

“It would channel billions of dollars right here to Iowa. It would create about 48,000 new jobs here in Iowa … because we know it would go to car repairs you’ve been putting off and tutoring services and the occasional night out and health care and education bills and day care and everything else,” he said.

He is personally giving that dividend to an Iowa family for the next 12 months, targeting it to a worthy soul who moved home to take care of his mother, who has cancer. And while a form of universal basic income might be a solution for at-home caregivers, who perform valuable work for free, his plan would also pay $1,000 a month to billionaire Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.

“He’ll get his thousand bucks, too, just to remind him he is an American,” Yang said, adding that means testing would be a bureaucratic nightmare. He also rejected the idea of cost-of-living adjustments, saying it would be too easy for people to game the system.

Part of the attraction of the plan is its simplicity — but it’s the details that would likely kill it in Congress.

Tech nerd with a heart: Yang carries a smartphone but his watch is decidedly analog — a Shinola timepiece with a dead battery that he wears because of sentimentality (his friends own the company) and a sense of style. He says he’ll change the battery when he has time.

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Election 2020: Andrew Yang, a Democrat campaigning for president in Iowa

Yang brings this same mix of intellectual agility steeped in compassion to issues like corporate responsibility and health care (he advocates for single-payer Medicare for All, but with a provision for homeopathic treatments like acupuncture or herbal therapy). His website lists platform positions on more than 100 issues ranging from getting rid of the penny to “quantum computing and encryption standards.”

One editorial board member was blown away: “He belongs among the front ranks of candidates. He has obviously thought deeply about the fourth industrial revolution, has fresh ideas and a refreshing non-ideological approach to governing. Meeting with him is like sitting in on a graduate seminar, with ideas sparking but a relaxed, not-too-nerdy atmosphere.”

Another editor agreed it’s a pleasure to listen to Yang, but questioned whether he had thought some of his policies all the way through. For example, his idea for saving community newspapers, while noble, includes taxpayer-funded grants for journalists. One of the tenets of credible journalism is that it needs to be independent — and that means journalists don’t get their salary from the government.

Bottom line: Even if we don’t agree with all of his ideas, Yang deserves more attention than he’s getting in this crowded presidential field. If voters are serious about actually solving problems, as opposed to just winning the next election, Yang’s website www.yang2020.com should be on their reading list.

Correction: The Register’s First Impressions editorial on Democratic presidential candidate John Hickenlooper misstated a reference he made to his job approval rating. Hickenlooper said he had a 92 percent approval rating before he was re-elected, not when he left office.