Democratic president ial candidates who spoke at the iowa state fair. This is just under one hour. Mr. Yang hello, iowa, it is so great to be back. So much love. What does math stand for . Make america think harder, thats right. Because the opposite of donald trump is an asian man who likes math, and that is this guy. What do we mean by make america i am not a career politician, but a problem solver, and i want to wake up america to the real problems that got donald trump elected. If you were to flip on cable news, why would you think donald trump is our president . Why did donald trump win iowa by nine points . Russia. Emails. Facebook. Hillary clinton. [laughter] mr. Yang the driving force behind Donald Trumps victory was we automated away 4 million factory jobs in ohio, michigan, pennsylvania, wisconsin, missouri, and 40,000 right here in iowa. Think about the 40,000 jobs in iowa, 40,000 families, and not just manufacturing jobs but if you go to the shopping district or what used to be the shopping district, what do you see . How many of you know Stores Closing where you work and live . 30 of americas stores and malls are closing in the next four years. Why is that . Why is that . Amazon. Mr. Yang amazon, that is right. Oneword answer. Amazon is soaking up 20 billion in commerce every year, and how much do you see . How must it they pay in taxes last year . Zero. Mr. Yang thats right. Amazon sucks up 20 billion to 30 billion from your communities. Your stores and malls close and people lose their jobs. The most common job in iowa and the United States is a retail worker, the average retail worker is a 39 year old woman making between nine dollars and 10 an hour. 9 and 10 an hour. Youre getting zero return, because amazon pays zero in taxes. And how is that possible that they pay less in taxes than everyone here today . Corruption, a one word answer. Again. Money is overrunning our system and amazon is laughing its way to the bank. These are real problems that help donald trump get elected. It is not just manufacturing or amazon, closing the retail stores, but my friends in Silicon Valley are working on cars and trucks that could drive themselves. Talk about what that will mean here in iowa, i was just in the countrys largest truckstop. Raise your hand if you happen there. Has been there. There. Been they have 5000 people stop by every day. What will happen in five to ten years when the trucks start to drive themselves . Driving a truck is the most common job in 29 states, including this one. Raise your hand if you know a truck driver. I have a truck driver in the family. Thats what an talking about. Im talking about. My friends in Silicon Valley are working on trucks that can drive themselves for the most american of reasons, for the money. 168 billion per year in cost savings if they can successfully get rid of Truck Driving jobs. That is a lot of money. An unthinkable amount of money. It is so much money, that if you are an investor and someone comes to you and says, if you invest 1 billion in my company, i can get rid of truck drivers, you make that bet. And what do they do . They hire hundreds of the smartest engineers who are working on that problem right now, and they tell me they are 98 of the way there. They say they are 2 from getting away from truck drivers, that is a big 2 , because you cannot have them crashing into things at a 2 rate. That is not a good plan. But to bet against these engineers and investors solving the last 2 is a losing bet because you are betting against the mass capital and technology of our entire society trying to get rid of truck drivers. What will that mean for the 3. 5 million americans who drive a truck for a living or the seven main americans who work in truck stops and hotels and diners that rely on the truckers getting out and having a meal . These are the real problems of our time. We are in the midst of the greatest Economic Transformation in our countrys history, what experts call the fourth home Fourth Industrial Revolution. When have you heard politicians say the words Fourth Industrial Revolution . Just now is the first time, and i am barely politician. Barely a politician. [laughter] mr. Yang i spent the last seven years helping create thousands of jobs all around the country, and people were patting me on the back and giving me metals. But you dont get it, i was pouring water, the water is rushing out of the bottom, and it got donald trump elected and is about to take off. I will use one last example on the technology front. When you call a Customer Service line, you get the bot, what do you do . You pound 000, human, human, human into the phone until you get a human. I do the same thing. We all do it. But in two or three years, the sound like this, hey, andrew, how is it going . It will be efficient and delightful, and you may not know if the software. If it is the software. What will that mean for the hundreds of thousands of americans who worked at call centers for a living right now who make an average of 14 per hour . This is a buzz saw and it is carried through many different parts of our economy. I was an unhappy attorney for five months, and i can guarantee you can automate that job. [laughter] mr. Yang software can go through document review and the contracts better and faster than the human. We are in the midst of this incredible, epic transformation, and our politicians are not talking about it. I know this because i went to washington, d. C. In 2017, and said, what are we going to do about the fact that technology is ripping apart our labor force . And immigrants are getting scapegoated, but they have nothing to do with it. [applause] mr. Yang what do you think the good folks in washington, d. C. Said to me when i felt what will the facte know about that americans are going to a fundamental transformation . That is right, they are doing nothing. Some said we cannot talk about that. Number two, we should study that. Number three, we must educate and retrain all americans for the jobs of the future. The last one sounds decent and responsible. Like, im for that. But i did the math, and do you want to guess how effective governmentfunded retraining programs were for the manufacturing workers in iowa . 0 to 15 , a failing grade by any curve. Half of the manufacturing workers have lost their jobs and left the workforce and never worked again. Many of that group have filed for disability and we saw surges in drug overdoses and suicides in the communities to the point where our Life Expectancy as a country has declined for the last three years. Do you know the last time american Life Expectancy declined three years in a row . Spanish flu of 1918. 100 years. We are in spanish flu territory because our society and economy have stopped working for us. The folks in washington, d. C. Will do nothing about this. We all know this. Someone in washington said something that brought me here to you all today in iowa. He said, andrew, you are in the wrong town. No one in washington will do anything because this is not a town of leaders, this is a town of followers, and the only way we would do anything is if you create a wave in other parts of the country that crashes us. Crashes down on our heads. And i said, challenge accepted. [cheers and applause] mr. Yang this is the ideal place to create a wave and bring it crashing down on washington, d. C. You do not need that many iowans to start a revolution. I have done the math. One iowan is worth 1000 californians. You look around this grant, what are there, 300 iowans . That is like three football stadiums full of californians. This is how you start a revolution in iowa. [applause] mr. Yang because all you need is 40,000 iowans the vision and the vision sweeps the country. What is the vision . One of my talking about . What am i talking about . How do we solve this . If you know anything about me you have heard there is an asian man running for president was to give everyone 1000 for month. Per month. [applause] mr. Yang those three things are all true. [laughter] mr. Yang first time you heard this 1000 a month you laughed and said it was a gimmick. It can never happen. But a 1000 a month dividend has been with the country since our founding. Thomas paine was for it and called it the citizens dividend. Martin luther king fought for it and called it a guaranteed minimum income. And he was fighting for it when he was assassinated in 1968, a Poor Peoples Campaign today, 1000 economists endorsed it in the 1970s. It was so mainstream, it passed u. S. House of representatives twice in 1971 and came this close to being law. One state passed a dividend about 10 years later where everyone in the state now gets between 1000 and 2000 per year with no questions asked, what state is that . Alaska. Mr. Yang how do they pay for it . Oil. Mr. Yang what is the oil of the 21st century . Technology. [cheers and applause] mr. Yang they call it the oil check in alaska, and they love it, and we will call this the tech check, and we will all love it. If you think, how can you afford 1000 per month for every american, amazon is paying zero in taxes and google, facebook, uber, these Tech Companies are investing billions in ai, and how much are you going to see of that . Zero. That is what we have to change. We have to make the economy work for us, the owners and shareholders of this country. This is the vision for a trickle up economy, from our people and families and communities up. I was just talking to a few people on the way in who were laughing about the fact that the trump tax cut did not get money into our hands and trickle down economy doesnt work. They said the best way to get money into the economy is to give it to us, because what would we spend it on . Shout it out. Tuition. Mr. Yang tuition, car repair, child care, day care, housing, Little League signups. How much of that money would stay here in iowa . Not all of it, but most of it. Some of it would go to amazon and the gang, buy an extra toaster. It would be fine. It would stay here in your communities, it would create 40,000 jobs right here in iowa. It would help give rural areas a path forward because they are being depleted. If you are a rural area, what happens when your kids age . They have to leave in order to have the kind of life that they want, and that is not the way should be in the United States it should be in the United States of america. This is the freedom dividend and there is nothing stopping us from making it happen, nothing stopping the citizens of a democracy from passing ourselves a dividend. Companies do it all the time every day, and when they do it what do we say . We say great job, good management, verizon, coke, they give money to shareholders and we are the owners of this country. We can return some of it to ourselves, and the only way we would get it back. This country, unfortunately, follows the almighty dollar, so the thing to do is to give us all more dollars. That is the basic plan. This is the big vision of the economy that would work for us but we cannot stop there. How many were excited about gdp when you woke up this morning . Nobody. Mr. Yang how many of you were like, i will make a big contribution to gdp, i can feel it . Of course not, gdp is at record highs, and you know what else our record highs in america . Anxiety, depression, mental illness. Suicide. Drug overdoses. It is all heading in the wrong direction. How many of you run a business or organization, if you have the wrong measurements, you will never go anywhere. What good is gdp being at record high if the communities are falling apart . Robot trucks will be great for gdp but terrible for a lot of americans. If we want to transition to an economy that works for us and gdp is an increasingly meaningless measurement, what would get you excited if i told you this got better for the people of iowa . Life expectancy. Mr. Yang health and Life Expectancy, if we say were healthy and living longer, that would make you happy. Right . What else . Clean air and clean water. Kids success rates. How about Mental Health and freedom from Substance Abuse . No more guns. Mr. Yang how much of us are enjoying the work we are doing . These are the measurements we have numbers for, and gdp is something we made up almost 100 years ago, where even the inventor said that we should never use it as a measurement for National Wellbeing and we should not use it. The inventor of gdp. What are we doing now . Following it off a cliff. He also said we should include parenthood and motherhood as part of the measurement because it adds so much value. [applause] mr. Yang my wife is now at home with our two young boys, one is whom is autistic, and what does her work include, zero, and she gets paid zero, the work she is doing is among the most challenging and vital work in our community today. Much more valuable than the average Hedge Fund Managers work. I would trade places with my wife. Razor hand if you are a parent. Id trade places with my wife for a day or two and i say, let me get back to running for president. [laughter] mr. Yang let me get back to running for president. [laughter] mr. Yang we have to do this as fast as possible because right now, our economy is evolving in fundamental ways, they do not get it in washington, d. C. And we have to take this vision and bring it to the rest of the country as fast as possible. That is why i am with you in iowa. Iowa, you do not know how good you have it, but you have this responsibility you take very seriously and i love you for it. You know you have this power. You are a bit spoiled, used to president ial candidates coming in, showing up in your living room essentially. [laughter] mr. Yang i have only met him once, i do not know what i think about that yang guy. [laughter] mr. Yang but the power is real, and you have to use the power and take it and bring this vision to the rest of the country this time. Because if you lose this opportunity you have four more years of the a. I. Getting smarter, and Stores Closing, and call centers shutting, Stores Closing, we have to make this move, you are ground zero, you see it on the farms and main streets, you will see it on the highway soon. If iowa does not make this case, we will lose the opportunity and we need to make the most of it right now. [applause] mr. Yang this is the vision. This is the vision of the trickle up economy that works for us. Of an economy we can be proud to pass along to our children. And this is not left or right, this is forward. That is how we will win the whole thing in 2020. Thank you very much, iowa, i love you, you are amazing. Thank you. Now, we will take some questions, because that is how the yang gang rolls. Wheres the music . There is no music. [laughter] mr. Yang in the back with the red balloons, shout it out. [indiscernible] mr. Yang look at that. Better ears than i do. The question is, how do we make sure the church and state stay separated . This has been engraved in our country since day one. Countrys dna since day one. We need to know there are many different ways to worship in this country, and we need to have the government and peoples faith be independent of each other. Speaking for myself personally, i married a christian woman and for myself personally, i married a christian woman and we are bringing our boys up in the Christian Faith and it has been tremendous for a family but there are many different ways people grow up and the government should not be making those decisions for anybody. [applause] mr. Yang another question . With the glasses. You have a valueadded tax how can we make sure we are consistently getting the revenue even if spending goes down . Mr. Yang how do we make sure we keep the revenue coming in . There was a person here, i think was you who said have our deficits are at record high and i have been a businessperson and have run a company that was quite successful. When you have a debt problem as a business, you look at the revenue and expenses. Right now we have both a revenue problem and an expense problem in this country. The revenue problem is that for the big winners of the 21st century economy we see next to nothing because they are good at moving all of the income through ireland or expensing it through stock compensation and we do not get the money. We need to reform our tax code so we get a fair share of every uber ride and facebook ad and Google Search and amazon sale. That is immense. That is hundreds of billions of dollars. On the expense side, we have to spend more widely in some instances. One of my plans is to take the military Defense Budget and move it towards infrastructure because that is something we will need for a long time and will produce economic value and a lot of the same jobs. That is one way we can become much more efficient as a country is by taking some of the resources on both sides. This will be unpopular. I think we should have it for taxes forll out our us. They know what they are. They had them in the Previous Year and they can bill it for us and you can sign off and do something meaningful with your day. I would turn tax day into revenue day and make it a National Holiday and we would celebrate the fact that we had another awesome year with hundreds of billions of dollars in new revenue and have a party at a National Party where there would be thank you video from oprah and the rock and tom you, saying, thank america, we did it for one more year that is what we need to do in this country instead of treating us all like we are servants to the state, no, we are the shareholders and deserve to be treated like it. Thank you very much, iowa. I appreciate it. Happy sixth birthday to quinlan. Look at that. Wished someone a happy birthday. As soon as you run for office, you will read anything anyone puts in your hands. [laughter] mr. Yang i love you, iowa. See you on the main stage in september and october because of you. Thats right. Yang gang. Thank you. Thank you. [applause] [crowd chatter] can i get one more picture . Yang as soon as i help the journalists do their job. I love the des moines register. [indiscernible] what ar