Voices from the road, on cspan. 2020 democrats are mccright president ial Campaign Andrew yang was in nashua New Hampshire. He talked about his campaign flap warm, including his a 1000 monthly universal basic income program. [applause] [inaudible] come on up. Good afternoon everyone. We are going to open those doors up so, hopefully people out there can hear what is going to happen. Welcome, everyone to this first in the 2020 gateway to the election president ial campaign series. Presented through a Collaborative Partnership between the Greater Nashua Chamber of commerce, riviera universitys president circle and the telegraph. I am traci hall, president and ceo of the Greater Nashua Chamber of commerce. It is a pleasure to welcome all of ours in his, civic and our business civic and , Community Members to todays event. We appreciate your support and applaud you for educating ourselves about the important choices we will all make on for for february 11th. Our goal is to bring president ial candidates to nashua, to get a better sense of their stance on Business Community topics, and to prepare you to cast your most informed vote on primary day. As we begin our program, i would like to ask that you check that your cell phones are in silent mode so they do not go off. I want to recognize a few people, former elected officials who are with us. The former nashua mayor, thank you for joining us. This is the challenge i will , miss someone, state representative and newly elected member of the board of alderman skip cleaver is here. There is skip. [applause] those are the only elected officials i saw walkin. If i missed you, brandon laws, our alderman. [applause] thank you. I would also like to think our corporate sponsor, fidelity investments. Fidelity is a strong and active member of our chamber and of the greater nashua community, providing funding and feet on the street to help dozens of agencies across the region each year. Our city is fortunate to have institutions of equality and history of our gateway to the election partners. Riviera university has seen great growth under the exam exuma under the exemplary leadership of sister paula marie bewley, and is blessed with dedicated men and women who share their time and talents through the president s circle counsel. The telegraph helps ensure our citizenry is engaged and educated through their coverage of the greater nashua region. I want to thank the publisher of the telegraph and the telegraph editor for what they have done to put the series together. We are grateful to jennifer mccormick, director of the nashua public library, my favorite place in the city, for hosting us here at the library. Im sorry we cannot sneak a few more people in here without venturing the wrath of the fire marshall. A few words on the format. Following mr. Youngs remarks i will present a series of questions, and then take questions from the audience. We look for to an informative conversation today and to your courtesy and respect as we go through the program. A brief introduction. You probably all know this, but just to be on the record, andrew yang is an american entrepreneur, philanthropist, author and lawyer. He is the founder of venture for america, a Nonprofit Organization that focuses on creating jobs in struggling american cities. In 2012, the Obama Administration selected him as a champion of change. In 2015, as a president ial ambassador for global entrepreneurship. In late 2017, mr. Yang announced his run for the presidency under the slogan, make america think harder math, which i loved. Along with his proposal of universal basic income, a supplemental income offer to american adults, to prepare them for the economic challenges incurred by Artificial Intelligence and automation in the job market. Mr. Yang is a 1996 graduate of brown university, where he earned a degree in political science. And a 1999 graduate of club at University School of law. He and his wife evelyn have two sons and live in new york city. I would like to invite mr. Yang to the podium to learn more about what he has for us. [applause] mr. Yang thank you, New Hampshire voice amplification. Be back here in New Hampshire. You missed the most important thing i graduated from phillips , Exeter Academy in 1992. [applause] that is pretty tepid applause. Its ok. I was invited to speak back at pea a few months ago and i said this is my first time back since i graduated because i do not enjoy myself here. In the student body erected in applause. [laughter] erupted inent body applause. I felt really bad. That was not the reaction i was going for. After i graduated from exeter, i went to brown and then columbia. Then i became an unhappy lawyer in new york city for five months. I left the firm to try to start a business. How many of you have started a business or organization or club . If you have your hand up, you know two things. Number one, it is harder than anyone lets on. Number two, when someone ask you how it is going . What do you say . Great. Everything is always going great . My business went great until it failed. My parents told people i was still a lawyer because was easier. I worked at one organization and then another and became the head , of an Education Company that was bought by another bigger company. 2009 was a decade ago and i cannot believe its been 10 years. That was a tough time in much of the country. How many of you are here in New Hampshire 10 years ago . And how was that time in 2009 in nashua . You are laughing. Were you the mayor then . [laughter] i want to commend elected officials and former elected officials. Because here New Hampshire, it is a labor of love. Youre certainly not doing it for the glory. I tell people to run for local office, i believe is harder than running for president , because people know where you live. [laughter] so, the financial crisis 10 years ago wracked many of our communities. I saw this unfold, and i thought i had some insight as to why the economy had collapsed. It was because so many of the wannabe whiz kids who are gone to exeter and brown gone to wall street and created derivatives and mortgagebacked securities and these exotic financial instruments. I thought that is a disaster, a train wreck, if that is where our energies are going. So i imagined what i would want our energies go toward instead. The vision i came up with was to head to a city like detroit or cleveland or birmingham or providence, and help grow a company to create jobs. So i started a nonprofit called venture for america. I started calling wealthy friends asking them this question. Do you love america . The smart among them said, what does it mean if i say yes, andrew . And i said, at least 10,000. So i raised a couple hundred thousand dollars which grew to millions and created jobs in many cities. I was honored by the administration multiple times and got to meet my wife to be the president. So my inlaws were excited about me that week. I started having the sinking feeling that for any job my organization was helping create, many communities were losing dozens or hundreds of jobs. I started to feel like might my work was pouring water into a bathtub that had a giant hole ripped in the bottom. I was still surprised when donald trump became our resident in 2016. How did you all react when he won . Disbelief . Stated, flag, it was a giant red that tens of millions of our americans decided to take a bet on the narcissist reality tv star. Even if you are devastated or cried, we all have family or friends or neighbors who were very excited about his victory. I started to dig into why i thought he won. If you turn on cable news today, why would you think donald trump is our president . Facebook. Racism. Russia. Hillary clinton perhaps. Emails. Someone shouted out, the economy. Mr. Yang that is closer to the truth. When i dug into the numbers, we have automated away 4 million jobs. Where were those jobs . Ohio, michigan, pennsylvania, wisconsin, iowa. All of the swing states that donald trump needed to win and did win. If you go through the voter district data, you see there is a Straight Line up between the adoption of Industrial Automation and voting district and a Movement Toward trump. This happened in New Hampshire, but it happened earlier. You lost over 12,000 manufacturing jobs in the northern part of the state. When you go to those towns, you see that many of those towns have never recovered. After the factory or the plant closed, and the shopping district closed, and the population shrank. When i was in detroit, cleveland and st. Louis, you saw a lot of the same things. We are in the midst of the greatest Economic Transformation in the history of our country. Because what happened to the manufacturing jobs is not stopping there. It is now heading to retail, call centers, fast food, truck driving, and on and on through the economy. How many of you have noticed Stores Closing here in New Hampshire . Why are the Stores Closing . Amazon, thats right, one word answer. Amazon is soaking up 20 billion in business every year. And how much is amazon paying in taxes . Zero. Out and zero back. 20 billion the most common job in the economy is retail clerk. The average retail clerk is that 39yearold woman making 10 per hour. How many of you have seen a selfserve kiosk in a fast food restaurant, like mcdonalds . Every location in the country, starting with the front of the house and there want to move to the back of the house. When you call the Customer Service line of a big company and get a bot or software, im sure you do what i do which is to pound 0, 0 and say human, human until you get a person on the line . The software is terrible. But in two or three years, the software is going to sound like this, hello andrew, what can i do for you . What is that going to do for the 2. 5 million americans working in call centers now . How many of you know truck driver here New Hampshire . It is the most common job in 29 states. My friends in california are working on trucks that can drive themselves. They say they are 98 of the way there. A selfdriving truck just took 20 tons of butter from california to pennsylvania two weeks ago, totally autonomous. Why butter . I have no idea. But you can look that up and say robot, butter, truck, and it will pop up. What does this mean for the americans who drive a truck for living or the 7 million americans who work in truck stops, motels and diners that rely on truckers getting out and having a meal every day . Despair. These are the forces tearing our country apart. Many americans feel himself getting left behind and pushed to the sideline. Corporate profits are record highs today and record highs the United States america. Stress, financial insecurity. How many of you are College Students . Student loan debt at record highs, not normal. Even suicides and drug overdoses. And unfortunately new , hampshires one of the epicenters of the Opioid Epidemic in the country. Eight americans are dying every hour in this country now. These are things people are experiencing on the ground and it is only going to accelerate Artificial Intelligence leaves the lab and starts hitting the economy in earnest. This is not just a bluecollar problem. Artificial intelligence will be able to do the work of bookkeepers, accountants, radiologists, even attorneys. Right now software can edit a contract more quickly and errorfree and certainly and inexpensively than the most experienced human lawyer. We are in the midst of this Economic Transformation. And for whatever reason, we are scapegoating immigrants, for things that immigrants have next to nothing to do with. My first move was still not to run for president. Because im not a crazy person. I went to washington, d. C. , and sat down with our leaders and said what are we going to do to help our people manage this transition . And what you thing the folks d. C. Said to me when i said what are we going to do . We dont know. Nothing. The three answers i got most frequently were number one, andrew we cannot talk about , this. Someone suggested americans would not understand it anyway. Number two, we should study this further. Number three, we must educate and retrain all americans for the jobs of the future, which sounds very responsible. But i said look, i checked the studies. You want to guess how effective retraining programs were for manufacturing workers who lost their jobs . Zero to 15 success rate. A total dud. When i said this to the people in washington, d. C. , they said they will get better at it. The truth is that the folks in d. C. Will do well whether we do well or not. The Feedback Mechanism is broken. One person in washington, d. C. , leveled with me and said some thing that brought me here to you all. He said andrew, you are in the wrong town. No one here will do anything about this because washington, d. C. Is fundamentally a town of followers and not leaders. The only way we will do some about this if you are to create a wave and bring that wave crashing down on our heads. That was over two years ago. I said i accept that challenge and i will be back with the wave. I stand before you today and im fifth in the polls to be the nominee of the democratic party. [applause] we raised 10 million last quarter in increments of only 30 each. Zero corporate pac money, all people powered. All grassroots. We will do better than that in this quarter. We are growing while other campaigns are shrinking because we are solving the actual problems that got donald trump elected. And we have Real Solutions that would help move the country forward. What are the solutions . If youre here today, and i appreciate you braving the elements and saying im going to go see andrew yang, even though it is yucky out. I grew up in New Hampshire too. If you are here today, at some point, you heard, this guy wants to give every american 1000 per month. Remember the first time you heard that . And the first time you heard that, you are like ha ha, that is a gimmick, too good to be true, that will never happen. But this is not my idea, and it is not a new idea. Thomas paine was sort of the founding of the country and called the citizens dividend. Martin luther king fought for in the 1960s and called at the guaranteed income for all americans and it is what he was fighting for what he was assassinated in 1968. I had the privilege of sitting with Martin Luther king the third in atlanta, who said this is what my father was fighting for, when he was killed. Thousand economists endorsed it in the 1960s. It passed the u. S. House of representatives twice under richard nixon, it was called the family assistance plan and to set an income floor for all americans. 11 years later one state has to passed a dividend where everyone in that state gets 2000 per yearnd no questions asked. , what state is that . Alaska. And how they pay for it . Oil. And what is the oil that when he First Century . Technology, software, ai, selfdriving cars and trucks. How many of you got your data check in the mail . We laugh, but where the data checks go . Facebook, amazon, google, the mega Tech Companies that are paying zero or near zero in taxes. That is a game, New Hampshire. Our communities are getting sucked dry and depleted and we are looking around wondering where the value went. And the biggest winners in that the 21st century economy are paying zero in taxes. What we have to do is get our fair share, your fair share, make sure amazon, this trillion Dollar Tech Company actually is , paying taxes. Equally important, we have to put that value into our hands come into your hands, the hands of the American People. Build a trickle up economy from our people, our families and our communities up. If we put this thousand hours per month into your hands, thousand dollars where will the money go in real life . Im going to guess a lot of it will stay right here in nashua or New Hampshire. It would be good for the chamber of commerce. If you run a business here, you think maybe people will be patronizing my business more the money would go into car repairs you have been putting off, daycare expenses, Little League signups, local nonprofits, religious organizations. It would create a sustainable path for rural parts of the state that right now are struggling to find it. It would make our people stronger, healthier, mentally healthier, less stressed out. For the students laboring under tens of thousands of dollars in student loan debt, it would help to clear that debt. Though i want to do more to clear that debt independent of giving you per month. Because this is out of control and it is immoral the way it was generated. This per month would help manage 1000 the greatest transmission our countrys history. I am friends with some of the leading technologists in the country and they tell me hey, andrew, ive seen what is in the lab. And everything will be fine. More someone knows, the more concerned they are. The folks in washington, d. C. , are decades behind the curve, on technology in particular. They got rid of the office of Technology Assessment in 1995. Congress has literally had zero input on Technology Issues for 24 years, aside from the Tech Companies themselves. A