Good. [laughter] [applause] i have a number of jobs and , andrew will be here shortly. Were you interested in meeting the next president of the United States . [applause] good. Thats good. Coincidently, he will be here in 10 minutes or less. Hopefully, less than 10. I saw some people groan. It is going to be all right. My name is steve. If you like state or local politics, we may have crossed paths. If not, that is on me. I used to be the mayor of portsmouth, New Hampshire. And i was a candidate for governor of New Hampshire on the democratic side last year. [applause] dont clap too much. Breaking news, i did not win. [laughter] and had i won, there would be burly security people trying to intimidate you. But the good news is, i am not intimidating at all. Instead, there is a Silver Lining to what happened, because i had more free time that i hoped i would, a year ago, coincidently, today, i sat down for the first time with andrew yang for a cup of coffee in my hometown of manchester. I knew him, but i did not know much about him, to be honest. Five minutes in, i knew, at a minimum, that we were going to be friends at the end of this conversation. So he checked some boxes for me very early. Lets see, 44yearold, firstgeneration american, father of two, really likes math. Ap, that was me, that was me and we connected immediately. The balance of that hour, ended up being the moment i went from , i am going to be friends with this guy, to i think this guy , could be president. I think that would be a good thing. And then we took the next couple of months and talked politics , did some campaigning in the north country. I have family way up in pittsburgh. Betty from the anybody from there . Anybody from its ok. It is a good thing. Its beautiful up there. We took him snowmobiling. You cannot be president if you have not been snowmobiling. Early april, i became a National Advisor for him. Doing debate prep, policy, south carolina. It has been a blessing. When we connected, he was in 16th place. And after that meeting back in january, we walked down elm street where he had another , meeting. And i had just run for governor, and it was my hometown, and we bumped into some folks that i knew. And they said, hey, steve, who is your friend . He is running for president. That is my friend. Well now, we walk down elm street and folks go, hey andrew, who is your friend . And that, in my estimation, counts as progress. And all of a sudden, he is not in 16th place and a relatively anonymous guy in New Hampshire. Anybody seen any tv ads for andrew yang . Because we are paying money. Do you like that . Good. Now he is as high as tied for fourth place nationally. We raised 16. 5 million in the fourth quarter, with much more to come, and consider this, in q1, the First Quarter of 2019, the entire quarter, he raised 1. 7 million. On new years eve day, he raised 1. 3 million. That also counts as progress. [applause] one of the key moments, that i realized the light bulb went on and that this guy had a chance, late march, we did a town hall in plymouth. At the end of it, i realized i was looking at this incredibly politically ideologically , diverse crowd. I saw trump voters who were wearing it on their chest. Maga. I saw clinton voters. I saw people like me who had been bernie supporters in 2016. I saw gary johnson people and jill stein people. I saw, i am never going to vote again people. He was turning on a more diverse Ideological Coalition than i had seen in my 20 years of political activism in New Hampshire democratic politics. After the event was over, i went to one gentleman who had the classic red with white lettering, make America Great again tshirt. And i said, sir, you have just sat through an hour and a half of a young Asian American man who is trying to give every citizen 18 and older 1000 a month for the rest of their life. Have you attended the correct meeting . And his answer was a lightbulb moment. It was, hell, yeah, i am attending the right meeting. Because it turns out, at that point, after 2. 5 years of the trump administration, he realized donald trump was the wrong answer to the right question. Andrew yang was the right answer to the right question. Allf you are at intellectually curious, you are probably thinking what i thought at that moment what the heck is , the right question . And here it is. It is a question that not enough american politicians are asking. Precious few of the other Democratic Candidates are asking, and it is this. How come at a time when gdp market, high, stock record high, unemployment record inflation, record low, how can it be . We have been told our entire econ 101 class, this is dogma when these things are the , case, you should be feeling unprecedented levels of Economic Prosperity. Personal economic security. You should feel like your kids are destined for bigger and Better Things than you could have imagined. But this is also true. If you were born in the 1940s, good for you, 93 of people born there could say their children were going to have a higher standard of living than they did. If you were born in 1990s, that number is now under 50 . All these things i just told you he goes, how can all these numbers to be what they are and yet the vast majority of americans feel like they are walking on an economic tightrope, with no safety net underneath . That is the reality of America Today. And if we, i say we as a lifelong democrat, if we as a Democratic Party believe the only way, or the best way, we will beat donald trump in 2020 is to simply be the party of not donald trump, we run the risk of doing in 2020 what we did in 2016, and then acting very surprised the day after that we got the same result from the same process. The only way we win is if we present ourselves as not against things, or simply against things. I am turned on to andrew yang and his candidacy because more than any candidate i have seen in a generation, he speaks about what he is for. He defines america by what it can be rather than the worst of what we have been. That is what excites people. Excites people that may have voted for donald trump in 2016. The percentage that are open for change, they desperately want maximum change, but they now realize the change they asked for was not exactly the change they wanted. And the way we will defeat donald trump, who is an outsider who does not have his act together, will not be with an insider. It will be with an outsider who has his act together. And ladies and gentlemen, that person is andrew yang. [applause] how many of you have seen andrew speak in person before . This is not a trick question. How many of you have not seen andrew speak before . Yeah, that is what i like. And when they think andrew finds that out, it is what he is going to like. Two months ago, much less than nine months ago, when we would do events, there were two things that are true. There were a heck of a lot fewer people at the events then we get now. The second thing is, it would be 80 diehard yang gang and 20 new people. Find, and most of these audiences it is virtually a flip, 70 to 80 of people who have not seen him before, but be election. N our how many of you entering the room today as certifiably yang gang . How many of you might classify yourself, and we are all friends today, as yang curious . Yeah. Give yourself a hand for being yang curious. [applause] by the way i am becoming yang , curious as to when they are going to arrive. That is kind of a joke. Kind of. What we find in the yang gang is that we have another term for yang curious. It is soontobe yang gang. Somebody shout out for me, if you are yang curious, what has drawn you here today that might not have drawn you here in month or two ago . Our granddaughter likes him. Our granddaughter likes them. May i ask how old is your , granddaughter . Almost 18. When does she turn 18 . [laughter] hold on, folks. I need to hear this answer. March. That is great for the general. Thate as much about that, andrew yang is going to be our nominee, folks. The number of people i do not mean to offend, and i have been bald for a long time. At one point, this was a choice. Not anymore. It was, until a few months ago, the reality was that most of the folks showing up in a room like this were pretty young and quite male. And while i am a relatively young and quite male person, we had to diversify in order to grow our coalition. And what i see here are folks who are now saying, it is my kids, grandkids, they are the ones who got turned on to take a look at andrew yang. And indeed, the way that we win the election is by pulling in people that may be were not too excited, or in some peoples case, and 2016 they were not eligible to vote in 2016. Get them excited for a generation. When you get young people excited to vote, you typically keep them engaged for the rest of their lives. It is one of the reasons why andrew supports lowering the voting age to 16 years old. The data is very clear on this. When you get people involved in the voting process in their teens or 20s, you probably have them for a lifetime. And there are other elements of Civic Engagement that follow suit. All these are important and are critically locking for a sizable portion of our population. So thank your granddaughter. Where does she live . The spoting you on more than you planned. [laughter] [inaudible] pennsylvania is a swing state. I like that. I like that. Please, staff . [laughter] tell me why you are yang curious and why you are here today . [inaudible] humanity first. How many of you have heard that as part of you andrew yang . It is one of my favorite things about andrew. We need as a country to separate the concept of economic value from human value. Andrews oldest son, who is seven years old, christopher, is on the autism spectrum and was diagnosed about three years ago. You will probably hear more about that shortly. One of the questions, as i become more exposed to the conversation about autism through this campaign, is when we see a child with special needs, we often do not think very much about the fact that that will one day be an adult with special needs. And when that conversation ensues, i am amazed at how often to some extent the question immediately goes to this. So, how is your child when he or theys an adult, how are going to make a living . What kind of work will they do . And there is an implication in there that their , human value and economic value are the same. If they do not imagine them as being able to deliver economic value in a traditional way, quantifiable way, the way we have defined for generations, that somehow they have less value as a human. And that is what happens when you spend all your time thinking about gdp as a measure of success at the same time that we have seen life expectancies go down three years in a row, that we have seen suicide rates, things that measure whether we are getting it right as a society. And one of the things that got me into andrew early, he talked these real ways, and it is one of the mantras of his of humanity. Something else curiosity. ,guess what . Hold it to yourself save it for , the q a. Talk to the press after. Somebody else . I will quickly introduce, yes, somebody i have got to know over the last several days. Awesome. The best evidence that i have found that andrew yang is really smart. His wife, evelyn yang, she will be out here in a second. Firstgeneration american just , like andrew, just like me. Columbia university graduate. Accomplished in the private sector. Helping to raise their two young sons. Sophisticated. Way,ngaged and by the nobody can run for major office, take it from this guy who ran for governor, unless your family is supportive because it is an , allin effort. Evelyn is remarkably supportive, windsticated, and is the behind this campaign and so many ways. She is going to introduce the next president of the United States, which means i get to introduce the next first lady of the United States. Ladies and gentlemen, give a nice warm bedford, New Hampshire, welcome to evelyn yang. [applause] hello, everyone. Thank you, steve. Thank you for that introduction. Thank you so much for coming out today. I have only recently started joining andrew on the trail. As steve mentioned, we have two young boys at home who keep me pretty busy. But i love being here when i can. I think i am useful to andrew because after 15 years of being , together, i am his best character witness. Andrew is a wonderful husband, father, and friend. He is a man of the highest integrity. He does not lie. I have never known him to do a single unscrupulous thing, but he is far from a stick in the mud. As you can tell, he is fun and he is flexible, but he is also principled and has exceptional judgment when it comes to filtering out the things that really matter. He is generous in heart and soul and action. By the way, i took all of that from our wedding vows. I am just kidding our wedding , vows were way more generic. [laughter] but all that aside, this is why i think my husband would make a great president. It is so upsetting how divided our nation has become. Its why we cannot get anything done. Andrews Campaign Message is humanity first, that includes all of us. He says all the time, it is not left, it is not right, it is forward. His intention was loud and clear from the start. Play partisan to politics. He has never dreamed to be president , or even in politics. His goal is to solve problems and improve the lives of all americans. Now how will he accomplish this . , i can tell you about his track record, for one, of being a nonprofit leader for most of the last decade, building coalitions in cities across our country, among a wide range of people, businesses, and local communities, to help solve the problems of job creation. For his accomplishments, obama named him a champion of change and made him a president ial ambassador of entrepreneurship. I have seen andrew in action over the years time and time again. Andrew is phenomenal at building bridges and uniting different people behind the common cause, at communicating what is at stake, at setting people up to succeed. His intellect and energy are unquestionable. But he has something else. A lot of people in politics are smart. But andrew has a very unique combination of characteristics. And to put my finger on it, i would call it authenticity, transparency and humor. His humor and humility are transformative. It enables all kinds of people to want to work with him and trust him. You just cant invent this stuff if it is not genuine. That is a promise andrew would bring to the white house people , before party, common sense before ideology, and the ability to work with everyone to get things done. While 15 years ago, i may hnot i may not have thought to myself, this man is going to be president , today the very same qualities that made me fall in love with him have me absolutely convinced that he is the perfect person to lead this country in the 21st century because the , stakes have never been higher. Americans know that things are not all right. Too many people are being left behind. Too Many American families are struggling to make ends meet. We have women who are financially dependent and stuck in abusive situations. We have children who are hungry and homeless in the United States of america, where we have so much wealth concentrated in just a few places. Be acceptable to any of us. Yet andrew is the only one addressing poverty in any meaningful way. We have the ability to eradicate poverty, and i believe we have a moral obligation to do so. Of course, 1000 a month cannot solve all our problems. We as a country have a lot of big, systemic changes to work on, and if you look into any of andrews 150 plus policy proposals, you know he fully intends to do that work. But the freedom dividend is a critical first step in the right direction. It will pave the road ahead and allow millions of americans to lift their heads up, look forward, plan, save for a rainy day and hope for a brighter future. That is why i so embrace this campaign, and my husbands work putting humanity first. What humanity first means to me is investing in people first. This will supercharge our families and supercharge our communities. As andrew puts it, it is thecak trickleup economy, from our people and our communities up. Is thislly bewilders me topdown approach that all of our politicians take. Yes, you need policies and laws and regulations. But they can take a long time to go into effect, and they dont always work as intended. It is common sense you need to take a bottomup approach as well. What about putting resources directly into peoples hands so they can make the best decision for themselves and for their families . Andrew is the only one talking about tackling the greatest issues we face as a country, and a peoplecentered way. It is why the more you hear from him, the more you want to hear from him. He makes too much sense. Realize this is , what we have been missing in politics. Now, the man u have been waiting for. Please join me in welcoming the next president of the United States, my husband andrew yang. [applause] mr. Yang hello, bedford. How are you . Good afternoon. Thank you so much. I love campaigning with evelyn because now people are finding out what i have known for quite some time, which is i am the luckiest guy in the whole country. Thank you, evelyn. [applause] sometimes people thank me for running and i say, thank her. Because, number one, she let me run, and she has been taking care of our boys and sacrificing more than anyone in our family. You have been a rock and i love you so much. [applause] i love campaigning here in New Hampshire for a number of reasons. I went to high school in this state. How many of you knew that . Yeah, i graduated from Phillips Exeter academy in 1992. They had me back to speak about seven months ago and i told them , i had not been back since graduation because i did not have a good time. [laughter] and then the student body erupted in you in applause no, that islike, oh not what i was expecting. I went to Brown University and then i went to law school and became an unhappy lawyer for five months and i started a business. How many of you have started a business . If your if you have your hand up, then you know a couple of things. It is much harder than anyone lets on, and when someone asks you how is going, what do you say . Great. It is going great. My business went great until it failed. My parents told people i was still a lawyer. [laughter] because they are asian, among other things. [laughter] but i had been bitten by the bug and i became the head of an education company, that was bought by a Bigger Company in 2009. In 2009, we were in the midst of the financial crisis. How many of you were here in New Hampshire in 2009 . And how was that period here in your part of the state . Not great, rough. There was a 14yearold boy at hampshire,nt in new and he said, it was a tough time. And i said, how would you know this . You were four years old at the time. Said, my family had to sell our house so i remember. , so many communities were devastated. I thought i had some insight as to why our economy tanked. And so many of the whiz kids id gone to exeter and brown with had gone to wall street and came up with mortgagebacked securities and derivatives. And i thought, what a disaster that is. I cannot believe that is what we have had people doing for these years. And then i thought of the opposite of that. And this is where i give credit to evelyn. How many of you work in nonprofits . How many of you volunteer for a nonprofit . You should probably pretend on that second one. It is like are you a good , person . Well yes, i am, andrew. ,so i said, evelyn, how about i leave to start a nonprofit that would help train entrepreneurs to create businesses and jobs in places like detroit, cleveland, baltimore, birmingham, pittsburgh and other cities that could use a boost . So those of you who raised her hand that you work at nonprofits how the heck do you start a , nonprofit . Here is how i started venture for america. I put up some seed money and i then started calling rich friends with this question do , you love america . The smart among them said, what does it mean if i say yes . I said, at least 10,000. Said, i loveople america for 10,000. Ofwe started with a couple hundred thousand dollars, and grew into the millions and helped create several thousand jobs. I ran this nonprofit that i started for seven years. Because of our success, we were honored multiple times from the obama administration. So i got to bring evelyn to meet the president , and my inlaws were very excited about me that week. [laughter] so much of this country, and unfortunately i had this feeling that things were heading in the wrong direction in many of these places. How many of you grew up in new england or upstate new york, like me . How about the midwest . The south . West coast, or mountain west, or southwest . I had never been to missouri or alabama or louisiana or ohio even, before running venture for america. Ulf i was staggered by the g between regions, where if you flew between st. Louis and San Francisco or michigan in manhattan, you felt like you were crossing dimensions and decades and ways of life, and not just a few time zones. And i was still stunned when donald trump won in 2016 and became our president. I am sure you remember that evening well. How did you react to his election . Crowd]ing i heard crying. Drinking. [laughter] evelyn and i reacted similarly. To me this was a giant red flag, where tens of millions of our fellow americans decided to take about on the narcissist reality tv star. That is not business as usual. , stop whate, whoa you are doing and evaluate. All of us, even if we reacted with tears or alcohol, have family members and friends and neighbors that celebrated his victory. If you were to turn on cable news that night or any night since then, why would you think that donald one and is our president today . Won and isald trumpwo our president today . Misinformation . Racism. Funding. Russia. Hillary clinton. Mr. Yang Hillary Clinton. Disenfranchisement. E apprentice the apprentice. Emails. Wow. Its the russians. Always trying to mess up my events. All of these elements mixed together, this is why he is our president. Hillary clinton, emails, russia, racism, fbi, electoral college. But i am a numbers guy, bedford, looking for an explanation, and i found it. We eliminated 4 Million Manufacturing jobs over the last number of months. And where were those jobs primarily based . Michigan, ohio, pennsylvania, wisconsin, missouri, iowa, all the swing states that donald trump needed to win and did win. And if you doubt this, there is a Straight Line between the adoption of industrial innovation in a voting district and the movement of trump in that district. It is one of the strongest correlations you can find anywhere in the voter data. And you may have experienced this or know people who have experienced this directly because it happened here in new , hampshire earlier. You lost over 12,000 manufacturing jobs, primarily in the northern part of the state. I have been to those towns. And after the plant or mill closed, the shopping district closed, then people started to leave and the school shrank, and that community has never recovered. I have seen the same thing play out in missouri and michigan and ohio and western pennsylvania. And unfortunately what happened , to those 4 Million Manufacturing jobs is now shifting to other parts of the economy. How many of you have noticed plants closing around where you live here in New Hampshire . And why are those Stores Closing . Indiscernible crowd voices] amazon, thats right. Amazon is sucking up 20 billion of business every single year, causing 30 of our stores in malls to close. The most common job in the economy is retail clerk. The average retail clerk is a 39yearold woman making between eight dollars and 10 an hour. What is her next job when the store closes . How much did amazon pay in taxes last year . Zero. 20 billion out, 30 of stores in malls close, the most common job starts to disappear, and we get zero. Now we all see the selfserve , kiosks in the restaurants on the grocery stores, but it is even more pervasive than what we see every day. When you Call Customer Service line of a big company and you the software, i am sure you do the exact same thing i do. Pound 0, 0, 0, yell human, representative over and over again. We all do that, like, please let this Company Still employ a human, after i pounded this button often enough. But in two or three short years, the software can sound like this. Hey, andrew, how is it going . What can i do for you . It will be fast, seamless, peppy, efficient. What is going what is that going to meet for the 2. 5 million americans working at call centers now and making 13 per hour . You are Truck Drivers here in New Hampshire . It is the most common job in the United States. There are 3. 5 million Truck Drivers in the United States. My friends in california are working on robot trucks that can drive themselves. A robot truck just transported 20 tons of butter from california to pennsylvania without human intervention three weeks ago. Why 20 tons of butter . I dont know. But if you google robot butter truck, the story will pop up. And then there will be a giant stack of pancakes. [laughter] they say that 98 of the way there, after they get that last 2 , what does that mean for the 3. 5 million Truck Drivers or the , 7 million plus americans who work at truck stops, hotels, and drivers that rely on Truck Drivers getting a meal every day . The trucks are blood cells carrying cargo but they also , carry economic vitality. Almost 10 of the jobs in nebraska support trucking and freight. What will happen to those jobs in nebraska when the robot truck does not need to stop in nebraska anymore . We are in the midst of the greatest Economic Transformation in the history of our country, what experts are calling the Fourth Industrial Revolution. One is the last time you heard the politician say Fourth Industrial Revolution . Just now, three seconds ago. And i am barely a politician. So these are the numbers that i was finding in 2017. Trump wins, i am like, my gosh, stop the press. He is being celebrated as this entrepreneur, jobcreating guy, and i have this sinking feeling that the water washing out the bottom of the bathtub is about to give us donald trump. And now it is about to take off, ai and robot trucks and 5g are about to start hitting in earnest. So i go to our leaders in d. C. And i say, we are scapegoating immigrants for problems immigrants have next to nothing to deal with, it is the Fourth Industrial Revolution revolution that is about to speed up, and what are we going to do to help our people manage this transition . What do you think the folks in d. C. Said to me . Learn to code. I know that is a joke but i think another candidate said that the other day. At another event in New Hampshire, someone, when i asked that question, they made the scooby doo noise. [scooby doo impression] [laughter] so the three responses i got from our leaders in d. C. Were number one, we cannot talk about this. That was actually a direct quote from several people. Oh, d. C. Number two, we should study this further. Number three, we must educate and retrain allamericans for the jobs of the future. How many have heard that from someone . I said yeah, that actually sounds pretty responsible, but i am the numbers guy, so i went looking at the studies. Do you want to guess how governmentfunded retraining programs were for the manufacturing jobs that were lost in the midwest . It is low. 0 to 15 success rates. Generally, a total failure. Half of the workers that lost their jobs in the Manufacturing Sector in the midwest never worked again. Of that group, have filed for disability. You then saw surges in drug overdoses and suicides in those communities, to the point where americas Life Expectancy has declined for the last three years in a row. Do you know the last time americas Life Expectancy the client three years in a row . World war ii was a good guess, Great Depression is a good guess. It is the spanish flu of 1918, a Global Pandemic that killed millions. You have to go 100 years to find a time in American History where in ahas happened, because developed country your Life Expectancy almost never declines. It ordinarily keeps going up and up because you are getting richer and healthier. But in the u. S. , it has gone down and down and down again. So i pointed this out to the folks in d. C. And they said, we will get better at the retraining programs. And then one person said something that brought me here to you all today. He said, andrew you are in the , wrong town. No one here in d. C. Will do anything about this because fundamentally, this is a town of followers, not leaders, and the only thing we will do anything about it is that you create a wave and other parts of the country, and bring that wave crashing down on our heads. I said, challenge accepted. I will be back with a wave in two years. [applause] now bedford, you may not know this, but you are the wave. You are the most powerful people in our country today. I know it does not feel like it. You are just living your lives, doing your thing, showing up to your local Intermediate School on a saturday afternoon because you thought the weather was going to be worse than it is. [laughter] but i have done the math. Do you know how many californians each of you is worth as far as voting power . 1000 californians each. So if you look around this room , i am going to give a trumpian estimate. [laughter] there are 1000 people in this room. [laughter] easily. Biggest room in history. [applause] there are about 200 of you in this room. Is 200 New Hampshire voters the equivalent of five football stadiums of californians. That is the power you have to change the course of history in this country. That is why it is a pleasure and privilege to campaign here, because of this power that you all have. You have the power to do something other americans only dream of. Other americans look and see our pipes thatas clogged are full of cash, and they look and say there is nothing that they can do to flush the pipes clean. And they are right, there is next to nothing they can do. Only you can do it. Only you can flush the pipes. The question is, how do we flush the pipes . How do we get the government to respond to us again instead of being overrun by the corporate interests that have completely had the run of the place for years now . I am here today, fifth in the polls and rising, to be the democratic nominee. Our campaign raised 16. 5 quarter inthe last , increments of only 35 each. So my fans are almost as cheap as bernies, that there are a lot of them. [laughter] i do not owe anyone anything except the American People to do the right thing. [applause] so how do we rewrite the rules of the 21st century economy to work for us, to work for our kids, to work for our families . How many of you are parents, like me and evelyn . If you are a parent, at some point over the last couple of years you have had this sinking , feeling that we are leaving our kids a future that is less stable, less secure, less prosperous than the lives we have led. And you may think about that as Climate Change, which is real. But it is also the fact that their economic prospects are getting dimmer by the day. If you were born in the 1940s, in the United States of america there was a 93 chance you would be better off than your parents. Thatis the American Dream so many of us aspire to, that brought my family here, evelyns family here. If you were born in the 1990s, you are down to a 5050 shot and it is declining fast. That is why we feel the way we do, because it is real. This is one of the main reasons why trump became our president , that people did not feel excited about their own futures and their childrens futures. So the question is, how do we turn that around and make it so that our kids are being set up for success, instead of constant Financial Insecurity loaded up with student loan debt, and scraping by . If you are here today, you heard there is a man running for president who wants to give everybody 1000 a month. Razor hand if you heard or saw that at some point. Keep your hand up if you saw a tv ad. That is important, because we spent a lot of money on those ads. The first time you heard this 1000 a month thing, i know you thought, this is a gimmick, too good to be true, will never happen. But this is not my idea and it is not a new idea. Thomas payne was for this he called it the citizens dividend for all americans. Martin luther king, whose son i met with in atlanta, was fighting for this when he was assassinated in 1968, guaranteed minimum income for all americans. And his son said this was the vision he wanted to see through. It was so mainstream in the 1960s that 1000 economists, including milton friedman, one of the fathers achy of economic theory, endorsed this plan. It was passed by the u. S. House of representatives twice in 1971 under Richard Nixon and came this close to being law. The family assistance plan would have set an income floor for all american families. And then 11 years later, one state passed a dividend where every person in the state gets 1000 to 2000 a year, no questions asked. What state is that . How do they pay for it . And what is the oil of the 21st century . Data technology, ai, self driving cars and trucks. A new study said our data is now worth more than oil. How many of you saw that study . How many of you got your data check in the mail last month . If our data is worth billions of dollars a year, who is getting all the money . Amazon, facebook, google, apple, and the trilliondollar Tech Companies paying zero or near zero taxes back into our economy. Do you see how it is working, bedford . We are getting depleted. We are getting sucked dry. And the biggest winners are laughing all the way to the bank. Our leaders in d. C. Just look at it and say, i guess that is the way it is. Whose fault is it that amazon is paying zero in taxes . Is it their fault . Whose fault is that . It is our fault. It is our governments fault. We have to be pretty far behind the curve to say, amazon pays less in taxes than everyone here in this room today. Like thats fine. , if your government is that backwards, you have to say, it is our governments fault. Because amazons job is to pay as little taxes as possible. Governments job to make sure that that does not happen. That is what you will have to use your power for in just four and a half short weeks to , rewrite the rules so that we get our fair share of every amazon sale, every google search, every facebook ad, every robot truck mile and then we put , it into your hands. Build this trickle up economy because after this money goes , into your hands and your community, how are you going to spend it . Wisely. Mr. Yang wisely, i like that. Where will the money go . How much of it will stay in New Hampshire . Most of it. Not all of it. You might get your own netflix password. [laughter] but most of it would go to car repairs you have been putting off, and daycare expenses and Little League signups and local Democratic Party dues perhaps, religious organizations. It would make a stronger, make us stronger, healthier, mentally healthier, it would make our communities function much better immediately. This is a vision that you can make real. That is why it is so much fun being here, where we can make all of this happen for our families and our kids. We are being told all the time that things are going great in our country. Corporate profits, record highs, gdp, record highs, unemployment, looks great. But then many of us are looking around and saying, i am not sure if things really are going great in my community, in my state. We have record high corporate profits right now. Do you know what is also at a record high in the United States of America Today . Stress, anxiety, Financial Insecurity, depression, mental illness, suicides drug , overdoses, all at record highs. Do you know what are at record lows . Starting a business if you are married,son, getting having kids, does this sound like a Prosperous Society . If you have corporate profits going up in Life Expectancy going down, which do you listen to . We know which one d. C. Is listening to. D. C. Cannot even see people on Life Expectancy. It is just staring at the money. Washington, d. C. , is the richest city in our country. Think about that. What do they produce . [laughter] whatever they are producing, business is good. Donald trump wanted to drain the swamp, and that actually got a lot of support among americans. Want to drain the swamp. I want to distribute the swamp. What do i mean by that . Why are you employing hundreds of thousands of people in the most expensive metro area in the country . Why wouldnt you move some of those jobs to New Hampshire, ohio, michigan, wisconsin or another place . You would save billions of dollars, you would add jobs in a place that would be thrilled about it, and i would argue that the decisions the regulators make would be better because they would live someplace normal instead of in a bubble. , so these are the things we can do to get our economy lined up with our communities. I know how our economic measures dont tell the whole story, in part because of my family and evelyn. Evelyn is home with our two boys, one of whom is autistic, working hard every day. How much is her work included in our economic measurements . Zero. And it is not just evelyn and stayathome parents around the country, it is caregivers and people taking care of ailing loved ones, it is volunteers and , it ists, it is coaches 98 of artists, it is local journalists more and more. We have put 2000 local newspapers out of business. Do you know what doesnt function as well if you dont have local news . Mark received. Because people cant tell what is going on in their community. It is quite hard to vote on who should be doing what and government. These are things we claim to value most highly in our lives, family, community, democracy, and we are allowing them to get zeroed out one by one. Because everything today revolves around the almighty dollar, and we have been confused into thinking economic value when human value are the same thing. What you have to say to the rest of the country loud and clear is ast we have intrinsic value, people, as americans and as humans ourselves. We have to get the machines working for us again instead of having us all work for the machine, this giants, capital efficiency machine that we build, that now threatens to. Ear our communities apart so if gdp and corporate profits are going up and things arent going so well in our communities, how should we be measuring our economic progress . I know, this is interesting, right . But we can actually do this. Gdp is something we made up almost 100 years ago, and even the inventor said at the time, this is a terrible measurement of national wellbeing, and we should never use it as that. Here we are, riding it off a cliff 200 years later. So how should we measure our economic progress in a way that will actually tell us how we are doing . Depths of despair mr. Yang depths of despair, quality of Life Expectancy, homeownership, poverty levels, proportion of americans who are going to retire in quality circumstances. We have Many Americans working until the day they die. Homelessness rates, childhood success rates. If we look at these indicators, we would see that we are in the midst of a Mental Health crisis, we are in the midst of a wellness recession, of a Civic Engagement depression. If we looked at the actual measurements of our health, we would see that things are not going that well. As your president , it will be my pleasure to go to the bureau of Economic Analysis and say, gdp, 100 years old. Kind of out of date. Increasingly useless. And modernize it to include this american scorecard of Mental Health, clean air and clean water, childhood success rates, affordability, and engagement. These are the true measurements of the 21st century, and i will present them to you at the state of the union each year. I will be the first president to use a powerpoint deck in the state of the union. [applause] and then we will send it to all of your emails no, no. [laughter] so this is how we build a human economy that works for us. We dont have unlimited time. Time is not working in our favor. If we do not make this move now, what happens over the next four years . More stores close, the ai gets smarter, the selfdriving trucks start hitting the highways. We have to turn the tide right now. Donald trump is our president today because he had a very simple message. He said he was going to make America Great again. What did Hillary Clinton say in response . America is already great. Remember that . It has been along three years, bedford, i know. A long threen years, bedford, i know. But it is about to end. [applause] that response didnt go over well because the problems are real. We have to acknowledge the depth and severity of these problems, real solutionsd that will move the country forward. What were donald Trump Solutions . Build a wall, turn the clock back, bring the old jobs back. We have to accelerate our economy and society to rise to the real challenges of the 21st century. In the way welve think about ourselves and our work and our value. I am the ideal candidate for this job because the opposite of , donald trump is an asian man who likes math. Thank you very much. [applause] you may not know this bedford, because but math is an acronym. And what does it stand for . Make america think harder that , is right. That is your job. In under a month, it is your job to move this country not left, not right, but forward. Thank you all. Lets make history together. [cheers and applause] thank you, bedford. Lets turn it all around and win. All right. Now i get to my favorite part, get to take some questions. Do we have a mic around there somewhere . Good job, mic runner. You will have to pick them for me sorry about that. [laughs] thank you for taking my question. I have heard both you and cory booker opposing a wealth tax. I have not studied how it has failed in other countries, but i have a sense on how it would in this one for five reasons. The first is, it costs a lot to administer, and so it is an inefficient way to tax. And second, it is hard to determine how much value something has unless it is just money. A third is it encourages people , to spend instead of investing and building a business. Taxes the same again, andand over then you have two tax. The fifth, [inaudible] unless the wealth tax is shaped to inflation, it erodes the have and theople cap gets lower and there is no money to tax. My question is a twopart question. [laughter] the first is do you have any , more reasons why a wealth tax would fail . And the second is, what kind of you decide to have that would not tax poor people more than rich people . [cheers and applause] mr. Yang wow, what a great question. That was awesome and adorable. That person is the subject of some highquality parenting, i would suggest. [applause] so we are in the midst of this winner take all economy, and the question is, how do we balance it and turn it around . Bernie and elizabeth champion a wealth tax, which i understand and even agree with in spirit. But i am a facts and figures guy, and when they rolled out a wealth tax in germany, france, sweden, denmark, and half a dozen other countries, it didnt work, and they repealed it in all of those places. So to me, if we do not learn from the experience of other developed countries who tried something, do we think the wealthy in america are somehow more excited about participating in a wealth tax than the wealthy in germany, sweden, france, and denmark . The argument you have to make is, it is going to work better here, and why . Because our wealthy people are somehow different than their wealthy people . So how do you turn that around and balance the economy in a meaningful way . The way i would do it is through this value added tax that falls most heavily on the Tech Companies like amazon, facebook, google and the gang, and the example i use is jeff bezos. So jeff bezos is worth 115 billion postdivorce. [laughter] no judgment. Whatever. So thats a lot of money. If you ratchet up the income tax , lets say to 75 , how much of his 115 billion do we get . Next to nothing, because he is not dumb enough to pay himself 10 billion a year and then let us get 7. 5 billion. He is going to pay himself enough to satisfy his lifestyle. So the wealth tax would not be ideal. What i am proposing is we have a transactional tax on his trillion dollar tech company, amazon, and you take a toll of what is coming in, which is the equivalent of hundreds of millions of dollars to jeff. When he takes that money and and then buys rocket ships to , mars which he does, you can look it up you can take a toll on that as well. Essentially, you take tolls on the highend transactions that are fueling many of these Tech Companies. If you did this, you would generate 800 billion plus in new revenue, almost immediately, with a big up arrow attached to it. Because a lot of the value that is going to get generated let me throw this out there lets say we have self driving trucks. How much tax revenue will we see from that . None. Because the beneficiary will be trilliondollar Tech Companies that doesnt pay any taxes. So we have to get in there and say, hey, we get a toll of every robot truck mile so that we can harvest some of the 168 billion a year in cost savings from robot trucks and get it into our , hands. Right now, our Corporate Tax highly s highly, gamable, and the companies are too smart. So if you look around the world and you see other developed countries have figured out that this value added tax, this toll tax is almost impossible for companies to game their way out of. We get that money and it makes us stronger. I love the question so much, and but thank you for the research. That is awesome. [applause] hi. Climate change and pollution are already harming their health and the future Economic Prosperity of millions, even some in New Hampshire but also in california, puerto rico and around the globe. So i understand that you are committed to investing billions for communities harmed by hurricanes and natural disasters, and billions for building seawalls and helping people if they need to move from communities impacted by climate my question is more, what about black, brown, and indigenous communities already harmed by corporate greed and environmental racism . Disproportionately impacted by these issues . [applause] first, how many of you all are concerned about Climate Change. Yeah, i am too. We all really should be. One of the things i think we should be realistic about is, its impossible to talk about preventing Climate Change at this point. We are already on the curve. The last four years have been the four warmest years in history. When i was in portsmouth, there were businesses that were flooding more regularly and shrinking dramatically because the water was warm. Now we have to do everything in our power to play catchup, to move towards lower Carbon Emissions and make our communities stronger and more resilient. The first thing we should do is put a tax on Carbon Emissions to try and make it to where if you are a polluter, you pay a price. You zero out the subsidies to fossil fuel companies and take that money and move it towards wind, solar, and other renewable forms of energy. The toughest part here is that the United States of america is only 15 of global emissions, so even if we did everything right within our own borders, the earth will likely continue to warm. China is going to africa and saying hey, we have a coal burning power plant for you. What do you think . The african government thinks what . Sure. What do we want to do to change that . We have to be at the table with the african government and say hey, we have solar panels. We will subsidize these heavily for you and make it a nobrainer. That is what we have to do if we want to get the it the other 85 under control. Your questions about the victims of a degrading climate and natural disasters of higher frequency and power and we know suffers most in a natural disaster. Poor people. Poor people and people of color overlap very, very heavily in the United States. One of the ways we can make this more just is by putting 1000 a month in the hands of every adult, which would then allow everyone to have a better chance at having a car, seeking shelter, being able to protect themselves and their families when a disaster occurs. But we cannot leave families on their own or communities on their own, and this is something do you remember the last debate where they asked arturo candidate, should we pay to relocate americans . Four candidates, should we pay to relocate americans . We have already relocated a town in louisiana. If there is a group that wants to move, we should be able to help subsidize it. It is much more costefficient for us to try and protect our communities and it is to rebuild our communities. If you can build seawalls and elevated structures and in some cases fire breaks to manage forests better, we need to actually ramp up our investment in mitigating and protecting our community from many of these disasters. That is where i get frustrated with the lets prevent Climate Change. It is already here. We have to start making our families and communities stronger and more mobile. [applause] only two more . Ok. Do you want to read it so you dont get nervous . If you become president , what will you do to help people with alzheimers . Thank you for the question. Alzheimers is one of the major sources of not just death, but also dysfunction and pain. I have met so Many American families that have struggled with it, and i am happy to say that we can make significant progress on alzheimers. I have talked to researchers who are cautiously optimistic that with some of the breakthroughs that we are now seeing, we can beat alzheimers over the next number of years. Under my administration, we would invest billions, tens of billions of dollars to advance Alzheimers Research because when someone gets alzheimers, it is not just that person, it is the family. That stretches on for years and years. We have to do more to help our families that are struggling with alzheimers. Thank you very much for the question. [applause] just that you know, my brother is a Clinical Psychology professor, so i feel very strongly about this. I talked to researchers in the field, and they do things that can make Real Progress in the next number of years. Thank you for being here. Thank you for taking my climate question earlier. Some thing also want to talk about, it is the great crisis of our time. I wonder if u. S. President would instruct your Justice Department you as president would instruct your Justice Department to legally challenge oil and Gas Companies and make them pay for the damage they are doing to our communities, because right now it is taxpayers footing the bill. Thank you. [applause] it is one big reason why we need to put a price on pollution or a price on emissions. So this is one of the great problems in american life, that if you are a company and make money and the cost is borne by the public, you dont feel it. So what we have to do is build in the costs of emissions into the fossil fuel companies, the oil and Gas Companies. If you had to put a price tag on Climate Change, what is that going to cost us . Trillions and trillions of dollars. Someone said everything, which might be right. Thousands and thousands of american lives. So how do you actually get all of that cost on to the bottom lines of the companies that are helping speed of Climate Change . That is what putting a price on carbon is all about erie it in some cases there might even be higher thresholds of damages, and it is not just with the oil and Gas Companies. It is with the Drug Companies that initiated the Opioid Epidemic that has ravaged so many communities. It is with the gun manufacturers all of these companies have made money in ways that have had some kind of social cost and they dont have to actually bear that cost themselves. So that is something we have to do our best to change. This is part of what modernizing the economy is about. If you have an industry that is incurring some largescale social cost, we have to make sure that you are sharing that cost and not just leaving it to us the taxpayers. I love where you are going with this and i agree that the oil and Gas Companies need to bear a much higher part of what they are causing in terms of emissions and Climate Change. [applause] all right. All right. First of all, bedford, give it up one more time for andrew yang. [cheers and applause] there you go. We have a limited time. This is a small state until you get in your car. We are off to hampton and dover it four tomorrow we do more times and the whole thing. So we only have 10 minutes now, so lets see we can do some gathering here. We will be hardpressed to get everybody in a photo, but lets do something quick, informal, be nice to each other. Get some photos with the next president , we have some interviews after that, and go to our staff here if you can volunteer, phone call, door knock, anything you can. Thank you, bedford. We will see you soon. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] thank you all for being here. Im very impressed. Thank you. [laughter] thank you, thank you. [inaudible conversations] 1, 2, 3. Its very nice to meet you. Thank you for being here. That was the most incredible question i have ever heard. I want to get in on this. [laughter] thank you very much. And thank you to your parents, they are very smart. [inaudible conversations] its a pleasure meeting you. 1, 2, 3. We appreciate it. [inaudible conversations] thank you so much. [inaudible conversations] thank you. Thank you. Everybody, all right. [inaudible conversations] thank you. [inaudible] 1, 2, 3. Thank you, man. I appreciate it. [inaudible] we have to go, im sorry. I wanted to shake your hand. Im very appreciative of what you are doing. Now more than ever. [inaudible conversations] welcome. [inaudible] and i am happy you are here. Thank you. [inaudible conversations] what is your Winning Strategy and how do you motivate people to get them to come out . How do you deliver the request to help them get excited . If you look at the candidates in the field, not many of them are actually paving the way forward. The message of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, [inaudible] [inaudible conversations] thank you for coming today, ok . Thank you. [inaudible] [inaudible conversations] [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2020] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] [inaudible conversations] the house will be in order. For 40 years, cspan has been providing america with unfiltered coverage of the white house, the supreme court, and Public Policy events from washington, d. C. And around the country so you can make up your own mind. 1979, cspanble in is brought to you by your cable or local satellite provider. Cspan, your unfiltered view of government. Coming up this morning, washington journal looks at u. S. Relations with iran. Ilan securityg, and middle east security programs discusses current tensions with iran. Michael rubin, American Enterprise and to resident scholar
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