SIO203: Jamie and the Yang Gang

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:30 Thomas: Hello and welcome back to Serious Inquiries Only, episode 200 and, oh shoot, two, I think. Anyway, guess who's back, it's Jamie. How you doing, Jamie? I'm doing great, except I don't have enough troubleshooting technical audio issues is the only complaint, so if Yeah, we didn't spend enough time on all that. No, that's okay, we got to figure it out, we're here, we I think sound good, should be all set. I'm so excited to have you back. There's just no end to the things that I would love to talk to you about. We had to kind of narrow it down and pick, which is really hard because there's like seven things at least. But today, I think we're here to talk about the Yang Gang.

0:00:40 Jamie: I'm all right. How are you Thomas? I'll do my best.

0:01:12 Jamie: We are Yanging it today. Yeah.

0:01:14 Thomas: All right. You know, and I can kind of use, I had a question I can kind of us as a launching off point and give a shout out to a listener, John here, who says, I value your take on things. You make me think more amongst other things about my white, cis, straight, upper middle-class privilege than anyone else, but I'd love for you to do a podcast about Andrew Yang. Here's a recent podcast I listened to with the link.

He makes so much sense about what is wrong with our society, but I just want to know your thoughts. Am I crazy or is Andrew Yang the person that makes the most sense in this crowded field? And they also add that they will phone bank and donate to literally any human that's running against Trump. So that just to make clear that they're not going to be like a Yang, only Yang and no one else kind of thing. A Yang or or yest.

Now, I don't know what the Yang version of that will be. There will be one though. There will be, 'cause there's so many, and that's what I want to talk about. So that's a good question as a launching off point. But before we exactly address that, I just want to ask you, all right, why do you, okay. What's going on with Andrew Yang? Just the whole thing. 'Cause he's got this like alt-right appeal, which I've done some research into as well.

And I want to talk about, but also, like, what is your view of why he's taken off? And I guess your view on Andrew Yang as a candidate and all that, whatever you want to squeeze into that. What do you think?

0:02:36 Jamie: So I have to be completely honest. I was mostly ignoring Andrew Yang in the beginning of this, for a lot of different reasons. In part because there's 437 candidates running for the Democratic nomination, and also in part because he doesn't have a lot of, you know, political experience that he's bringing to these debates.

0:02:53 Thomas: Right.

0:03:02 Thomas: Yeah, zero, actually.

0:03:03 Jamie: Yeah, yeah, literally zero. And so when you had suggested talking about Yang, I had to really set aside some time to look into this because up until that moment, I had just kind of sort of really taken him seriously as though this was sort of a fad and a fringe and it would go away. And I was kind of surprised to see just how vast his internet support was and was kind Of surprised at the intersection of internet support that he has because because like you said, he's sort of intersecting with that intellectual dark web crowd, who tends not to really get excited for progressive politics. And I'm going to plug Grant Maxwell here, who I think had a great blog post on the APA blog back in February of 2018, talking about Jordan Peterson in particular, and trying to get at why he's so attractive to especially young, white, upwardly mobile men.

And what he pointed to is that we seem to be in this transitionary period in our culture, where the old status quo hasn't quite yet passed away, and we haven't quite yet figured out our new paradigm. And so in between, we have people who have historically at least been the beneficiaries of the established hierarchy, who are not really sure where to turn now that it looks like it might be changing. And I think that's similar to what's happening here with Andrew Yang.

I think he is, at least in some respects, correctly getting right what's going wrong. And I think people are eager for somebody to give them answers and tell them like, okay, well, what do we do next? Because as things stand right now, it looks like the status quo isn't going to be sustainable for much longer.

0:03:30 Thomas: Yeah,

0:05:02 Jamie: And that has up until this point sort of been anticipating, benefiting from that expectation.

0:05:10 Thomas: Idea. OK, here's what confuses me. I'm not sure how to launch this into a question, but I'm, I'm assuming you saw him on Tucker Carlson. Yeah. This is why I don't think you can, I don't think anyone really, and I certainly can't, um, shake off that part of Andrew Yang because like, yes, he talks about automation and, you know, he, and he has a lot of, like, if I go on his website and I look at all his billion policies, uh, there's, there's some stuff I like, you know, like there's, there are a lot listed here and obviously it's would be insane to go on any of these policy websites and try to evaluate like the particulars of every single one of them because there's like a hundred policies here but just looking at like the broad strokes of what he wants, you know, lower the voting age to 16, uh, you know, legalize marijuana, there's a lot of lib, you know, there's a lot of leftist causes, I think there's a lot of liberal stuff. And so it's weird that like he has this crossover appeal. Do you have a, what do you think about that? Hmm?

0:05:18 Jamie: Yeah, I'm not I'm not actually sure that it is so surprising that he has this crossover appeal.

0:06:19 Jamie: You know, at the end of the day, I think there's a lot of similarity between what those on the left and those on the right are saying, right? Their targets may Be different, but at the end of the day, both the left and the right sort of have this sense that things just aren't working the way that they should be, right? The system's rigged, no matter how hard you work or how fairly you play by the rules, sometimes like it just doesn't work out for you. And there's some sense that that isn't fair. And so I think once you start talking about universal income, for example, right, every single person that you talk to is going to think that they're doing the right thing and they're playing by the rules and they've put their time in and that they're deserving of some kind of investment in them because they're good people doing what they should be. And I think that's going to cut across all socioeconomic political lines.

0:06:30 Thomas: Yeah.

0:07:14 Thomas: So here's here's my theory, and feel free to tell me what you think. I think that this whole Andrew Yang thing, especially if you watch the Tucker Carlson appearance, which I did, it's it's so freaking weird, um,

0:07:25 Jamie: Yeah, I'm still mad at you for that.

0:07:27 Thomas: That it, I think it goes to show just how little the right-wing Fox News ethos is about anything, anything resembling policy. It is 100% about culture. It's 100% about the culture wars. Because if you take, just Google any random, you know, Tucker Carlson, Ilhan Omar, Tucker Carlson AOC video, and I'm sure all that you will see is socialism, socialism, nationalism, Venezuela, Venezuela, socialism evil, whatever. And then all of a sudden Andrew Yang comes on and you get this like obsequious, you know, fawning Tucker Carlson. Seriously, go watch it. It's four minutes. It says it's, you obviously it's Tucker Carlson.

So it sucks, but like, it's almost worth watching because you get, this guy was like, I, I just agree with you so much. And everything you're saying is just so great. And it's like, what happened to all the socialism stuff? You got the one, the guy who's literally running on universal basic income. And all of a sudden, it's not Venezuela. All of a sudden, and it's just, he's got all the right answers.

And, and furthermore, fundamentally, Andrew Yang's thesis contradicts Trumpism because Trumpism is the, you know, the immigrants are taking all the jobs and that's, that's who's to blame. And then Yang comes on, he's like, well, actually automation is taking all these jobs in swing states. And Tucker Carlson's like, yep, you're right. Wow. Wow, you're the best. And so I think it's all it is, is the sort of like rhetorical positioning that Yang has taken, like the, you know what I mean?

Where it's just like, as long as you don't virtue signal in or whatever, that you support social justice, then all of a sudden the like the glasses, the Venezuela communism glasses are off and people on the right are like, like, oh, this guy's making a lot of sense.

0:07:41 Jamie: Oh yeah, yeah, So I'm going to push back on you a little bit here because I'm not sure that Andrew Yang having a different solution necessarily makes him the opposite of Trumpism. I think that there is a bit of an overlap in the Venn diagrams between what Andrew Yang is preaching and what Donald Trump is preaching, which is that for a lot of Americans, there is a sense of economic insecurity that is deeply unsettling. And, you know, as it relates to Tucker Carlson and the right and socialism, you are absolutely right. And nothing made that more clear than the debates over the Affordable Care Act. Let's remind everybody that that was largely the brainchild of the Heritage Foundation, which was endorsed by Newt Gingrich back when Hillary Clinton was advocating Hillary care.

0:09:23 Thomas: Sure.

0:10:15 Jamie: It was the basis of what Mitt Romney had done in Massachusetts that Republicans were all for when it was advocated for by Republicans. It wasn't until there was a black man in the White House saying, hey, I'm willing to meet you guys here and do a compromise, that it got rebranded and sold as socialism run amok. I

0:10:34 Thomas: I agree. I think what I mean about, I think you picked up on a commonality between Yang and Trump. I don't mean that everything Yang says is opposite to Trump. And I also think that you'd be hard pressed to find a candidate who isn't trying to talk about these economic concerns because it's everywhere. Like we all know that like we all know things aren't working for a lot of people, but what I mean is the central Trumpian Fox News thesis is in where the blame is.

You know, the blame that that the the right and Trump, uh, do is, is to tell you that it's immigrants who are taking your job, like that's the reason you don't have anything, that'sthe reason you're struggling, it's the immigrants, let's build a wall and stop it. And Yang, um, is actually, I think, correct in diagnosing that it's not, it's not immigrants, it's, it's automation is actually a huge reason why we're losing all of these jobs.

And to just see Tucker Carlson be so two-faced about all these issues is just, it's so weird, and it makes me, it's hard, because it makes me not like Andrew Yang, but maybe it's not his fault. What do you think, is it, is do you think he's purposely signaling to the kind of alt-right at all, or is it all accidental, right?

0:11:45 Jamie: Don't want to speak to Andrew Yang's mental states, and I certainly don't wanna attribute to him nefarious motivations that I can't corroborate. I think we're going to be talking about Tucker Carlson and the alt-right. It's really important to be clear that fascism is having a renaissance now. And in order for fascism to flourish, you fundamentally need to have some conception of a hierarchy. And so the reason that immigrants are important to Donald Trump's rhetoric is not because they're actually causally responsible for the economic insecurity of everyday average Americans, because one, they're not. The reason that immigrants are so important as a rhetorical strategy is because it allows Donald Trump and people who support his agenda to identify who gets to count as us and who gets to count as not them. And so immigrants for Donald Trump serve as an othering. And that's something that's really important to keep in mind, as I think, at least, as we discuss these issues.

0:12:15 Thomas: I Agree. And also, but I, so I guess my question is this, why why, why do you think possibly that Tucker Carlson wouldn't have, you know, when, when Andrew Yang says in this, in this, in the show, he says, you know, we've got, this is responsible for all these jobs lost in these swing states. Why wouldn't Tucker Carlson defend what has been his entire reason for being lately, which is, wait a minute, it's not automation, it's the immigrants, they're taking our jobs. Like, why do you think he instantly kind of abandoned that key, you know, like claim of Trumpism and of Fox News-ism? I'm just confused. I don't get it. Yeah,

0:13:30 Jamie: I mean, I can't say for certain, but I would imagine it has at least a little bit to do with the fact that he does not hold intellectual consistency in high esteem. I don't think he's particularly interested in what the right answer is. I don't think any of the discussions that he's engaged in are done from the point of view of curiousness or wanting to get at the right answer, because these are really important questions that, as a country, we need to come together and answer because they're existential in nature. I think he is, you know, a not so good person who enjoys making money off of the insecurities of vulnerable people. So

0:13:40 Thomas: Right. Oh, See, I totally agree. But that's actually kind of why I'm asking the question. I think there is a reason that he's doing this. And it's not, obviously, it's not intellectual honesty or anything revolving around like trying to find the right answer or anything. There seems to be a reason. And I guess that's maybe kind of what I'm getting at with why people on the right are propping Andrew Yang up. I wonder if it's sort of like, do they want a Democratic candidate civil war? Are they trying to like, you know, who knows if it is that kind of thing, or if it is just that when they see somebody like Yang who seems to rhetorically position himself as against quote unquote identity politics that they just go nuts for that. It seems like it is one of those two things to me, but those are just guesses.

0:14:58 Jamie: I think that's definitely part of it. I think Andrew Yang is able to articulate things that are being said by other Democrats without raising the defensiveness of, you know, middle America. Andrew Yang isn't getting up there talking about America's historical relationship with slavery, for example. Andrew Young isn't talking about the need to discuss reparations or the wage gap between men and women, the way that he's framing these issues isn't leading to anyone at the outset, at least, feeling defensive about where they are. And I think that's one thing that's very different from Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren or Kamala Harris and to a lesser extent, Joe Biden and the other 8,000 people running for president.

0:15:11 Thomas: Yeah, Yeah, I totally agree, those are great points, those are, I, and I think it is part of those, the, the ways that he isn't, you know, what's the opposite, I guess, he's, he's not vice signaling, but he's just like not sending certain signals, which is just for some reason is so important to these like intellectual dark web people, you know, like it is, is absolutely vital to them that like someone not say the magic words that makes them think they're doing identity politics. It's really weird.

It seems like, to me, it seems kind of anti-intellectual to be so worried about like the specific rhetorical way that somebody like Yang or whatever is making a case for something and not just look at like the bottom line, I don't know, almost utilitarian, like effect of people's policy, because they seem to be so scared. Like, uh, you know, Peter Boghossian, right? Or Yeah, yeah, exactly. He is, he's going to marry Andrew Yang. He's in love with him. It's incredible. It's like the stuff he's saying about him. Here, I'll read a tweet. He said, so Andrew Yang tweeted, I don't expect people to agree with me on everything. That would be odd. My main hope is that people trust that I'm trying to solve problems and I'm open to different approaches, particularly if the data drives in a particular direction. Changing one's mind is not a bad thing.

And Peter Boghossian quote tweets that and says, I'm 53 years old and I've never heard a politician say anything like this, yet it is exactly the attitude we need to get us out of the myriad of disasters we're facing. I sincerely believe Andrew Yang is a once in a lifetime candidate, he is the real deal. It's like, what, yeah.

0:16:39 Jamie: Yeah.

0:17:22 Jamie: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's charming and sweet. And I hope Yang accepts his marriage proposal, because that would be a much more interesting news cycle than Donald Trump declaring himself the king of the Jews.

0:17:38 Jamie: But again, I think this gets to the fact of how we frame what our political solutions are. And Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders and Kamala Harris and most of the Democratic candidates are talking about this structurally. They're situating our problems in the context of our historical relationships to one another and how we got here. And that can be really uncomfortable to hear, particularly when you yourself are not doing very well. So if you're working 50, 60 hours a week and you can't really afford both your insurance premiums and the copay to see the doctor and to get your children into college, and you're listening to politicians do what sounds like sort of preaching or talk down to you about how hard it is for other people, unfortunately, you're not going to have a lot of emotional resources left to care, right? Right?

Because you yourself feel so stressed out. And we can set aside the normative judgment about whether that's good or bad. But when Andrew Yang is talking about the difficulties that the current economy is presenting for regular Americans, he's talking to those individual Americans. And he's not trying to suggest as though they're benefiting from some historical injustice that they now need to make right about.

And I think his ability to talk to people to say, hey, we can make this better without tying it to our historical patterns and moving away from the way that that can induce guilt can be really enticing to people who are kind of aware that there's something wrong but don't quite feel like they're responsible for it and would like their own situation fixed first, please.

0:18:07 Thomas: Well, I, I think you're right on with that, and now I'm curious, like, what is your view of that, like, it almost sounds like from what you're saying that it may be a necessity to communicate in this whitewashed way that doesn't implicate white America in order to get elected. Is That, yeah,

0:19:41 Jamie: So I definitely don't want to endorse that. I think white America needs to have its, its reckoning, I think that's true. I think if we're going to do that, though, we need to be of the things that we need to be able to do is at the same time, we're saying, hey, there are all of these other people that are suffering in ways that are far, far beyond what you're suffering, we have to somehow at the same time be able to validate the very real suffering of people who aren't suffering as much. And that's a really difficult thing to do and to find the right balance, because America does need to do a sort of triage, and America does needs to pay attention first to the people who are hurting the most. And that's going to mean that some of these middle-of-the-road white men aren't first. And that's going to be new territory and uncomfortable territory for a lot of them. And so it's going be a difficult road for any politician to figure out quite exactly how to do that.

0:20:49 Thomas: You know, I'm gonna say something that maybe some people disagree with me on, but after Trump was elected and I missed Obama a lot, I went back and I read Michelle Obama's book and I heard both of Obama's books just to hear what it was like to have a president who could speak English and think and stuff.

And one thing that actually struck me was I actually think Obama spoke in the way you're talking about a lot, um, I think he actually spoke in a way that made white people feel okay because, and I think back to the speech of like, "There is no white America, there is no black America, it's just America, United States of America." And it's like, there were a lot, like Ta-Nehisi Coates, for example, I'm pretty sure was, was one of the people who was criticizing him, saying like, no, there actually is a black America in white America, like that isn't how things are, you know, like it's, and I wonder if, if that was a key to how quote unquote electable Obama was and how he was able to get so much support, uh, in a way that maybe now, um, I don't know if someone can reproduce, and I don't, if that, that we should be reproducing that.

Like for, for my part, I personally want us to be able to confront the fact that like the median wealth of a black family is like $0 and the median wealth of a white family is like $130,000, whatever it is, you know, like ridiculous discrepancies in between, you know, how people are doing in this country. So I don't know, I mean, do you feel free to push back if you disagree with me, but that's what kind of what I think.

0:22:19 Jamie: This is complicated, and I want to be very careful here as a white woman talking about these issues. I think one of the reasons white liberals really liked Barack Obama is that he was able to talk about these things in ways that made white people comfortable. I'm not sure that white people being comfortable is, at the end of the day, the most important metric. In fact, I'm pretty confident that it's not. Um, and I do think for all of the oratory skills that Obama had, that in some ways, you know, his inability or his desire to make white America comfortable, right, when talking about these things, came at the expense of changing the ecosystem in the meaningful ways we needed to avoid this particular political moment that we're in where we have Donald Trump as president. But

0:22:49 Thomas: Yeah, Yeah, yeah, I agree. And I want to also echo, like, don't take my word for it as a white dude. I really love Ta-Nehisi Coates' writing on this. I think We Were Eight Years in Power in particular is where I got a lot of that from. So go to the source, that's definitely better than listening to me. But it is an interesting similarity.

I wonder, it's always this battle between like, what do we need to say, or what do candidates need to say to, like, get elected in what I think is largely a kind of a racist country, or at least an absolutely, like, a white identity centric country, versus what is actually the right thing, like the morally right thing to be, be saying, and like, how much do we need to evaluate, you know, the trade-offs between those things, because at the end of the day, if we don't control anything, we can't make any change, and furthermore, it's worse than that, we actually lose the Supreme Court, and, uh, gerrymandering becomes okay, and we, like, all these other systemic problems come on top of all that.

So, like, it's a very scary thing in my mind, I'm actually terrified of my favorite candidate Elizabeth Warren getting nominated and then losing because of similar structural sexist, and also just the, I don't know, the way our country is. Like, I'm so scared of that happening, I really am. And I don't what the answer is.

0:24:49 Jamie: I wish I knew the answer.

0:24:52 Thomas: Is it Biden? Is Joe Biden the answer?

0:24:54 Jamie: I'm pretty confident it is not Joe Biden.

0:24:58 Thomas: But his wife said he sucks, but we should just vote anyway. Because like, right? Did you see that?

0:25:03 Jamie: Yeah, she did say I think that is God awful advice. And, you know, listen, I have in the past been in love with people I definitely shouldn't have been. And so I can appreciate the way that love can be blinding. And while I admire her devotion to her husband, it really seems obvious to me that that has prevented her from getting a clear sense of the dynamics of this race and what we should do.

0:25:34 Thomas: I never would have thought like even Joe Biden's wife would be in on the electability argument, you know, like wouldn't you have thought that even like the Bidens at least would be like, no, I'm just the best candidate, I got the best policies, but even then we're like, nah, I mean we suck, but like, come on, just vote for us anyway. Yeah.

0:25:50 Jamie: And you know, it's such a hollow argument because, you know, polls are Funny to read and can be manipulated as well as anything else. And you have to be able to dive into the crosstabs and see who was asked and how they organized their data, right? But even in these polls where Biden is in the lead, still the majority of poll respondents choose not Joe Biden. And so it's just weird to me that we're sort of parroting this argument that he's what's most electable when the majority of Democratic voters would like somebody who is not Joe Biden.

0:25:54 Thomas: Yeah.

0:26:26 Thomas: But I mean, that's going to be true mathematically of any candidate right now, so doesn't that same argument go against every candidate, like

0:26:34 Jamie: So, I mean, in a strict sense, yes.

0:26:39 Jamie: But when you're saying that you're the front runner, right, I feel like that's a different dynamic. Can you really say that you'RE the clear front runner when 40% of Democratic voters would prefer, you know, one of two other candidates who are very much to the left of you policy-wise?

0:26:47 Thomas: He's you're saying like, right? I I see what you're doing, so you're like, you're saying he's talking like he's like a 60 percent candidate when really right now he's like a what, 30 if that below

0:27:05 Jamie: Well, he's below 30. I just saw that Elizabeth Warren is leading in Iowa.

0:27:08 Thomas: 30 now. Yeah, yeah.

0:27:13 Jamie: Sanders is leading in Colorado, I believe. And so it just seems really weird to me, right? Setting aside the fact that there are literally 24 people in the Democratic nomination right now, it just seems weird to talk about electability as though it's any sort of guidance after 2016, in the first place, and particularly when you're talking about a candidate who at best is getting under a third of support in a field with 20 other people.

0:27:19 Thomas: Yeah.

0:27:43 Thomas: It's a weird gambit, I don't, I don't fully get it, like, I, it's like something you would say if you just were so sure you were going to win, you didn't care or something. I don't know. Or like, or maybe it's more cynical in that he's playing on our fears that like, oh yeah, we nominated a woman last time and like, that didn't work. And maybe we just need a white man to like, just guarantee that we're safe from Trump, you know? And like, is that the worst strategy tactically? I don't know. Um, for, for Biden, I'm saying like, is it the worst strategy for him to play on those fears? I think it's like not okay and I kind of hate it, but like, he might not be wrong to try to campaign in that way. I don't know.

0:28:23 Jamie: So that would be a good podcast, I think, to do. Like, is Biden wrong, right? Is this a good campaign strategy? I personally disagree for, you know, a number of different reasons. I think morally it's just a bad strategy to do. I think it perpetuates the very racism that animates much of Trump's support when we say that, oh, you know, the world is just bonkers and what we really need is a white dude. As though the totality of all of the American presidents, with the exception of one, is not sufficient evidence to suggest that, you don't maybe actually white men are not enough to do what we need to do. So that's that suspect to me.

0:28:28 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah.

0:29:07 Thomas: No, I, but I also wonder if like Joe Biden, does he really have another choice? Because like, he, that's what he is, like really, like that's literally what he has to offer, so unless, I guess, I guess his other option would have been to adopt this insanely progressive policy and just pretend that that's who he is, but I don't, but anyway, we should, you get back to Yang, I want to ask you, we can't do a Yang podcast and not talk about UBI in more detail, so I'm curious what you think of maybe his flagship policy, the Freedom Dividend, uh

0:29:36 Jamie: So I do appreciate the chuckle I get any time that I say freedom dividend. Once I appreciate

0:29:37 Thomas: Yeah. I Well, and we got to give credit to Yang, like he acknowledges that like it's a universal basic income and he's joked about like he calls it the freedom dividend because it tests better and like, like, I think he's in on that joke personally, but just to be fair.

0:29:55 Jamie: This, I think Democrats have been kind of behind the eight ball on this. I think it was Frank Lutz in the Republican Party who was just sort of their master of messaging and would poll test different phrases. And I think he's who came up with death panels, that that just like, you know, really impacted people viscerally. And so, okay, I'll give Andrew Yang coming up with the poll-tested clever phrasing. That's great. But when you dig into the particulars of these policies, they don't really seem like they're going to do anything that's going to address the underlying economic insecurity that he is suggesting is at root of all of our current problems.

And so just real quick, I want to throw out some numbers. He says that this freedom dividend is going to be $1,000 a month for everybody in America, no strings attached. But that no strings attached needs an asterisk. Because if you are on any sort of welfare program in the United States currently, if you need nutritional assistance, if if you need Medicaid, if you need social security disability insurance, there most certainly are strings attached. And you will have to choose between the benefits you are already receiving and this freedom dividend. Which is interesting because there's no mean testing for this. So if you make a million dollars a year, you

0:30:06 Thomas: Yeah. Right. Yeah. Yeah.

0:31:22 Jamie: Still get the freedom dividend, but if you're living below the poverty line because you are disabled, then you don't get the freedom dividend. And I just find this really at odds with the reality that is leading to this current moment in our political crises.

0:31:41 Thomas: Yeah. That does seem pretty regressive. The fact that, you know, like if I like, so for me, for example, who's doing okay, I just get my thousand dollars and I'm great. That's just, I get it. It's fine. Don't even have to worry about it. But the people who like need it most, they're the ones who have to be like, oh, doing a bunch of math, you known, like figuring out how much of these benefits that I currently get is it worth like replacing it with this. That doesn't seem fair to me.

0:32:05 Jamie: No, it absolutely doesn't, right? And so I actually had to sit down and I needed Google to do the math because none of my degrees are in math. And so we have 11 million millionaires in the United States. To give all of those millionaires $1,000 a month equals $132 billion a year. That's more than we spend on higher education. It's more than we spent on nutritional assistance to poor people. And it's more than we spend feeding into the very upside down nature of our priorities that is leading to this crisis rather than addressing them.

0:32:11 Thomas: And I Yeah, I agree. What do you make of just UBI in general? I agree with you that specifically that component of his UBI does bother me a lot. And it also, it kind of reminds me of, this is, it might be an unfair comparison, but I cannot help but think about Charles Murray when I look at this Andrew Yang Policy. Yeah, he's for universal basic income. He has been for a long time. And in fact, it may even be the same amount, um, I'm pretty sure he's talked about a thousand dollars a month for a long time. Uh, could that part, I'm less sure on. But he is pro, uh, UBI, Charles Murray is.

And despite being obviously uh right winger, but part of him being pro UBI, I think, is because he gets to gut all the other, like, policies, you know, if he were in control of stuff. He gets to get rid of all everything else, all the other welfare, everything.

And uh, that way it's almost a way to be like, okay, now there's no excuse for people to not pull themselves up by their bootstraps, kind of thing, in a weird, it's, I don't know, there's something about it that does bother me, but, um, I know that's a tenuous thing, but like, Charles freaking Murray is for the same policy.

0:33:13 Jamie: The race scientist?

0:34:07 Jamie: So generally, I think UBI is a good idea. I think it moves us in the right direction. I think at the very least, Andrew Yang gets something very right when he says that automation is going to lead to an existential crisis. I don't think he gets the solutions right. So when we talk about automation leading to an existential crisis, right, we're not really unpacking what that means and its implications for how humans live their lives. If automation is an existential crisis for human lives, it's because our sense of who we are and how we relate to each other and how we consider ourselves deserving of things like housing and food and even the love of our relationships very often comes down to what we do for a living.

And so that's one of the things that makes automation very scary is because our jobs give us our sense of identity. They give us our sense of purpose. They give us our ability to take care of our family, which gives us our sense of meaning and belonging in the world. And so I think he's right when he says automation will lead to an existential crisis.

I think what he misses, though, is how to create meaning for human lives where we don't actually need people to be engaged in all of this sort of monotonous work. It's very unlikely, I think, to happen in our lifetime, but maybe our children's and definitely our grandchildren's, most of the work and especially the sort of drudgery work is not going to be needed to be done by humans.

And we need to figure out how to separate that from how people go about getting their housing or their food or their romantic partners. If we we no longer need people to sweep the streets or check out our groceries at the grocery store, at least for me personally, I don't think that that means the people who historically used to do those jobs should be homeless or starving. And I think that's the piece Yang is missing. I

0:34:24 Thomas: Yeah.

0:36:27 Thomas: Well, I think that's a lot to put on him though. I mean, like if he's, if he is pro UBI and that's part of the solution, but then he, he isn't going full on, like figure out how humans will value their lives. I think it's tough to like knock him on that more than other candidates, do mean, yeah.

0:36:46 Jamie: I mean, yes and no. None of the candidates are going to be able to answer, you know, the great existential questions of our lives, right? Like, what gives us meaning? Why are we here? Why is there something instead of nothing? Although any candidate who does absolutely has my vote. So, yes, there's that part of it. The other question, though, is no. You know, if you're going to be saying things when you're interviewing for your run for presidency that we are facing an existential crisis, I think you should have an understanding of what that means. And I thinkyou should have some way of offering an alternative to lead us through that.

0:36:55 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, I give him credit for his UBI policy and for a lot of his policies. I really do. So my problem with this. And I'm actually going to, I think I have to issue maybe a minor correction.

I just noticed that on his website, he has a fight for equal pay policy where he's talking about the gender pay gap and it says women are often under compensated because their work is not properly valued by employers who believe that they will accept less than their worth, etc., etc., so yet he has the whole policy on that, and I think you had mentioned that that maybe he didn't, or or whatever, but at the very least, he doesn't, I haven't heard him emphasize it, and for me, I think this just further gives lie to this entire thing where, like, if you dig into his policies and he, he actually is talking about stuff like equal pay and stuff like social justice-y stuff, he, you know, so much of his platform is actually quite progressive.

It's just that he doesn't use specific magic words when talking about it. So it doesn't, like, bring up white people's defenses or something. And to me, that just makes it all the more ridiculous that he's being taken so seriously. You know, like, yes, he's a smart guy with some good policy that I like. And, like, it wouldn't be the end of the world to me if he were president. You know, like, I, I'm sure he would be okay.

But this idea that because he's talking in a certain magical way that doesn't like sound like identity politics, all of a sudden he's taken way more seriously by a lot of people than, say, Elizabeth Warren or other people. That really bothers me personally.

0:39:01 Jamie: Well, so I'm not sure that he's actually taken more seriously than Elizabeth Warren or other people. I mean, at least his polling doesn't suggest that.

0:39:07 Thomas: Well, I meant by a certain segment of people. No, No, of course not. But I meant among, I guess, sorry, I'm gearing that toward a specific segment of people like the Boghossian types, you know, who think they're, and I have to deal with them a lot because that's a lot of that like atheist movement kind of rational bro person that I, you You know, so it's, it's a specific type of segment of our population that thinks identity politics has ruined the Democratic party and all this crap. And those are the people that take Yang way more seriously than they take someone like Elizabeth Warren, for example. No,

0:39:10 Jamie: Sure, I think that's correct. I'm worried, though, about how much we should base our electoral expectations on that narrow slice of the American electorate, particularly in light of the fact of, you know, our voting turnout numbers, right? So we have 40% of Americans who just don't even bother to come out to vote. And I think that has a lot to do with the fact that they don't feel like politicians are actually talking to them or that the politician in office isn't going to actually change how they live their lives.

And so for me, when I look at Andrew Yang's policies, I tend to think, well, for most people, this actually isn't gonna change most of them. If you are working on minimum wage and relying on SNAP benefits to meet your nutritional needs or, you know, Section 8 housing to subsidize your rent because you don't earn enough money to afford rent and food despite the fact that you're working full time, Andrew Yang is not going to speak to you.

Because in order to even access this UBI, you're going to have to give up the benefits that you need to keep your head above water as it is. And so it's weird to me to make, you know, Reddit and 4chan the sort of deciding factor of who should be taken seriously for president. Yeah,

0:39:56 Thomas: We're not. Yeah.

0:41:09 Thomas: Well, I a hundred percent agree with that. I think, I think that's, that's kind of what I'm responding to. Like the, the, the idea that those people like the 8chan, 4chan, whatever Reddit people are so into to this guy because he says these magic words, even though when you look at his policy, you know, there's a lot in there that's very similar to to other candidates, it, that part bothers me. But I also agree that the UBI is like deceptively, uh, maybe maybe a little bit regressive, as you've laid out. And also, I don't know if you want to talk about this, but the way that he would fund it with the VAT, the value-added tax. Is that something you want to talk about?

0:41:48 Jamie: So that tax as well is kind of regressive. That is mostly a consumption tax, and that's going to fall disproportionately on people, people who have to spend the majority of their income just to live, as opposed to higher earning incomes that receive income from things like dividends or capital gains, which are not subject to a VAT tax. And so this is just going to compound the already existing inequality that we have, right?

So take, for example, you have a double income couple, no kids, right, a DINK couple. And let's say they both make, you know, $100,000 a year. They have some stocks. They're each going to get $12,000, um, in this freedom dividend. And because they make enough money that they're able to invest some of it in stocks and maybe some investments, they're not going to hit, be hit with this VAT tax at every access point that they have income.

They're going to to do a lot better than a single mom with three kids who maybe needs to rely on SNAP benefits to meet their nutritional needs or needs to apply for Medicaid because she doesn't make enough through her job in order to get insurance, or her job doesn't offer insurance, or arbitrarily keeps

0:43:15 Jamie: Her hours low enough.

0:43:15 Thomas: Well, I agree. In fairness to Yang, in fairness to Yang he says he's pro-Medicare for all.

0:43:19 Jamie: He does.

0:43:20 Thomas: So like if we're going to evaluate his policy, we'd say that that part would at least be taken care of if he were to have his way.

0:43:26 Jamie: That's fair. That is right. But that doesn't speak to the other their benefits, right?

0:43:31 Thomas: The VAT tax. No, you're totally right.

0:43:32 Jamie: And so this

0:43:33 Thomas: Yeah. No it doesn't speak to the Vat tax part.

0:43:34 Jamie: Is just one of the ways the already existing inequalities in our system are going to be compounded and continue, which in my opinion, I think feeds to the very Trumpism that we're worried about right now.

And I think one of the problems is that Andrew Yang sort of has this idea when he talks about, you know, what is his company's name, Venture for America or something, where he thinks the solution to our problems is to seduce Ivy League grads to move to different parts of the United States than they otherwise would have, right? And to bring this talent elsewhere.

And it sort of sets up the problem as though what's really lacking in these places that have been hard hit economically is just an absence of people, people who have attended Harvard. And it ignores the systematic way they've been taken advantage of. You know, Flint isn't in trouble because not enough people who graduated from Flint High School got to go to Stanford or MIT or Yale. They are in trouble, because a Republican governor thought it was profitable to change their water source and poison them with lead. There's no amount of graduates from elite universities that's going to reverse the impact of lead poisoning. Sitting. And I think he's just missing that piece of it, that there's this structural element we have to deal with.

0:44:28 Thomas: Right.

0:45:03 Thomas: And that's the very thing that he kind of can't signal. Otherwise he might lose the his like core support, yeah.

0:45:08 Jamie: He's going to lose all his support. Right.

0:45:11 Thomas: That's interesting, and uh, I think what, another thing that's so frustrating about this VAT, and I'll try to, I guess I, it's like ATM machine or something, so it's, I just shouldn't say, I guess I shouldn't, VAT tax, it's VAT, or value-added tech, but uh, but anyway, um, is that he specifically in the pitch, because the pitch for it makes sense, like what he's saying about it, I totally agree with, which is we've covered automation. And furthermore, the, the fact that a lot of companies who are benefiting from this automation aren't currently paying taxes. You know, the Amazon example is always brought up. They have whatever, $12 billion of revenue, whatever the number you see everywhere, and they're not paying any taxes on it.

And he presents the value added tax as like a way he's going to finally get to that money to help, you know, fund this UBI. And the analysis I'm seeing is like, well, that actually doesn't work. It just gets past the consumer. So that's not even... So I guess it's frustrating that he went to all this trouble, but that's bad word. Didn't find like a tax plan that was actually going to get money from the right places.

Because I think that a lot of what, I want to give him credit, like I really think he's on to a lot, lot of things, um, you know, and I think that's why he's running as a Democrat, like he's got some policies that are progressive and I agree with, and I, I would agree with the project of funding some sort of UBI that is not like, you know, not taking away from current benefits, I don't think that's a good idea, but just adds on to, onto it, uh, and maybe is, is, is phased out with certain levels of income.

I don't know why that's always, that's, Charles Murray does the same thing where he said, like, it can't, it's just, no matter what you get, it doesn't matter how much money you make. And I'm not really sure why that's always the way we do it. I think your math with how many millionaires we have, like, it really does make me wonder, why are we giving, why would we want to give 11.8 millionaires $12,000 a year? I don't understand that.

It seems pretty simple to just phase it out like we do with so many other tax benefits. But anyway, I like that idea. I like the project of a UBI funded by taxing the hell out of these companies that are going, going to benefit from this technology, because one of the great injustices, I think, of all this, is when, as this, like, automation comes into play, the people who will benefit are the people, just happen to be in control of the companies that can benefit from it, and then once human labor is like, you know, in the far future, is like virtually worthless, and some of these lines of work, because machines just do it better, then they just profit on that forever just because they were in control, control of things, or held the patents, or had the companies, or whatever at the time.

And so I do think that we need to tax the hell out of those companies in order to prevent that really unjust kind of dystopic scenario and fund something like a UBI. But as you've laid out, I don't quite think this is it.

0:45:23 Jamie: Right, right.

0:48:02 Jamie: Sure. Well, I don't think he is going to be invited on Tucker Carlson, for example, if he's advocating taxing the rich.

0:48:11 Thomas: Guess not. He found a way to dance around that. I don't know. Because he does, does say, you know, value added, but maybe, is that, is, is Tucker in on that? Does he know that that, that doesn't hit rich people as much as maybe some people think? Anyway, um,

0:48:15 Jamie: Right?

0:48:24 Jamie: Well, what it does is it protects the stream of income where rich people make the most amount of money. Rich people are not making the money they're making from a paycheck that gets direct deposited into their bank account every week. They are in dividends. They are in real estate investments. And conveniently enough, there is nothing about Andrew Yang's funding mechanisms that touch any of that kind of wealth.

0:48:32 Thomas: Right yeah yeah He doesn't even have like a capital gains tax or anything, nothing. Yeah Well,

0:48:55 Jamie: Nothing, nothing. And so he doesn't go after that at all.

0:49:01 Thomas: That could be, could be crucial to his, uh, right wing support. That's interesting. I think we're, uh, we're low on time. I want to give you the opportunity to get to anything that you didn't get to. Um, is there anything you wanted to say on Yang, and then I have a final question I'm going to ask you, that, that, that might be fun, but go ahead if there's anything to squeeze in before that.

0:49:19 Jamie: No, so I mean, I guess my closing remarks would just be, I had seen a quote of his where he had said that there is no malice in replacing workers with automation. And I think this really gets to the key to a lot of his support. Because what he wants to do is sort of morally absolve everybody who could possibly be implicated in the structural inequalities that we, we have, hey, listen, it's not the CEO's fault, but it's just more efficient to have a robot than a human being bag groceries. And this way, we don't have to worry about what happens to the person who had to bag groceries and their family when they can no longer bring food home or afford a doctor. And so it enables him to sort of wiggle through these spaces without actually pointing to, to any one person being responsible. It's all sort of amorphous and systematic.

0:50:18 Thomas: Yeah, that's interesting. Well, who, I mean, who's to blame, though? Like, who would you point the finger? I mean, I think in the, unless we're going to, you know, uh, fundamentally overturn capitalism or something, there's always going to be a CEO who's gonna, who's going to make robots. Like, I don't, I guess I'm not mad at like the individual CEO more than I am at just the whole system is what I'm saying.

0:50:43 Jamie: Yeah, so I'm mad at both.

0:50:45 Thomas: Both. Okay.

0:50:46 Jamie: Yeah, yeah, I'm at it both.

0:50:46 Thomas: All right. Fair enough.

0:50:49 Jamie: You know, I think once you have,

0:50:49 Thomas: But at least again, to be fair to Yang, he does want to provide healthcare, you know, to everybody. And he does wanna help out that person with his UBI just doesn't really go far enough. I don't think maybe, but anyway.

0:51:00 Jamie: Right, I Think he's just, he's seeing it from the perspective of someone who has had really tremendous privilege in his access to institutions of higher learning and moneyed interests. And I think that prevents him from seeing how this impacts people who don't have those same advantages and what life is like when you don't get to go to fancy boarding schools and Ivy League colleges.

0:51:27 Thomas: All right, my final question to you is you get the, it's magic wand time. You get to either make Andrew Yang president or Joe Biden president, who do you choose?

0:51:37 Jamie: Oh, that's cruel. Yang.

0:51:42 Thomas: Me too, I would absolutely, I would definitely vote Yang. I'm glad, okay, well, we agree. I know it's cruel, but, uh, but I still think it's better to have, and, and, you know, just maybe a shout out to our Yang Gang listeners, like, I don't, I don't detest Yang or anything, I just, like, I do think he's, for my, my part, I'll just give my opinion. Like, I do think he's, he is playing into this right-wing support a little bit.

And I think, I think he does kind of know what he's doing with some of the signals he's sending. And, also think, you know, actually, maybe one last thought to get from you on this. And also, if you want to explain your vote, you can. But, like, in all these articles I was reading and doing some research on him, so many people were talking about, you know, he's going on Tucker Carlson, all that. And he has this white supremacist support, white nationalist support.

And so many of them were, were like, well, you know, he's not white nationalist because he's not white, and they just kind of dismissed the whole thing, the whole accusation, based on that. And, like, I just want to say that non-white people can do things that play into, like, white identity, just as, you know, just as that happens with any number of things, you know, like Diamond and Silk are helping Trump's white nationalism even though they're black.

And, like, Andy Noh is out there, he's Asian, he's out there helping the alt-right and helping. So I did think that was kind of dismissive of the idea that he could be doing something or saying things that would be playing into white nationalism, even though he's not white.

0:53:11 Jamie: Yeah, I think that's totally dismissive of both historical reality and just the way that we use language. I mean, for goodness sakes, even, even Cornel West referred to Obama as an Uncle Tom. The idea that one can't be supporting white supremacy because one isn't white is just not borne out by any familiarity with reality that I know of.

0:53:35 Thomas: All right. So do you want to elaborate on your vote or just leave it at Yang over Biden?

0:53:39 Jamie: So I happen to live In New Jersey, which I consider it to be just about a 100% chance that all of my electoral votes will go for a Democrat. Democrat, um, so I say this with a fair amount of privilege, and I recognize that, um, but I will absolutely, under no circumstance, ever cast a vote for Joe Biden because I absolutely refuse to forgive him for the way that he has carried water for the anti-abortion movement in this country.

0:53:41 Thomas: Oh, Wow. You know, what's funny is when you started that, I thought of, like, three different places you were going to go, and it wasn't even what you said. So to give an example of how many, any bad things that I, I am just not a Joe Biden fan, I thought you were going to talk about, uh, Anita Hill when you started that, which is another, another Thing

0:54:24 Jamie: Also irredeemable And Makes him awful in My mind, um But what he Has done to undermine abortion rights in this country, particularly in this moment in time as Planned Parenthood has to back out of Title 10 funding. I just will not forgive him for the work that he has done to legitimize this as a viewpoint. I think it puts women's lives in real danger. I think it's unscientific. I think itís immoral. And I will never, under any circumstance, cast a vote for Joe Biden because of it. This

0:54:25 Thomas: Yeah, right Yeah Yeah All Right, well, we'll leave it there. Uh, thank you so much, Jamie, for breaking down the Yang Gang, talking about Andrew Yang, it was a lot of fun. Um, we are going to, for patrons, answer a, an extra question here for a little, uh, extra segment on how to speak to your own and how to police your own when it comes to, I don't know, being a white person in this country, very interesting question I got over email. For everybody else, we'll see you next time, uh, but stick around if you're a patron for a little bonus time. All