Andrew Yang Was Right About AI. Politics Still Isn't Listening

Remember the Yang Gang? Those bros in MATH baseball caps who rallied behind Andrew Yang's unlikely presidential run in 2019? Yang campaigned on the "freedom dividend"—$1,000 a month for every American. Critics dismissed him as a futuristic alarmist when he warned about mass job displacement from AI and automation.

That "alarmist" message is now mainstream reality. A recent MIT study found that nearly 12 percent of American labor market tasks—representing $1.2 trillion in wages—could be performed by AI today. A Senate committee warns that America could lose nearly 100 million jobs to AI and automation within the next decade.

The Prophet Who Came Too Early

Yang was a political outsider with zero electoral experience, yet his UBI platform and bro-friendly delivery earned him a spot in presidential debates. He suspended his campaign on New Hampshire primary night, later joking that people dismissed him as "the magical Asian man from the future" who "wants to give everyone money."

But winning wasn't his goal, Yang told me in December. "My design was to raise the alarm around AI and mainstream universal basic income." People stop him "on the street, every day" to say: "You were right on AI, and we need universal basic income."

His new book title says it all: Hey Yang, Where's My Thousand Bucks? The alternative title, he quipped, was "Hey, Am I Racist, or Are You Andrew Yang?"

Yang sees himself differently from other politicians—as someone who recognizes problems and proposes solutions. The trouble was that neither the man nor the idea were politically viable. As a politician, he couldn't capture enough voters' trust. Other candidates offered familiar stump speeches; UBI was solving a problem voters didn't yet know they had.

Politics Without Solutions

"The disease in American politics that is pushing us all into the mud is that you do not actually have to solve the problem," Yang explained. Politicians play "you lose, I lose," taking turns screwing up and returning to power. Meanwhile, "you have AI coming to eat tens of millions of jobs. And you don't have a meaningful conversation about it."

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Since 2019, more than 72 local governments in 26 states have experimented with basic income programs. Recipients experienced increased health and financial stability, reduced stress, and no decrease in employment. Some participants actually worked more during pilots.

But UBI remains politically unpopular. Robert Greenstein from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities notes that Americans strongly prefer in-kind benefits like SNAP over cash assistance. UBI hasn't reached "first base politically" because "we have one party that doesn't want to raise taxes on anybody" and "the other party doesn't want to raise taxes on anybody with incomes below $400,000 a year."

Yang sees Democrats as particularly frustrating. When proposing to tax AI companies and distribute money to displaced workers, "a lot of Democrats would be like, 'No, no, no. It would be much better if we put that money to schools.'" He describes Democrats as institutionalists, sinking money into programs without questioning effectiveness.

From Politics to Business

Faced with government's glacial pace, Yang pivoted to entrepreneurship. His cellular service company, Noble Mobile, launched in September after raising over $10 million. Using T-Mobile's network, it offers European-level pricing and gives customers up to $20 monthly credits for using less data.

"The average American is sad for two reasons," Yang said. "They're not able to save enough money monthly, and they're spending too much time staring at what Hasan Minhaj calls 'their rectangle of sadness.'"

The company encourages customers to limit doomscrolling, pushing average phone usage down 17 percent by the second month. Last year, Noble threw "no-phones parties" nationwide with dance floors, cocktails, and patches of lawn marked "touch grass."

Yang describes the company as an outgrowth of his political work: "For years, my career focus has been building a human-centered economy to improve Americans' lives." But he found that "government action" happens "too slowly."

The Innovator's Dilemma

Yang gets told "every day" that he "was right," but he isn't smug about it. AI will still destroy jobs. He has hopes for his Forward Party, noting that young people lack older generations' party loyalty. When asked about running again in 2028, he's coy, saying he gets that question "every day" too.

The end of his book reads like a future campaign manifesto, outlining an America where poverty is eliminated, workweeks are shorter, and technology serves humanity: "In a world of numbers and data and money, can our humanity save us? I still hope so."