"Andrew Yang's Insightful Book 'The War on Normal People': Examining Inequality in the 21st Century"

Bryan Kavanagh: It's proven to be the case in the past that jobs lost by technological advance have been replaced by jobs blossoming in new areas, but Andrew Yang has provided compelling evidence that this time it's different, as gig jobs rise and people struggle to make a living.

So, I'd give him full marks for the first half of the book, and it's impossible to dispute his call in the second half for a universal basic income in circumstances that are emerging around us. He exposes the canard that "It will destroy people's incentives to work" by showing the arguments to which opponents cling are quite contradictory: 1. Work is vital, the core of human experience, and 2. No one will work if they don't have to. They can't belong together.

However, Yang's UBI is a timorous effort, hardly a living wage universal income. He doesn't seem to understand the extent of unearned super-profits that banks, monopolies, and other rent-grabbers expropriate unto themselves would be vastly reduced with a significantly larger UBI. Nor, more importantly, does he seem to understand that not only would this replace the welfare state and abolish unemployment, but that businesses would only have to offer...

Australia on Jan 08, 2021

Peter Monien: Politics seems to repeat, every time it is just another flavor. And it doesn't get much better. No visions, just "keep on going". Andrew Yang is different. He is facing the big struggles of our time and has answers:

"A wave of automation and job loss is no longer a dystopian vision of the future—it’s well under way. The numbers have been telling a story for a while now that we have been ignoring. More and more people of prime working age have been dropping out of the workforce. There’s a growing mass of the permanently displaced. Automation is accelerating to a point where it will soon threaten our social fabric and way of life."

"It will happen in stages. First, there will be automated trucks with a human driver as a failsafe. The technology will allow truckers to go beyond their current 11 hours per day on the road as the driver will be able to rest and do other things during long stretches. This will increase the productivity of trucks and equipment, and likely reduce the wages of truckers as the pay scale changes. The next stage will have convoys of trucks with the lead truck having a driver and the others following automatically, which lowers wind...

Germany on Sep 07, 2019

Daniel James: Andrew Yang deeply understands the incredibly bleak future for normal people that our economy is driving us toward, and explains it in a clear and entertaining way. By the end of this book, you will have a hard time disagreeing with the bleak picture he paints for average people, or the solutions he proposes on how we can make that picture better. It's all based on factual data, and he's seen it all happen up close.

When I first heard about Andrew Yang, I dismissed him as a fringe candidate who was a little bit crazy. The more I learned about him and the more I listened to what he was saying, the more convinced I became that the vision of the future he was presenting was the most optimistic, logical, and inspiring of any I had heard.

I've never had someone running for office make me feel more optimistic about the future than Mr. Yang. I'm confident that even if he doesn't win in 2020, he will successfully make the 4th Industrial Revolution part of the mainstream conversation, and force us to think about how we can build an economy that actually works for normal people.

Canada on Aug 02, 2019

Garry McCallum: Canadians - This book is not just an American election issue. It is a Canadian one too. The debate over implementing a Canadian Universal Basic Income is stalled by Canadian politicians being afraid of drawing fire from American corporations launching legal attacks under our "Free Trade" agreements with the U.S. Government. We will never get a much needed Canadian UBI without something similar happening in the States.

Yang's rational arguments for replacing a confusing and ineffective social support system with a simplified and more effective UBI not only applies to Canada but we have little hope of electing politicians brave enough to go it alone without a UBI at least getting some political traction in the US.

This book is a good read prior to the Canadian election as it discusses a potential point of conflict during trade negotiations. Do we want to trade our social support system in trade negotiations dominated by the interests of giant American corporations? Should we assume that US politics will swing back from it's current social extremes or do we need to elect a government willing to take bold measures in Canada for the benefit of Canadians without...

Canada on Jul 28, 2019

S. Yoshida: Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs and Steel explained why some countries have more “cargo” than others. Andrew Yang’s book explains why some Americans have much more cargo than others and where this trend is taking us. As one of his proposed management strategies, he argues for a Universal Basic Income (UBI). I suppose the main issue is if a UBI will create value.

He wrote (p. 166) that UBI was proposed by former SEIU President Andy Stern in the book Raising the Floor. I’m currently a job steward with the SEIU Local 1000 and during one of our meetings with a union representative, I learned that about 40 clerical workers at a state agency risk losing their jobs to automation. A UBI might help them during this transition period in their lives.

I commute to work by bus and I see the homeless every morning, carrying their sleeping bags, performing warmup exercises in front of a reflective glass doorway, standing around despondently, etc. A bus driver told me that she was one paycheck away from being homeless herself. A UBI might be the cushion she needs to keep from becoming one of the people she drives by each morning.

After one of the many massive wildfires...

United States on Jun 06, 2019

getcaffeinatedstaycaffeinated: I'm not inclined to review things, so I'm not exaggerating when I say this book is so important to America right now that it's making me get off my butt and write this review.

Recently I watched Joe Rogan's now-famous YouTube interview with Andrew Yang, and was struck by the stellar quality of Yang's answers to Rogan's often difficult questions. Yang consistently backed up his assertions with facts and data and generally came off as someone who really knows what he's talking about.

It turns out (to me) that Yang essentially prepared for the interview, and his presidential candidacy, by writing this book. Those who watched the interview (I recommend it as a high-quality debate/discussion about American issues, virtually unheard of today) will recognize that Yang's talking points all come from this book.

Which is fine. In fact, it's a positive sign for his candidacy. Yang is clearly not running for President just to be President. He has zeroed in on the great challenges facing America now - income inequality, increasing joblessness, the opioid epidemic, the healthcare mess - and identified real, practical solutions. Yang is running for President because he wants...

United States on Jun 02, 2019

Chillyfinger: This is a disturbing portrait of America as it is in 2018 and an even more disturbing portrait of what America will look like in 10 years.

Many people blame the current political catastrophe in America on the malignant narcissist in the Whitehouse. They assume that he was put there by ignorant racists living in a post-fact universe. This ignores what Trump supporters actually say about why they voted that way. They have their reasons. The daily scandals surrounding POTUS are distracting us from the fact that the American economy is being hollowed out - an effect felt precisely in the "flyover states" that tipped the balance in favor of Trump.

The collapse of the American ability to find jobs for everyone is absolutely real and accelerating. Populist dictators ride the rising tide of panic felt by "normal people" as they see their hopes for the future replaced by a daily scramble to survive. Looking back to the 2016 election, we can see that Bernie Sanders had his hair on fire over pretty much the same issues that elected Trump. The media focus on Trump seduces us into thinking that all will be well if we just get rid of this one man. All would have been well if they...

Canada on Jun 23, 2018