Moving Forward

Democratic presidential candidate entrepreneur Andrew Yang speaks during a Democratic presidential primary debate, Friday, Feb. 7, 2020, hosted by ABC News, Apple News, and WMUR-TV at Saint Anselm College in Manchester, N.H. (AP Photo/Elise Amendola)

Independents are now America’s largest group of voters.

After George Bush’s presidency, fewer people called themselves Republicans. After Obama’s, fewer called themselves Democrats.

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How will these independents vote?

Andrew Yang hopes they’ll vote for him.

In my latest video, the former Democrat explains why he’s started a new party, the Forward Party.

“Our country is polarized and getting worse all the time … seeing each other as mortal enemies … I’m committed to doing everything I can to help change it.”

He’s written a book about that, “Forward.”

Compared with most politicians, Yang is refreshing. He opposes censoring people for what they say. “Saturday Night Live” fired a comedian after he called Yang a “Jew Chink.” Yang tells me, “I didn’t think that was right … he’s a comedian. It’s his job to push boundaries.”

Yang says other things presidential candidates don’t say, like: “Running for president requires traits that make you a terrible leader. You make false promises [and] regularly claim powers you do not have.”

He cites worker retraining as an example. Governments keep funding expensive job training — the federal government alone has 43 retraining programs, but they almost never work. Many promise computer-coding jobs, but Yang points out, “If you actually go to a town that had the plant close, you find no one working as a coder. … People walk out with valueless certificates and no job.”

Unfortunately, Yang’s plan to help people, a universal basic income, may be even worse.

Yang would simply give every adult $1,000 a month. But the United States is already going bankrupt, and a UBI would give more of your tax money even to people who don’t need it.

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Yang’s UBI wouldn’t even replace existing welfare programs (Charles Murray’s proposal), so a drug user could just snort up $1,000 and apply for more handouts. His plan would encourage lazy people to stay lazy. People like me, when I was young.

I say to Yang, “I wouldn’t have overcome my stuttering and worked as hard as I did if I had free money. Not having it … drove me.”

“I’m a data guy,” he replies, claiming more people would start businesses. “If you have that fallback, it makes you more likely to take a risk.”   

But at what cost? Already, we see an effect of government’s reckless stimulus handouts: inflation is the highest in 40 years. Yang’s UBI would give away four times that every year.

A better Forward Party proposal is automatic tax filing.

“We waste so much time figuring out our taxes,” Yang complains. “It’s stupid.”  

True. In some countries, government just sends you a bill or refund. You can dispute the results, but if you don’t, you can file taxes in less than a minute.

The reason the USA does not have automatic filing, says Yang, because “Intuit is making too much money off TurboTax. It lobbied [actually, H&R Block and others lobbied, too] and said, no, no, no! [You] can’t do it automatically!”

Yang says other sensible things that Democratic politicians rarely say. During the heat of last year’s anti-police anger, activists screamed at him because he opposed defunding the police. He stood his ground.

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Yang’s run businesses, so he doesn’t say stupid anti-capitalist things.

But often, he acts like a typical politician. At the Democratic National Convention, he gushed over Biden and Harris. “You’re just sucking up!” I tell him.

“I was willing to do or say whatever I thought would help get Trump out,” Yang replies.

Why?

“Trump was erratic,” says Yang, “not leading in a positive direction.”

I’m glad Yang is around, with a new party. More choices are a good thing. Yang is a decent man who brings up some fresh ideas.

Unfortunately, many of Yang’s ideas are bad.

He calls climate change an “existential threat.” He wants every gun owner to re-register every five years. He wants to ban assault weapons but can’t define them. He promotes government-funded journalism.

But at the end of our interview, we agreed about one thing:

“We can see very clearly the way our country is going,” Yang concludes. “We deserve better than this.”

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