"Your Job Won't Exist In 6 Months!" Why AI Is Becoming The #1 Threat To America | Andrew Yang

19 Mar 2026 · 2 h · 48 chapters

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In short

Podcast Summary: The Iced Coffee Hour - Episode with Andrew Yang

Episode Overview In this episode of *The Iced Coffee Hour*, hosts Graham Stephan and Jack Selby engage in an in-depth discussion with former presidential candidate Andrew Yang. The conversation centers around the implications of artificial intelligence (AI) on jobs in America, the political landscape, and Yang's proposals for addressing poverty and economic inequality.

Key Themes and Discussions

  1. Predictions and AI Impact
  2. Accurate Forecasts: Yang discusses his past predictions about AI's impact on jobs, noting a significant transformation in employment patterns across various sectors.
  3. Job Displacement: He highlights that AI is set to replace millions of jobs, particularly in retail, fast food, and even some white-collar jobs like law.
  4. Safe Careers: Yang mentions that non-repetitive manual jobs, such as those in HVAC repair and teaching, are less likely to be replaced by AI.
  1. The K-Shaped Economy
  2. Yang explains the current K-shaped economy, where the wealthy prosper while the bottom half face increasing challenges.
  3. He emphasizes the need to foster optimism and inclusion in the economy to prevent social unrest.
  1. Financial Proposals
  2. Universal Basic Income (UBI): Yang advocates for a $1,000 monthly UBI as a means to alleviate poverty and ensure a basic standard of living.
  3. Funding and Efficiency: He discusses the potential of AI to enhance government efficiency and proposes the idea of taxing AI and automation rather than human labor.
  1. Political Insights
  2. Politics and Media: Yang shares his experiences in the political landscape, illustrating the challenges candidates face regarding media coverage and voter engagement.
  3. Lobbying and Corruption: He offers insights into the lobbying industry, suggesting it often prioritizes special interests over public good, and discusses the need for reform in campaign financing.
  1. Future Predictions
  2. Yang predicts potential economic downturns in sectors inflated by AI investment but also acknowledges the transformative potential of AI in the long term.
  3. He expresses optimism about the future but warns that failure to address economic disparities will lead to societal backlash.
  1. Personal Experiences
  2. Yang reflects on his own career, his motivations for running for president, and the lessons learned from his campaign.

Key Takeaways

  • AI's Dual Edge: While AI presents opportunities for efficiency and innovation, it also poses significant risks to employment, especially in low-skill jobs.
  • Need for Policy Change: Structural changes, including UBI and better taxation of AI, are necessary to create a more equitable economy.
  • Engagement with Young Audiences: Candidates like Zoran Mamdani are successfully leveraging social media and charismatic appeal to engage younger voters, highlighting a shift in political campaigning.
  • The Role of Wealth: Yang argues against penalizing wealth but emphasizes the need for systems that allow for wealth redistribution without discouraging hard work and entrepreneurship.

Conclusion Andrew Yang's insights on AI, economic policy, and political engagement provide a thought-provoking perspective on the current and future state of America. His emphasis on inclusivity and proactive measures to address economic disparities aligns with ongoing debates about the role of technology in society and governance. The dialogue serves as a reminder of the importance of adapting to rapid changes and ensuring that all citizens have a stake in the economic future.

Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.

Chapters

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The Automation of Jobs and Its Consequences

0:34 to 1:41

Explore how automation has affected manufacturing jobs and the looming threat to various sectors.

“Over the last number of years, we have automated away 4 million manufacturing jobs.”

Andrew Yang's Predictions on Job Loss

1:50 to 3:01

Delve into Andrew Yang's insights on job loss due to AI and his journey into politics.

“I've been looking forward to this for months now to try to get you on.”

Understanding Job Security in a Changing Economy

3:01 to 4:19

Yang discusses which jobs are at risk and how societal priorities may shift.

“You guys should donate to my campaign though.”

The Future of Law Careers in an AI-Driven World

4:19 to 5:47

Examine how AI is transforming the legal profession and the implications for lawyers.

“And so what's a career today that people think is safe, but that you think is going to be replaced entirely?”

Navigating Career Choices Amidst AI Advancements

5:47 to 6:40

Identify jobs that are likely to remain safe from AI disruption and explore non-repetitive roles.

“Like with Chachipiti, you could literally just upload a PDF and then immediately gets you back whatever you need to know.”

Resilient Jobs in the Age of Automation

6:40 to 9:22

Learn about jobs that are less likely to be impacted by AI and the skills needed.

“become that person that you trust and that I trust to review AI's work so you're going to have a real chasm for law school graduates and college graduates starting essentially last year.”

The Role of Unions and Job Security

9:22 to 11:19

Discuss the importance of unionized jobs and how they may provide security against AI.

“If you look at a Microsoft report that came out a few months ago, the resilient stuff is like sledge operators or people who have to change out the flooring or something like very gritty stuff that's very physical.”

AI in the Judicial and Healthcare Systems

11:19 to 14:02

Explore the implications of AI in legal and healthcare sectors and the resistance from established institutions.

“Like, the law school degree is not the flight to safety.”

The Impact of AI on Job Security

14:02 to 16:40

Explore how AI threatens job preservation in various sectors and the challenges of implementing it.

“There's no lobby for either better decisions or better government efficiency.”

Leveraging AI for Personal Advantage

18:25 to 23:06

Understand how individuals can benefit from AI advancements in various fields.

“I think you guys are an example of it again.”
Show all 48 chapters

The Changing Nature of the American Dream

23:07 to 24:19

Discuss the perception of opportunity and wealth in America today and its impact on society.

“Seems like that's already happening, though.”

Reality vs. Narrative in Wealth Creation

24:20 to 28:00

Examine how societal narratives shape young people's financial behaviors and risks.

“Because if you don't think you have a shot, don't think the system's fair, then it takes the American dream and makes it seem out of reach for most people.”

Navigating Risk in Financial Decisions

28:00 to 29:40

Explore the reasons why young people are taking more risks with their finances.

“Comparison is the death of joy or something like that.”

The Influence of Social Media and Gambling

29:40 to 31:00

Discuss the impact of sports betting and social media on financial behaviors.

“And one of the theories was that because young people are not buying houses and they feel like certain things are out of reach, like buying a house, something priceless is more attainable.”

Shifts in Symbolic Wealth Among Youth

31:00 to 33:10

Understand the changing perceptions of success and value among young people.

“And so at that point I was like, oh my gosh, I'm like a 34 year old millionaire.”

Contrasting Risk Profiles: The River vs. The Village

33:10 to 34:10

Learn about the differences between entrepreneurs and traditional workers in risk-taking.

“So what Nate differentiates between is the river, which is what I'm describing.”

Universal Basic Income: Effects on Society

35:57 to 37:20

Examine how providing a basic income could encourage entrepreneurial spirit.

“So do you think getting$1 ,000 a month for people would give them enough encouragement that they could start those businesses?”

Addressing Welfare Dependency Concerns

37:20 to 38:58

Discuss the pitfalls of welfare systems that discourage work and productivity.

“Right now, businesses are bifurcating where you have the K-shaped economy.”

The Economic Value of Data and AI

38:58 to 42:00

Explore the economic implications of data ownership and the rise of AI.

“The first is that you should not have a system that ever discourages someone from going out, kicking ass, making money.”

Wealth Distribution and Inflation Dynamics

42:04 to 45:36

Explore how wealth distribution affects buying power and inflation in various sectors.

“So if you give everyone$1 ,000, then doesn't no one have$1 ,000 effectively?”

Government Policies and Rising Costs

45:36 to 48:39

Discuss the impact of government intervention on rising costs in housing, education, and healthcare.

“I would argue that government intervention is causing those prices to go up.”

Corporate and Military Waste in Government

48:39 to 54:38

Analyze waste in government spending and the incentives that perpetuate it.

“I mean, I think I'm someone who is sympathetic to the goals of Doge and then was like very unhappy with the actual implementation.”

The Need for Accountability in Government

54:38 to 56:01

Examine the call for increased accountability and auditing in government budgets.

“Because in any other business, it wouldn't be like, you know, hey, if I don't spend all of my money this year, I'm not getting more.”

The Challenges of Government Spending and Accountability

56:01 to 1:01:50

Discussion on inefficiencies in government spending and the need for transparency.

“I can be like, look, I'm pro-military too.”

Andrew Yang's Political Journey and Media Experience

1:04:35 to 1:10:04

Yang shares insights on his presidential campaign and experiences with media.

“And why did you decide to run for president?”

Media Bias and Personal Experiences

1:10:04 to 1:12:40

Andrew Yang shares his experiences with media bias during his campaign, detailing how he was omitted from coverage and faced hostility.

“for Joe Biden's primary rivals out of MSNBC.”

Reputation Management and Press Interactions

1:12:40 to 1:17:28

Yang discusses how negative narratives were formed about him and the lengths media would go to in order to find dirt.

“And their response to that was instead just to completely black me out for the entirety of the rest of the campaign, even when I made the seventh presidential debate in the primary.”

Generational Differences in Social Media

1:17:28 to 1:20:28

The hosts discuss the impact of social media on political candidates, highlighting the challenges faced by younger generations.

“I think if you had an employee a microphone, they felt pressured that they couldn't hand it back because their job was on the line.”

The Importance of Independent Media

1:20:28 to 1:21:56

Yang emphasizes the role of independent media in today's political landscape and the need for institutions to adapt.

Lobbying: The Industrial Complex in D.C.

1:21:56 to 1:23:50

Yang explains the lobbying system in Washington D.C., discussing its financial implications and political influence.

“that are on the ground, which I do think you're going to need government to do at scale.”

Corruption and Wealth in Politics

1:23:50 to 1:24:00

The conversation delves into the perceived corruption among politicians and how wealth influences politics.

The Influence of Wealth on Congress

1:24:00 to 1:25:10

Explore how wealth impacts Congress and the potential for corruption.

“They're like, hey, you want to take this trip to like blah, blah, blah.”

The Case for Transparency in Politics

1:25:10 to 1:26:34

Discuss public support for transparency and reform in government dealings.

“there's a difference donating to a campaign where the money has to be spent on campaigning.”

Insider Trading Insights

1:26:34 to 1:27:44

Understanding the prevalence of insider trading in politics and its implications.

“I love these accounts that break down like Polymarket and Kalshi and they say like, hey, this trader has 100 % success rate.”

Lobbying and Offers of Influence

1:27:44 to 1:28:59

Hear about the lobbying offers and the ethics surrounding them.

“If you could just let us know, you know, we will not take advantage of it.”

Addressing Poverty Through Politics

1:28:59 to 1:30:46

Learn about efforts to alleviate poverty and their impact on society.

“I have been as I have been offered like all expense paid luxury trips and things of that nature for people that wanted to get me on board with, you know, their interests or cause like that sort of thing has happened.”

The Forward Party and Political Reform

1:30:46 to 1:32:44

Discover the goals of the Forward Party and its approach to reform.

Cost Plus Drugs and Market Solutions

1:32:44 to 1:36:21

Examining innovative approaches to lower healthcare costs and market inefficiencies.

“So Mark and I are friends and he started a company called Cost Plus Drugs.”

Revolutionizing Wireless Costs

1:36:21 to 1:38:00

Learn how to potentially save significantly on wireless bills through innovative approaches.

“So it becomes a set it and forget it savings plan.”

The Value of Data in Politics

1:38:00 to 1:39:59

Explore the importance of data ownership and its implications in political campaigns.

“Like how much strategy goes into choosing a side?”

Political Landscape and Upcoming Elections

1:40:00 to 1:42:58

Discuss the strategic considerations of running for president in light of party dynamics.

“And I do not think there's going to be like a robust, genuine primary.”

Charisma and Its Role in Modern Politics

1:42:59 to 1:45:44

Learn about the significance of charisma in political campaigns and the influence of social media.

“Um, so when you talk about who's going to be using Instagram and TikTok and right now that stuff is a huge advantage, uh, in terms of your ability to move and build with these tools.”

Tax Policy and Economic Disparities

1:45:45 to 1:48:37

Examine the implications of tax policy on society and the wealth gap in America.

“And then people say, wow, that sounds awesome.”

Future of AI and Its Economic Impact

1:48:38 to 1:51:48

Discuss the potential economic consequences of AI and the need for new taxation models.

“By the way, when I ran and even I think like last month or whatever, I think wealth taxes are a disaster because wealth is portable.”

Future Political Aspirations

1:51:49 to 1:53:26

Hear about potential future political endeavors and reflections on past campaigns.

“uh and again you want to avoid an environment where everyone's turning on each other and and so i i think dario's making the right case like i'm more interested in taxing that that I am taxing labor because I like labor.”

Rick Caruso's Political Potential

1:53:26 to 1:54:46

Exploring the missed opportunities in Rick Caruso's potential governor run and the importance of modern campaigning.

Predictions for the Future

1:54:59 to 1:57:22

Andrew Yang shares his insights and predictions for the economy, AI, and potential market corrections.

“this long overdue conversation i feel like we should have done this a long time ago i would have loved to.”

Lessons from the Dot-Com Bubble

1:57:22 to 1:58:32

Reflecting on the dot-com bubble and the lessons it holds for the current AI market.

“And what's funny is that you see where they called it a bubble and where it actually popped was so much higher.”
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Transcript

Automatic transcript. May contain errors.

0:00Andrew Yang:Fiscally responsible, financial geniuses, monetary magicians. These are things people say about drivers who switch their car insurance to Progressive and save hundreds. Because Progressive offers discounts for paying in full, owning a home, and more. Plus, you can count on their great customer service to help when you need it, so your dollar goes a long way. Visit Progressive.com to see if you could save on car insurance. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states or situations. Over the last number of years, we have automated away 4 million manufacturing jobs.

0:40Andrew Yang:And unfortunately, I'm here to say things are going to get much, much worse.

0:43Graham Stephan:Why did you decide to run for president?

0:46Andrew Yang:I've been trying to alleviate poverty, which I see as the most addressable major problem that we have. I have a lot of friends in Silicon Valley and I went to them and I was like, guys, is just me or are we going to eliminate millions and millions of American jobs? And the response I got in private was like, oh, yeah. What we did to the manufacturing workers, we're about to do to retail workers, fast food workers, truck drivers and on and on through the economy. AI does not discriminate between the hardworking, conscientious truck driver or the drunk one. It's going to get you either way. And so the question is, what is the path for those people?

1:26Andrew Yang:We have to make Americans optimistic about the future and feel like they're included in it. If you don't do that, then you wind up with a very angry 80 percent that eventually gets the pitchforks out.

1:40Graham Stephan:Andrew Yang, thank you so much for coming on the Iced Coffee Hour.

1:43Andrew Yang:Yes, I'm here. Don't drink that coffee every day. You have no idea.

1:50Graham Stephan:This is so exciting for me to do. I've been looking forward to this for months now to try to get you on. You made some extremely bold statements back on Joe Rogan's podcast, Predicting the Future. And I recently looked back at it and everything you had said came true. How were you able to see these things before they came true?

2:10Andrew Yang:I've got a crystal ball, my Yankstradamus crystal ball. I have a lot of friends in Silicon Valley and I went to them in 2018, 2019. It was like, guys, is it just me? Are we going to eliminate millions and millions of American jobs? And the response I got in private was like, oh, yeah, that's definitely happening. And then I said, are you willing to say that to the press? And like, why would I say that to the press? Because all it's going to do is get me a spotlight I don't want. But the folks who are conscientious were like, someone should do something about this. and I even said to them, it's like someone should run for president on AI, fourth industrial revolution, universal basic income.

2:53Andrew Yang:And they would say, yeah, yeah, yeah, someone should. And then I asked, do any of you want to do that? And they said, hell no. And then I said, okay, I'll do it. You guys should donate to my campaign though. And they said how much? And then I said, the max at that time was only like 2 ,900 or something. And so the better ones said, sure. But that was the genesis of both the campaign and my certainty that AI was going to eradicate a lot of American jobs. In which ways would you say you were most right? I feel pretty good about 98 % of the case I laid out. The part I got wrong, maybe in terms of emphasis, was the sequencing, where I did not talk about in 2019, hey, we're going to eliminate all these entry-level white-collar jobs and recent college grads aren't going to be able to get consulting jobs or whatever.

3:44Andrew Yang:now um that would probably have been a pretty uh lousy unappealing political argument anyway because like no one cares about that population i would argue that they should because everyone's a person and everyone has professional aspirations and if you end up uh let's say loading up a young person with tens of thousands of school loans and then they don't find a job um that's really really bad um for the individual and also for the economy and for society but i was talking more about trucking jobs, call center jobs, blue collar jobs, when maybe I could have been talking more about white collar work.

4:20Graham Stephan:And so what's a career today that people think is safe, but that you think is going to be replaced entirely?

4:26Andrew Yang:I the first thing that jumped into my mind when you said that was lawyer law school applications. Last I checked, went up 21 percent last year, and I would suggest that was a flight to safety. And that stuff's not safe at all. law lawyering is highly structured it's very process oriented it's kind of the ideal environment for ai and i have friends who are partners in law firms who say look i'm giving ai work that would have taken a second or third year associate a week to complete and gives it back to me in 20 minutes so why on earth would i hire a small army of these associates uh when you know like i can frankly keep the billables and the revenue and then go to my client and say hey great news i got this done more cheaply and then you had the savings because when you are a first year um law firm associate which i was back in the um early 2000s you're a cost center for the first two years of your career um where the law firm's kind of eating cost to train you up and the incentive to do that is going to be non-existent for most of the big firms.

5:39Graham Stephan:I hate to say it, we run, or at least I run, a lot of the contracts through Gemini, Chachipiti, and Grok and it's surprisingly accurate. I still have a person reviewing everything who's a proper lawyer who could give me the guidance but so far, the guidance that the AI gives me is almost the same as the actual lawyer who I'm spending like $300 to$400 an hour for. And it's slower with a lawyer. Yes. Like with Chachipiti, you could literally just upload a PDF and then immediately gets you back whatever you need to know. Yeah. And it's just like, what am I missing? Is this good? Is this bad? And it's called out so many red flags that I've later addressed and fixed for free.

6:15Graham Stephan:Yeah.

6:16Andrew Yang:Yeah. Law and accounting are two domains that are very, very rules-based and really ideal for AI. Now, I'm with you. I also have a human lawyer. but what happens is that you have relatively experienced attorneys who we're going to keep on using but the folks who are coming up now out of school are never going to get the training to become that person that you trust and that I trust to review AI's work so you're going to have a real chasm for law school graduates and college graduates starting essentially last year. Which jobs should young people pursue because they will be unaffected by AI? The jobs that are going to be unaffected.

7:00Andrew Yang:So writ large, 44 % of American jobs are either repetitive, cognitive or repetitive manual. And those are the jobs you should try and steer clear of because those are the jobs that AI is going to decimate. So non-repetitive manual jobs are still jobs that most people who are listening to this don't want. And the example I use is cleaning a hotel room. you're probably going to have humans cleaning hotel rooms for quite some time because having a robot recognize like a wine stain on the pillow or whatnot and then being able to manipulate all the odd sized objects in hotel rooms a pain in the ass and the human is really inexpensive um so you're gonna have humans do those jobs for a long time so if i say hey you should become a hotel cleaner i mean no one's going to take that advice which you know i mean that there are a bunch of jobs that resemble that that are persistent another one's hvac repair it's very very hard to get a robot show up to a structure and figure out what's wrong with the air conditioning unit that's going to be a human electrician human for quite some time though eventually if you had a modern uh building then it would become self-monitoring and the rest of it but you have a lot of old structures and a shortage of uh that kind of work so if you're handy that stuff is a good idea uh the other stuff is non-repetitive cognitive which you guys do i do on a good day so so this is entrepreneurial creative um bossing the ai around um the issue is that we all like you all i mean you are you have very successful uh media properties uh you've generated a ton of value through real estate like you know people tune in for your advice and congratulations thank you to both of you for improving people's lives and this is why i'm very passionate about people's financial literacy and you guys are practitioners which is to me awesome uh the question for someone again who's like 22 or 24 is like how do they get enough money together to have or audience to be able to live that kind of creative or enterprising or entrepreneurial journey.

9:14Andrew Yang:But that stuff's still going to be there. I mean, there are a lot of inefficiencies still. So those are some of the more resilient jobs. If you look at a Microsoft report that came out a few months ago, the resilient stuff is like sledge operators or people who have to change out the flooring or something like very gritty stuff that's very physical. The other jobs are jobs that interface people all the time. So a teacher asked me, hey, do I need to worry about my job? And I was like, teaching will be the last thing to go. We're not going to replace the teacher with like a screen. Really? I thought teaching would need teaching.

9:53Graham Stephan:There's no point. I learned so much more and I can learn, If I apply myself with ChatGPT to ask questions and learn, I can learn probably 10 times faster than in a classroom. Or YouTube videos. Maybe 100 times faster. People upload these entire master classes on Twitter and they spend hours just going over one specific thing that you could learn. You just got to watch the video.

10:14Andrew Yang:All right. So the person who was asking this question, this was on an NPR program that I was on a few weeks ago. It was like an eighth grade teacher. And the eighth grade social studies teacher said, is my job safe? And I was like, your job is safe insofar as your community has budget for you and that there are still still kids. So our birth rates going down, the number of kids showing up is is diminishing. And so eventually these teachers unions and whatnot are going to be under downward pressure because, you know, just demographics. But in terms of right now, that school administrator or principal looking around that school and saying, you know what, you eighth grade social studies teacher, I'm going to replace you with like, that's just not going to happen because the incentives are not there for that individual administrator.

11:04Andrew Yang:And there is a union in this case. So some of the most secure jobs are going to be unionized jobs. Now, that applies to about 10 % of American workers, but you're going to see a real flight to safety in that way. Like, the law school degree is not the flight to safety. The flight to safety is, hey, is there going to be a union who demands that, for example, you know, a human radiologist needs to review this film and that it can't be AI. There's going to be a lot of lobbying for persistent jobs.

11:38Graham Stephan:And how far do you think this should be allowed to go? Like, can you see AI replacing people in courts or coming up with policy decisions? Because I could see a point, you know, at some level in the future where you go to court and it's just like this AI little beacon that you just you say your case to it and it processes. It just spits out. Red is jail. It spits out a decision. And it could be using John Cena's face.

12:06Andrew Yang:Yeah. Or it could be using someone like very trustworthy. So who would be like the arbiter of American justice?

12:10Graham Stephan:Just something. But like I know with legal contracts, it's just like I could tell when the other side is using ChatGPT back to me. And then I'm putting that in ChatGPT. So it's just ChatGPT negotiating against itself.

12:22Andrew Yang:You know what's funny is that reminds me of the dating apps is that dating apps learn your behaviors. And then so over time you could have AI to AI chatting and then they could determine your compatibility.

12:33Graham Stephan:We came up with this idea a while ago. It's called the perfect match. But when AI has enough information about you and your preferences, it could match you with anybody in the world who it believes is your best match. Because statistically, there's one person in the world who's the best match from everybody.

12:50Andrew Yang:Well, they could essentially have two folks simulating each other and then they could play out years of a relationship. You know what I mean? Yeah. That's interesting.

13:00Graham Stephan:For marriage, for raising kids, for anything. For business partnerships. Yeah.

13:04Andrew Yang:I mean, there's a lot of me out there. So AI simulating me, like I've seen it, it's pretty eerie. It's pretty good. The first time when I was running for president and they said, look, we want to write an email in your voice. I was like, you know, you can't do that. And then they did it. And I was like, oh, it's actually pretty good. This is even, this wasn't even AI at the time. And then AI came along and then, you know, the Andrew Yang simulations are not half bad. So you're hitting something that I think is very, very important, Graham, which is disability decisions, for example, there are hundreds of thousands of them each year, and you could have AI determine who's being, frankly, who's showing flags for fraud, who's honest.

13:51Andrew Yang:You could do a lot of stuff, and that would be much more efficient on the part of the government. The problem right now is that the government has no incentive to replace itself with AI because that would decimate their own jobs. There's no lobby for either better decisions or better government efficiency. And so there are all of these inefficiencies. The healthcare sector is going to be very similar, highly unionized environment. A lot of that money is public money. But if you go to one of these hospital environments, let's say, and I use radiology as an example, let's say AI could hypothetically do a better job than human radiologists which arguably it could today what's happening is the uh the medical lobby is like hey it's all well and good but you need a human being to review the film at the end which then sounds reasonable to everyone and so there's going to be legislation being like needs to be a human at the end now that's a job preservation move um and there are going to be tons of those sorts of moves uh even if ai could theoretically do the job this is goes back to the teaching example say hey ai could teach that group of students as a parent myself i know that a lot of the stuff that a teacher does is actually behavior management and regulation then ai would have a lot of um difficulty with it's just keeping 13 year old from running out of the room and stuff like that like if you had the screen like you'd have chaos and so you kind of need the human um but it's around organizational incentives it's one reason why I made the predictions I made is that if I'm a like a corporation and I have 2000 call center workers it is a hundred percent in my interest to automate those customer service workers I'm going to save money and they're non-unionized so if I made a prediction I'm like look that stuff's going to go by like that but then you put me in a hospital or a school I say wait a minute there are all these political pressures and the incentive for this organization actually deliver things cost efficiently is really low.

15:55Andrew Yang:It's one reason why everyone's frustrated with aspects of government. It's like, if I were to say to you, I could deliver disability decisions at a tiny fraction of the cost, which is probably true, by the way, the government would be like, well, whoop-de-damn-do. Like, what am I going to do? Like, fire all my employees who are all unionized and are there. Like, I don't care if you can do a better job with the decisions. I don't care if you could save me money. Like, we're just going to do it this way. And you can go throughout the public sector and find examples of that.

16:25Graham Stephan:But that sounds very doomer mentality. For the viewer there on the flip side, if they're listening to this and just feeling completely helpless when it comes to AI and how they're going to lose their jobs, lose their significance, not make any decisions for themselves, what's the best way someone can leverage today's AI landscape for their own advantage? Now, honestly, with all that goes on in day-to-day life, nutrition can often be one of the hardest things to prioritize. Whether you're stopping for fast food or microwaving your favorite frozen meal, poor eating habits tends to lead to a whole bunch of negative side effects.

16:57Graham Stephan:That's exactly why we are so excited to be partnering with Huel. Huel eliminates the hassle of cooking without sacrificing your health or your bank account. For those unaware, Huel is complete, balanced nutrition in two forms. The ready-to-drink is a full meal that you can grab and go, and the black edition powder gives you a quick option that you could make at home without any of the hassle of cooking. The ready-to-drink is the most convenient option. It's a complete meal with 35 grams of protein and 27 essential vitamins and minerals. It's gluten-free, contains no artificial sweeteners, colors or flavors, and requires zero prep while still being filling.

17:29Graham Stephan:It's also under$5 a meal, which makes it a practical alternative to many quick breakfast or lunch options. The Black Edition powder works super well for days at home or when you want something just more customizable. It has 40 grams of protein per serving, mixes extremely easily. it can be blended with ingredients like fruit or milk, depending on your preference. Having both options helps keep routines consistent. You got the powder for more flexible or customized meals, and they're ready to drink for busier days. Honestly, it's just a super simple way of staying on track with protein and overall nutrition without needing to plan every single meal.

17:59Graham Stephan:I kid you not, every single morning, I go for a walk, I drink my Huel. Every single morning, without fail, I get in protein, vitamins, minerals, it tastes great, and I feel amazing. If you want to try it for yourself, you can get 15 % off at Huel by using our code ICED15 at Huel.com slash ICED15. This offer is for new customers. Thanks again to Huel for partnering with us and supporting our episode. What's the best way someone can leverage today's AI landscape for their own advantage?

18:28Andrew Yang:I think you guys are an example of it again. Now, if you were to say to someone watching this, like, you know, would I trade places? Or the two of you, you know, 99 % of them, I'm sure, would like that. Same with me. The people who follow me, I think, are hoping that I'll help them inform their futures. What you want to do is the simplest way to think about what's happening, and you've actually written about this, Graham, where you have this K-shaped economy. So you have the top 20 % are then taking off to the right. And that crew is going to be the crew that leverages AI in various ways, whether that's through their media and getting a following, whether it's through a business, whether it's through real estate investment or anything else.

19:11Andrew Yang:Like if you can use the tools, the three things I think of it's AI, it's money, it's attention. And if you have a combination of those three things, then you can become super powered. If you're absent any, all of, or absent all of those things, then it's like a real struggle. Now, when you ask what someone should be doing, to me, they need to try to adopt many of the financial principles you guys talk about. to try and put enough money together so that they wind up one of the beneficiaries of the AI wave.

19:47Graham Stephan:So if we're going to break that down, you said money. How much money do you need?

19:50Andrew Yang:Well, I mean, you know what it takes to be in the top 20 % of Americans. So that should be the goal. Now that may or may not be realistic, but at every life stage, you can try and position yourself in that direction. It's one reason why I think you guys do what you do and I do what I do. And I'm sure because we have a lot of time to talk, But like I can talk about what I'm doing right now with Noble Mobile, which I think will save people, you know,$500 to$1 ,000 a year, which then if you extrapolate that over compound interest.

20:22Graham Stephan:But what do you think about Elon Musk's statement that money is not going to matter because we're going to become so efficient at things that you're not going to need money in the future? Okay.

Read the full transcript

20:30Andrew Yang:So if you look at the top line, Elon may be correct. The issue is how all of this value gets transferred to the people who are watching this at home, to the former Uber driver, to the former customer service worker, to the 22-year-old who's coming out of college and is like, hey, no one wants to hire me. How does that person enjoy the bounty? And to me, the logical way that that person enjoys the bounty is some sort of public policy um now there there are issues with different um methods when i ran for president i said look let's just give everyone a thousand bucks a month no questions asked call it a day i mean not even call it a day it's like you make that a starting point uh and in my mind um all of the things that work uh provides around community, training, structure, purpose, fulfillment, that is not replaced by a thousand bucks or whatnot.

21:35Andrew Yang:You know what I mean? Like the thousand bucks is enough so you can make ends. Actually, now it'd probably be higher because a thousand bucks is what it was. It probably would be two thousand a month.

21:45Graham Stephan:So explain the thousand dollars a month for skeptics who just think it's free money.

21:49Andrew Yang:My argument is that capitalism functions best when people can actually participate in the consumer marketplace. And so this is capitalism where income doesn't start at zero. I came up with$1 ,000 a month, one, because it was simple. And at that time, the poverty level was maybe$17 ,000 a head. And so it's like, look, we get you like two thirds of the way there. Something along those lines. I also did the math and thought$1 ,000 a month was feasible, given the budget of the government, the size of the economy, like a bunch of other things. So Elon's argument is, look, AI is going to create trillions of dollars of commercial value, which it surely will.

22:32Andrew Yang:Now, again, what I would like to suggest to folks is like right now, who's going to get those trillions of dollars? it's accruing to the stock value of open ai and alphabet uh and nvidia and the other major players and so there's like a narrow band of americans who might be shareholders uh in those companies who right now are seeing their stock portfolios go up and up and up um but that does not describe the 22 year old or the former customer service uh representative or all those people so what i was saying is like look let's take some of the bounty from ai and transfer it quickly and broadly to the general public in a way that doesn't differentiate doesn't stigmatize doesn't means tests like like we're transitioning from scarcity to abundance and we need to make people feel included as quickly as possible because if you don't do that then you wind up with a very angry 80 that eventually gets the pitchforks out and gets really really angry at whoever the winners are in the new world.

23:38Graham Stephan:Seems like that's already happening, though. It seems like right now wealth is considered bad.

23:43Andrew Yang:Yeah, and it makes me super sad. So my parents immigrated to this country. I'm the child of Taiwanese immigrants. And they believed that, you know, America was the land of opportunity and it's the American dream. And they came here for a better future for me and my brother. And it worked. And so I thought, you know, America is awesome. We can just roll up our sleeves and work hard and make a good life. And now people feel like the system's rigged in a way that stigmatizes folks who have made a lot of money. And that makes me very, very sad. Because if you don't think you have a shot, don't think the system's fair, then it takes the American dream and makes it seem out of reach for most people.

24:32Andrew Yang:and i'm a numbers guy so i get it i mean if the average age of a home buyer is uh what is now

24:38Graham Stephan:i hear different statistics now i thought it was like home buyers over the age of 70 outnumber

24:42Andrew Yang:those at 35 yeah and like i saw like the average uh age of a first time home buyer was like way too old to make sense it might have been like 42 or something you're like well that's not cool yeah and so if a young person looks up and says you know what american dream is bullshit it's out of reach for me like i can work hard i cannot work hard doesn't make a difference like that is super um the opposite of what you want like you want an environment where someone's like look if i kick ass and work hard uh and adopt um you know sound financial principles of my own life like you know i can make it whatever making it means um for most americans making it probably involves owning a home um which you know it's like i don't know you guys might have different uh advice on that And I was a renter for a long time.

25:29Andrew Yang:So I was like, cool with that.

25:31Graham Stephan:I was living in New York and I guess that's pretty standard. I mean, that's a whole different vein that I'm sure Graham would love to go down. But first, I'm curious. We'll get to that. How much of that is mentality versus actual reality? The way I see it is there's more opportunity right now than there's ever been in American history. But more people feel like the odds are stacked against them now than they ever did in American history. So it makes me wonder, like, what is the reality? the way I see it. And from all of the people I talk to, everyone's saying it is as easy as it's ever been to get rich.

26:00Andrew Yang:You know, again, I look at the numbers and if you were born in the 60s or 70s, the odds of you doing better than your parents were, you know, like 80%. I think it was like 94 % if you were born in the 60s. I mean, sky high. And then you start getting into the 90s and then it gets to 50 % and then starts going below. So So statistically, the odds of a kid doing better than their parents are now sub 50 % in a way that was not true when I was growing up. So in my mind, you should have an attitude like, look, you could give me any percent and I'm going to make it. Like you tell me the top 30 % are going to make it, I'll be in the top 30%.

26:41Andrew Yang:You tell me it's 20%, I'll be in the top 20. You know, because there's no upside to putting yourself in like the bucket where you're not going to make it or the deck is stacked against you. I mean, that stuff is it's not helpful. I mean, one of the things that I took to heart when I was younger, it's like, look, if you believe you can succeed or you believe you can fail, you're probably right.

27:06Graham Stephan:That's 100 percent true. 100 it seems like from my perspective though anyone could make it but it seems like the people who do have a smaller chance of making it but when they do they can make way more money

27:18Andrew Yang:that's the truth i mean shoot we might wind up with the first trillionaire in human history oh 100 i think elon musk has so many incentives to hit the one trillion net worth yeah which is a crazy number that you would have thought i mean heck a billionaire seemed like a crazy number not that long ago and then now you might have have um it's probably elon or jeff bezos would be the two candidates for it so you have these extreme outcomes by the way in my mind this is a real problem for young people adopting sound financial principles because you look at it and you say okay i need like a higher variance strategy in order to get into the winner's circle and so then you start seeing more aggressive behaviors and more speculative behaviors because it's like if i make 12 % like I'm not going to pat myself on the back I gotta roll the dice for something higher whereas you know for me it's like you made 12 %

28:13Graham Stephan:well that's why young people are taking significantly more risk because they see it as their only viable option out of just mediocrity or that middle and they feel like they have to take extreme risk to get to the top it's narrative it's not reality like technically speaking in the middle is way more comfortable than it was to be in the middle 50 years ago

28:32Andrew Yang:Yeah, I think you're right that, what is it? Comparison is the death of joy or something like that. Thief of joy. Thief of joy. You have social media obviously bombarding you with images of what success looks like. And then you have people advertising their outsized winnings all the time, whether it's crypto or some investment or even some sports bet I made. I mean, that's just pervasive. I mean, it makes me sad and a little bit angry that I can't watch ESPN or any of the sports programs without someone telling me how to bet. And I'm just like, come on, man. I mean, like, and by the way, the numbers show that when you legalize online sports betting in a state, like investment behaviors go down.

29:22Andrew Yang:Because when I gamble, I actually invest and save less. and also this is going to be super depressing but domestic violence goes up by i think it's um 12 15 something along those lines and we all know what that chain of events was which is that someone made a bet on a game or a parlay or something and then it doesn't go right and then they get super mad um so you you can tell that there are negative um macro effects um from the legalization of online sports betting but then if i go on social media or turn on espn uh like i just see it's like oh shoot like you know draft kings fan duel and the rest of it um so there are all these forces that i think are pushing higher variance what's interesting is that uh we have a mastermind group

30:06Graham Stephan:called the index and we meet every quarter and we met a few days ago and we were talking about why certain items are going up in price so much i'm talking like rolexes pokemon cards certain cars. And one of the theories was that because young people are not buying houses and they feel like certain things are out of reach, like buying a house, something priceless is more attainable. And that might be buying a Rolex, spending the money in a car instead, because for them, a house isn't even an option. But they could get that brand new Corvette or they could buy that $15 ,000 Rolex. And for them, that's the new signal of success than buying a house.

30:45Andrew Yang:yeah i generally think that um most people are rational and when they're doing things that seem aggressive or irrational um i try and figure out why they're doing it uh and um and i think um there's actually some hidden rationality in the risk-seeking behaviors because the conventional method um maybe they don't believe in it anymore or the timing doesn't work out for them and so they do things that, uh, you know, like I wouldn't have done when I was their age, but then when I look at it, um, cause when I was coming up too, so I don't know how much about my background you guys know, but, uh, I, uh, sold a company when I was in my early to mid thirties and made seven figures.

31:31Andrew Yang:And so at that point I was like, oh my gosh, I'm like a 34 year old millionaire. I can do no wrong then um decided to become a bit of a do-gooder um started an entrepreneurship organization it's one reason why i love what you guys do in terms of trying to help people live better financial lives i became convinced that entrepreneurship was what was going to get america um out of its mess but um i i so my income might have been like you know So low, middle, low, middle, low, like high, like zero, like, like my income varied wildly from year to year. So I always acted like whatever money I was making might disappear tomorrow.

32:13Andrew Yang:Um, and, uh, I should be swinging for, uh, significant wins as opposed to, um, you know, like worrying about, um, this expense or that expense. So it was kind of easy come easy go. um i you guys read nate silver no you'd like him um so he he wrote a book called on the edge um about risk taking and he talked about people who've gotten lucky gamblers who got lucky and they sort of gamble assuming they're they're going to be fortunate um you guys are an example of this in my opinion where there's this experience of abundance where like you have a bet then it works out and you have a bet and it works out and you invest in the business it grows you're like do this the audience gets bigger you know just keep on growing um for you probably started out with um real estate sales it did yeah and then you know the first thing you sold maybe it was like you know x hundred thousand and then like eventually got to a million the first million dollar sale

33:09Graham Stephan:you were like oh crazy yeah my first sale was three million five hundred and fifty well i guess maybe your first thing was crazy yeah that's that's that's way high yeah so um so you wind up

33:22Andrew Yang:taking um these bets and these risks because enough of them have worked out where then you can just keep on progressing uh and um that that's a very different set of behaviors than And a lot of folks who are hoping for, you know, a 4 % raise from year to year and like are just trying to put a little bit of money away. So what Nate differentiates between is the river, which is what I'm describing. It's entrepreneurs, investors, financiers, also gamblers. And then there's the village, which is I'm a teacher. I work for the government. um you know um um postal worker like where it's like a stable environment and i might make a smidgen more next year than i do and and um he said that these two groups are kind of at odds with each other culturally and increasingly politically um anyway so i realized from reading nate's books like oh my gosh i'm like a river person because i took a bet on my business doing well in my early 30s and then when it did do well then all of a sudden you know you get this windfall that most people will never experience, then it makes you think, wow, if I could do that, like I can do lots of other things.

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35:45Graham Stephan:If you want to try PLOD for yourself, you can get 10 % off of all PLOD devices by using your code ICH at plod.ai.ich. Thank you again to PLOD for sponsoring this episode. So do you think getting$1 ,000 a month for people would give them enough encouragement that they could start those businesses? And how do you ensure they just don't waste the money or that it causes inflation or that they spend it on drugs or let's just say alcohol or things like this?

36:13Andrew Yang:Yeah. So again, I'm a numbers guy. And when you put money into people's hands in various environments, and so there was like a Native American tribe that had a natural experiment because they had a casino and some families got money and then some families didn't. And suddenly you look to see what happened to families that got money. And you had very, very low rates of, well, so what they spend the money on, it was food and education and like in some cases, socking away for the future. but the most positive things you could identify with that families in the that got the money their kids grew up with much higher levels of two traits conscientiousness and agreeableness and so those traits map to if i do the right thing at home something good happens if you're in a home environment where doing something good bad doesn't really matter to your outcome you know like you don't get rewarded your allowance doesn't go up your parent doesn't say good job or whatever then so conscientiousness and agreeableness correspond to success in life um they they correspond to successful marriages they correspond to being a decent worker you show up and like you actually expect to have to to do the work and if you don't do the work then you know then there'll be consequences um so studies have have consistently shown that's the kind of thing that the money enables um would more people start businesses if everyone had a thousand bucks a month of course in part because you just have more middle class-ish customers to be able to cater to.

37:52Andrew Yang:Right now, businesses are bifurcating where you have the K-shaped economy. And it's like, look, if I cater to the top 20%, I could have a good business. And then if I cater to the bottom, whatever, 50%, you might have a good business.

38:08Graham Stephan:I want to share an example, and this might be very specific, but I have some friends of extended family in Canada. And they practically live off the welfare system there. And they don't work. And they hang out all day. They smoke weed. They play video games. They get drunk. And I've talked to them about this before. Like, hey, why don't you work? Oh, because if I work, I lose these benefits. Or if I make a certain amount, I don't get all this free stuff. So it's actually better for me not to work and just live off this. It was probably like$1 ,300 a month of what they were getting. But that was plenty for a rural part of Canada.

38:45Graham Stephan:How do you prevent that not from happening here? Or do you just accept that some people will fall into that? And that's okay, because at least they're happy. They're staying to themselves. They're not hurting anybody. Let them be. I would say two things.

38:59Andrew Yang:The first is that you should not have a system that ever discourages someone from going out, kicking ass, making money. And right now, you do have that system in the U.S. Sounds like in Canada. Yeah. Where, um, when I was running for president, a woman came to me in Iowa and said, hey, I'm disabled. Uh, I want to volunteer in my community, but I'm afraid to, because I'm afraid that I'm going to lose my disability benefits as a result. Uh, there are millions of Americans who are in some kind of situation like that, where if I make a certain amount of money, you'll take the benefits away. If I show that I'm able bodied, you'll take the benefits away.

39:34Andrew Yang:I'm going to suggest that that is terrible and messed up. and that woman should be able to go have a bake sale or whatever the heck and not be concerned we're going to take money away so that that's why you need a less negative um incentive structure like what i was um campaigning on the freedom dividend was like look i'm gonna give you a thousand bucks you make more money sure you know like i'm not it's like like i don't want to punish you for being successful and right now a lot of the way government programs are designed do have this perverse incentive where if you do better you get less um if you if i give this to you into the second point so if i give this to you i personally andrew yang would love it if you went out there and used it to start a business and kick some ass and like you know you don't just chill out at home playing video games all day but um i think that is up to you uh you know my hope is that you'll want to um get a girlfriend and you know like do good things and most girls aren't that into it if if you're at home in the base of playing video games all day um i tell by the way i have a 13 year old and a 10 year old and i tell them all the time like this is not a path to you know getting girls that one of them will be like what if i meet a girl who just loves playing video games all day i was like yeah good luck with that like that's unlikely um so uh part Part of it is that we've all contributed to the development of AI in some minute fashion, where the data that's getting sold and resold every year, if you had to put a dollar value on it, even putting aside the value of AI, the direct market value of the data that gets sold and resold in America every year is in the hundreds of billions of dollars a year.

41:20Andrew Yang:And that most Americans don't see a dime of that, obviously, because it's just, you know, getting siphoned off the top then if you include ai then you could ratchet that value up significantly if you play out the value of ai over time and so that person in rural um north dakota or whatnot canada yeah canada well i was picking our sharing but yeah and that's why um i called it the freedom dividend is like look this is your dividend from all the awesome progress that we're making here in the states and i would like you to do certain things but hey it's yours like one of one of the comparisons i made was that most major companies let's say microsoft um they pay a dividend every three months to their shareholders you guys because you're experienced investors actually enjoy the dividend income that various companies send you and not once has one of those companies turned to you and been like hey i really hope you don't use that money uh to like get a hot tub whatever like you know you're a shareholder you get the money like get yourself a hot tub do whatever i mean like i what i was trying to say was that we should apply that kind of ownership model to our data to being an american um society-wide sure but isn't wealth technically

42:40Graham Stephan:only significant due to how wealth is relative like for example it's all about buying power If you have more wealth, you technically only have more buying power because you have more wealth than those beneath you that have less wealth. Yes. So if you give everyone$1 ,000, then doesn't no one have$1 ,000 effectively? How are you going to ensure that that doesn't just cause massive inflation and then everything just goes up 10%, 15 %? Why would a landlord not just charge more money if he knows his tenant's getting an extra$1 ,000?

43:15Andrew Yang:So this is an in-depth conversation that I enjoy, where if you look at inflation in American life, it tends to be centered in a few sectors. And those sectors are, you probably can guess them all, housing, education, health care, and you use landlords for a reason. And then you have things like clothing, media, electronics, like that are getting cheaper in some cases or the same. And, and so when you start digging in, you think, okay, why is it that, um, insurance is always more expensive? Like no one listening to this has ever gotten a note from their insurance company and be like, great news.

43:55Andrew Yang:Your insurance policy is less this year. It's one reason why like health care is, is eating the economy is because the entire business model is like, I'm going to charge you more this year. I'm going to charge you more. I'm going to charge you more. And, and then, you know, makes employers be like, oh shoot, if I give you healthcare, it's going to end up breaking, breaking my back in various ways. So you have certain parts of the economy that are allowed to ratchet up prices all the time because you're captive. You have no choice. Colleges have been like that for a long time because it wasn't the family necessarily paying out of pocket.

44:27Andrew Yang:It was that you had this giant government program. It's like, look, I'm going to put this money out. And then I'm also going to convince you that whatever you pay, this is good debt. You can pay whatever for this college degree. It's going to work out. Obviously, that is now being questioned rightfully. uh and so the things you'd have to separate really it's like look if i put money into your hands certain things certain sellers are going to be like oh you have more money let me try and ratchet up the price but then there are other um other industries where it's still super competitive where um if you know like the cost of mcnuggets for example might not shoot up by a thousand bucks because it's like a highly competitive marketplace and so what you'd want to do is you'd want to try and introduce market dynamics and discipline into the really dysfunctional segments that you're seeing mostly inflation in.

45:19Andrew Yang:And so then that leads you to like, okay, why is it that the cost of health care keeps going up and up regardless of what happens? Why does the cost of college keep going up? Why does the cost of housing keep going up? And then you realize that there are different things that are making those things more expensive than money in people's pockets.

45:36Graham Stephan:I would argue that government intervention is causing those prices to go up. And when you look at housing, as soon as the government got involved and subsidized mortgages, people were able to access bigger mortgages at lower rates to buy more house, which increased mortgage rates and increased the mortgage size. Also with restrictions to housing and making it difficult to build. If it was easier to build, you'd have a much larger supply. Also with student loans, as soon as the Department of Education got involved, you see admin just go through the roof and then colleges charged exactly the amount that the government would subsidize.

46:13Graham Stephan:It just seemed like that pushed it up.

46:14Andrew Yang:That is my big point, which is that the things that are driving the costs in these sectors are often born of the government and policies. and those are the things you want to attack and get to the root of um as to why certain costs are going out of control um but then there are two different issues it's like those things didn't get super expensive because everyone got rich uh you know like they got just distorted um and so you want to like i'm all for loosening zoning restrictions for example because like that might make the housing market like i'm all for trying to figure out like hey what are the i mean what was trump's idea 50-year mortgage and like 50-year mortgage that didn't make it it made zero sense so by the way i i know you i mean you and i and you know the three of us knew that immediately i actually put out a tweet making fun of it where i was like a 50-year mortgage is a good idea you know it's an even better idea 100-year mortgage but you know what's crazy is reading the comments

47:09Graham Stephan:how many comments were for the 50-year mortgage and said thank you finally this is a solution this is exactly what we've needed finally big w trump and then when he said you could pull out money from a 401k to buy everybody was for it and it just seems like why is there such a a distance between like what's factually and mathematically correct and what people think it just seems like you throw ideas that sound great and people just go for it oh yeah that's that's this era and i

47:37Andrew Yang:by the way like and i've put this out there too i love when anyone in power trump included is doing something uh trying to make life more affordable or like reducing costs of various things i love uh the trump um saves accounts for newborns like you know you argue against that and people be like oh it's not enough it's like you know sure shoot it's something like yeah a thousand thousand bucks per kid and then michael dell threw in another 250 for you know like a bunch of kids in texas yeah it's like well you know no you can't be mad at that stuff um so he's uh taking swings at trying to make housing more affordable and we're seeing what is and is not uh possible i mean 50 or more is a dumb idea 401k stuff you know also it's like you know like risky but yeah yeah right you're like taking a different risk but risky yeah it's like yeah i mean that was a chinscratch i was like how do i feel about this the coin flip yeah but but so you um so i'm enjoying that aspect um like the the actual problems have been allowed to fester over you know years and years where like when when you um adopt certain policies and then you come back 30 years later you know like things have gotten um very distorted and so when you're trying to undistort them then some of the um solutions like you know like the things he's doing like some of them aren't awesome but what you would actually need is a time machine you'd actually need to go back in time and be like hey guys like maybe we shouldn't be subsidizing certain things so much or we should be loosening housing um uh production uh and i know i think austin has been a real success story where they built and then rents have gone down um so it shows that good leadership and policy could actually

49:19Graham Stephan:make a difference what did you think about doge were you optimistic going into it you said that you loved targeting those really expensive government programs that waste a lot of money And I feel like that was kind of the idea going in.

49:31Andrew Yang:Yeah. I mean, I think I'm someone who is sympathetic to the goals of Doge and then was like very unhappy with the actual implementation. And I think that describes a whole lot of people. You know, I think a lot of business people are like, well, this is interesting. Like, I do sense that there's a lot of bloat and excess in there. And then it's like, wait a minute. Like, you know, the way they went about it, I thought was not the right way. And it made me sad because, you know, some of the goals I think Americans are on board with, including even earlier Democratic administrations who, you know, you can find clips of Bill Clinton or Obama being like, you know, we need to root out waste.

50:06Andrew Yang:I mean, who likes waste? There's a lot of waste. I mean, we all know that. Do you think they could ever fix waste in

50:11Graham Stephan:the government? I've looked at this in some detail. It just seems like this would be the highest ROI activity. Like we talk about canceling income tax. And when you look at how much the U.S. makes from income tax and the amount that's allegedly lost to fraud, you could practically cancel out a lot of income tax and be a net the same. It was like zero to six hundred thousand dollars, zero taxes. If you got rid of fraud. Yeah. I mean, that's something Americans should get on board with. At this point, we should be able to at least knock out like half. I'm going to say something

50:47Andrew Yang:that people are going to dislike intensely as someone who looked at this. So check it out. i've run private businesses um and so some people who run for president who have a business background like me might say i'm going to run government like a business uh and that sounds good to business people but they're very different things they have like different goals and and um um different structures and so if you were to be in charge of government and run it like a business you know what you would do pretty quickly you would increase uh the the size and efficiency of the irs because you know you invest a billion in irs agents you probably goose um receivables and by the way reduce fraud like if i were to spend a you know like and i could have a bounty system i could have like a you know like by the way you could also have a tax holiday which i totally would have done it's like look if you've been playing fast and loose for a number of years it's cool just come clean and then we'll like divvy it up we're not going to throw you in jail we're just going to like you know true size it like you know like give you like a slap on the wrist and like take 30 like i was going to do i wanted to do things like that because like you know i'm not like we we're not going to change the rules on you retroactively i'm not going to like shaft anyone but if you were to run it like a business that would be a phenomenal investment

52:07Graham Stephan:But here's what a lot of people say, because I've seen that point and I agree with you. But at the same time, people say, well, why should I be paying taxes when all that money is going to this waste? Like, why target me who's like trying to work and make money when like these people over here are basically just stealing it and wasting it?

52:25Andrew Yang:I would a thousand percent agree with that. And I would have been the first person to be like, hey, look. And by the way, I've been on Capitol Hill. I've hung out with, you know, senators and presidents, next presidents and whatnot. As soon as I get in there, their actual desire to try and shrink government. It's like, you know, it's very minimal. Like they don't care. You know, like that they become ensconced in this circuit of fundraising dinners and like the rest of it. And like the money becomes an abstraction as soon as you're in Capitol Hill, in part because the numbers are so big. But I would have taken joy and been like, look, here's what we're going to do.

53:04Andrew Yang:We're going to ratchet up the ability for our government to catch fraudsters. And that includes people who are right now wasting government money in like a whole million ways. and we all know that exists that it's coming out in dramatic fashion um you know right now in various quarters um and i i would have said like that's my responsibility go dollar for dollar it's like anything i ask you to do i'm gonna ask us to do um and then i'd like to beat it because i have like a you know a huge bloated budget to work with and anyone who's realistically taking a shot at this and this is one reason why we're so lost anyone who's really taking a look at this would also include the military in this um and i have a high school buddy who was an air force academy graduate and he said like his worst day of the year is was when he flew over the ocean just dumping um uh oil and gas into the ocean because and i asked like any normal person who's like why the fuck do you do that and he was like well because if we spent less on fuel in any given year then our budget would shrink the next year so we're gonna use the amount of fuel that's budgeted.

54:15Graham Stephan:We've heard so many stories of basically exactly that of waste within the military of just purposely going and spending money on things you don't need just to be able to get that budget and more the next year. And if they didn't hit that, they just get a lower amount and they may as well just waste the money at a higher amount.

54:32Andrew Yang:Yes. So you had the biggest efficiency czars in D.C., but then it'd be like, oh, I can't touch the military.

54:39Graham Stephan:Why does it work like that? Because in any other business, it wouldn't be like, you know, hey, if I don't spend all of my money this year, I'm not getting more. Why does it work like that for the government?

54:48Andrew Yang:So the big thing, the big Yangian word I want to leave everyone with from this conversation is incentives. Like that's what is driving us crazy. That's what's making government not work is that you have very, very powerful incentives for, let's say, each member of Congress. The military, shockingly, has a base or some kind of like economically generative thing in every congressional district in the country. Now, why is that? Does it just make sense to have 435 different factories or bases? They do it so that every single member of Congress benefits from military expenditures in terms of jobs they can point to.

55:32Andrew Yang:So if you have an incentive structure, let's say I, President Yang, would be like, look, guys, I love this country. We ought to be able to defend it. We ought to be able to do awesome stuff. But there is a ton of bloat in the military. And let's take a look at it. Let's try and get some expenses out. These things don't make us safer, for example. Maybe I could find, by the way, any reasonable person could find a whole host of things that we're doing that have nothing to do with our actual readiness or effectiveness, et cetera, et cetera. But then the incentives are, I'm going to reduce the spend in someone's district.

56:01Andrew Yang:and then that person then is like why am i i have to fight this because you know like you're going to reduce jobs at my base you can reduce jobs at that munitions factory you're going to reduce jobs at x and y so as soon as you end up running afoul of someone's political interests then they'll fight you tooth and nail um and and if i go to the american public too and say hey i'm going to reduce military spend like 50 percent of americans would be like screw you like that's terrible i'm like pro-military. I can be like, look, I'm pro-military too. I'm like not, you know, I'm like, I, yeah, anyway, I can stop there, but people get it like that.

56:38Andrew Yang:There's like, uh, um, there's, if you were serious about trying to curb excess spending, like military be included.

56:46Graham Stephan:So here's a theory that we've always joked about on the podcast. And I love mentioning this to anybody in office because hopefully one day we'll actually get done. 10 ,000 accountants, all auditing the IRS and also the government budget, seeing where the money goes. If we had some sort of registry or forum database where you could go in, see how much money is actually going into the IRS and then line item, where is it being spent? If some random agency in some department in some state and whatever needs to buy some televisions, I want to be able to see where our money is going and which televisions we're buying.

57:19Graham Stephan:And are we paying way above MSRP? Because realistically, we all know that there's some extra fee, extra buffer. We've heard of like the$22 muffins or cupcakes that was served at this one party. The$20 per ounce Starbucks coffee that is being provided at some random government agency party. And so if we actually had some sort of database where you could see line by line, what is being spent, then you have a million YouTube journalists that are all going to look through it and find a bunch of stuff and expose a bunch of fraud, a bunch of waste. And I think that that would be perfect. Once you have that, then you could have someone who runs for office campaigns on the idea of, I'm going to just go in and just cut out all of these things that we all agree is wasteful.

58:03Graham Stephan:Like if you just actually, we give our money to the government, their job is transparency to us. They're supposed to serve us. But if they just spend our money willy nilly, then it's like,

58:12Andrew Yang:I would enjoy that too. I would mean that there's a lot of ridiculousness going on and we all know it uh and um it's not in anyone's interest really to go against it to uncover it because one person's cost is another person's job you know i mean like like i could find all sorts of like crazy expenses and then like there are like a thousand people there's no transparency or barnacles on that now let me say i'm also you know like a conscientious human where it's like is it your fault that your job relies upon this inefficiency uh you know like i i would argue

58:47Graham Stephan:no i mean just like it's not some but there's a negative economic multiplier on their job so what is the purpose at the end of the day it's like just give them welfare instead of having them like continue to an inefficient system that that would be my very least that that would be my argument

59:03Andrew Yang:it would be look uh in like in a way um and that this was one of the ideas um i think doge was working with it's like look if i buy you out like we still win you know what i mean like i'm i don't want to be um like uh like a total jackass because like if someone got hired in some capacity i mean they're just like a random schmo who ended up working at this thing and they're you know they're doing their thing um and i say this in part Dart. So, my parents were immigrants to this country. My mom worked at a state university in New York. And so, like, I worked summers there. And so, like, you get a sense of, like, you know, various departments and employees.

59:43Andrew Yang:My aunt then worked for the state of New Jersey as a researcher. and so like i kind of visualize people in these random offices um and uh you know it's like like i if what they're doing doesn't actually create any value and it's all like a giant um bureaucratic mess and waste it's like we should find something else for you to do but like you know i don't want to be like cruel where it's like if they're you know like office parks full of these people you know you don't want to be a dick and be like hey like everyone get lost

1:00:15Graham Stephan:yesterday give them a year of their income and then tell them to figure it out some kind of by

1:00:19Andrew Yang:the way everything i'm describing um might not just apply to these government workers i mean at this point going back to the earlier part of our conversation um is like ai is going to do that uh like people who work in call centers right now ai is going to do that pretty soon to people who work in warehouses right now so like that like my passion in life in many ways is to enable humane, effective, realistic transitions for millions of people that are going to be displaced. And you can see now the system is kind of tremoring or whipsawing, like the ground is shaking beneath our feet. You know, people who never thought they'd have an issue all of a sudden, it's like, oh my God, like, you know, and some of that I get, and it's appropriate because there are millions of manufacturing workers who got kicked to the curb in this last generation.

1:01:09Andrew Yang:and our political system treated them like shit and ignored them and that was totally wrong slash like you know i mean the word that popped into my mind was actually evil it's like you you decimated communities people went home and like uh you know often drank themselves like very very bad things happen in these in these towns uh and now we're that's playing out in more and more sectors um And AI does not discriminate between the hardworking, conscientious truck driver or the, you know, the drunk one or whatever. Like, it's going to get you either way. And so the question is, what is the path for those people?

1:01:50Graham Stephan:And why did you decide to run for president? This episode is in partnership with Airbnb. So Graham and I just got back from a trip to Austin and Puerto Rico. And in both places, we book stays on Airbnb. and literally every single time we travel these days, we stay at homes on Airbnb. And if you're big on traveling like us, anytime we're away, the home just ends up sitting unused, but it could actually be generating extra income by hosting on Airbnb. So you guys may not know this, but at one point I actually hosted on Airbnb a spare bedroom in my house and it ended up being far easier than I expected.

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1:04:40Andrew Yang:So I ran for president because I wanted to educate the American public about AI and the Fourth Industrial Revolution and what was going to happen. and accelerate the end of poverty. Right now, as we're having this conversation, GDP per person is around 83 ,000 ahead, and that's going to shoot up because of AI. So at what level do you get to where you look around and be like, you know what, that's actually enough so we can alleviate gross poverty in this society. And if we don't make a move like that, in my opinion, we end up disintegrating and turning on each other and all sorts of terrible stuff happens.

1:05:16Andrew Yang:So I thought to myself, if I run for president, I estimate that I have a 15 % chance of accelerating the addressing of poverty in this society. And that seemed like a fine way to spend, you know, three years of my life. It's like if I told you you had a 15 % chance of speeding up the end of poverty and you... I might like to think more people would take that mission on if I said that to each of you. i don't know if my estimation of my probability of of accelerating was correct yeah but that's what i thought what was the most surprising thing about politics no i i was surprised at how uh fake shit was i suppose i mean i'd say like if you want to in what way like what exactly because

1:06:06Graham Stephan:i hear all the time that politics like dirty like they try to like find some dirt on you or someone's like, hey, tell us everything about your life in case something comes out, we know how to handle it. How true is that?

1:06:18Andrew Yang:There's some reality to all of that, for sure. Now, I led a fairly boring civilian life prior to running for president.

1:06:29Andrew Yang:And the closer you get to being a threat, the nastier it gets. and so i was the likable upstart presidential candidate for most of the campaign and the folks above me you could tell had very strict instructions do not waste any time tangling with yang like it's all downside no upside so what happens is every candidate in that environment has instructions from our teams like who to try and attack and nine times out of ten that person's above you um and so if you remember the race like i know we joked my team that i was like the grim reaper of presidential candidates where as soon as i passed you you dropped out it's like the joke was it's all fun and games until andrew yang catches you in the polls and then like you're out and did i catch up to kamala harris and have her drop out yeah i mean yes that did happen if you rewind the tape for the presidential primary in 2020 um but joe biden bernie sanders like all those folks like anytime we had any reaction they just like cut it off immediately because they're like i do not like my team has told me like waste no time on yang and so because of that um i had in some ways a fairly benign experience um because uh you know candidates didn't want to like and like um engage um but the press was bizarre where one thing that came out as an example is an MSNBC producer named Ariana Pacari.

1:08:04Andrew Yang:After she left, she said, I was given a list of candidates never to have on air, and Andrew Yang was one of those candidates. So there's stuff like that going around where the media, that was something that I wouldn't have necessarily believed.

1:08:17Graham Stephan:How did you single-handedly prevent Kamala Harris from winning the primaries in 2020?

1:08:22Andrew Yang:No, I did not. It was just that I did better than her, and then she dropped out. The two major arbiters of viability in that environment were donors and the press. And so if either or both of those groups turned on you, then you ended your campaign.

1:08:42Graham Stephan:Do you think that maybe the press was a thing five, six years ago and now it's all social media and algorithms?

1:08:48Andrew Yang:Yeah, it's a big deal. You know, so by the way, it is asymmetrical where if you look at confidence in national media, as an example, it's maybe twice as high among Democratic primary voters as it is among Republican primary voters. So there is the holy trinity of Democratic media institutions that let Democratic primary voters know who is good to vote for. And that trinity is the New York Times, MSNBC, and CNN. so now the average person listening to this maybe you don't care about what those um media organizations are saying but you know who cares are democratic primary voters in new hampshire south carolina um michigan nevada you have to look at four states who owns and controls those

1:09:36Graham Stephan:outlets like who's at the top making the decision how do you is it just like these people cozying

1:09:40Andrew Yang:up to those people yeah so if you rewind the tape again um when joe biden launched his campaign um the people that had the his first fundraiser event for him were the owners of comcast um which also own msnbc at the time and so uh there was like a fairly hostile um coverage environment for Joe Biden's primary rivals out of MSNBC. And is that stuff real? And again, as someone who like coming in was like, yeah, you know, like professionals, they do their jobs. I experienced some things that made me understand why some people just think it's fake news. Like think they're full of shit. I got it. I was like, oh my God, like some of that stuff is definitely happening.

1:10:26Andrew Yang:What did you experience? Well, again, like some producers being like, hey, not allowed to have you on. like the biggest thing was msnbc um was actively hostile towards me at different times um and then at some point i was like i'm boycotting msnbc until they like acknowledge that they've um covered me what do you mean actively hostile like what did that look like what do they say about you they like there would be a fundraising graphic being like hey these are the candidates that raise the most i would just be omitted from that graphic like let's say i was supposed to be like fourth in that graphic it would just skip me um so it would go from like third and fifth

1:11:02Graham Stephan:and would you tweet about them yeah i'd be like hey guys like fyi like i should have been fourth

1:11:06Andrew Yang:in that graph and what would they would they respond to you no um truly acted like you just did not exist yes and so then i i came out and crazy i came out and was like hey guys like what the hell um and then it got even worse instead of being like oh yeah like by the way some of the things that the New York Times actually shrunk me visually by several inches in a photo. How do you know they did that? Well, because I saw the photo and it's like, I'm not the same height as Amy Klobuchar or whatever the hell. And then they actually had to print a retraction being like, oh yeah, sorry, we like shrank.

1:11:39Andrew Yang:Yeah. Was it just an editor? Was it just like a random person? By the way, so my team got livid about this stuff. I would just be like, I just blew off most of them. It's like, who knows? But like some of the things you were like, well, there was one time CNBC actually put a different Asian guy that was not me. Like for CNBC, it was, uh, I'm 90 % sure it was CNBC, like had a picture of a guy named Jeff Yang and said like Andrew Yang, like presidential candidate, you know, and so by the way, the subtitle of my book that you have up there, um, Hey Yang, where's my thousand bucks? Uh, the alternate title was, Hey, am I racist?

1:12:15Andrew Yang:Or are you Andrew Yang? Um, which I, which I have been asked. Um, so yeah. Uh, so, so MSNBC, like eventually I was like, look guys, like, I don't know why you guys are being such jackasses, but like, like if you just acknowledge that you've covered us like, uh, in a way that, you know, is not great. By the way, they already apologized for a couple of things. So it was like, just acknowledge that you, you've covered us, um, unfairly and then we can move on. And their response to that was instead just to completely black me out for the entirety of the rest of the campaign, even when I made the seventh presidential debate in the primary.

1:12:52Andrew Yang:And people making the debate stage was like, you know, a news item where every press outlet would be like, hey, like, you know, Yang just made the debate. MSNBC wouldn't even cover that, wouldn't even cover the fact that I made. Why wouldn't you just sue them?

1:13:06Graham Stephan:I feel like that's the, like the fact that they intentionally went in and shortened you. That sounds like you could easily sue them.

1:13:13Andrew Yang:Oh, you know, I mean, that was the times like there was there was no upside, by the way, for a Democratic candidate, which I was at that time. I'm now an independent. I co-founded a new political party, the Forward Party. We're the third biggest party in the country by resources. Congratulations to us. Um, by the time I was a Democratic primary candidate and there was tons of downside and no upside to getting into a food fight with the Holy Trinity of Democratic voting opinion makers. And if you fast forward to 2028, this, this upcoming primary, these three opinion makers are diminished from where they were, but they're still powerful, particularly the New York times and MSNBC among this Democratic primary electorate that I'm going to suggest to you all, by the way.

1:13:58Andrew Yang:The average age of a Democratic primary voter might be something like 55. And the average age of an MSNBC viewer, 57. Something along those lines. So you might think, who the hell's watching these things? Why does anyone care? And people care less than they did, but they still can put their finger on it for a Democratic primary.

1:14:21Graham Stephan:Did anyone go and try to ruin your reputation or anything else beyond just getting excluded from media?

1:14:29Andrew Yang:you know there was some very very negative stuff um like um but it was you know i mean anyone looking at it was like what like yang made his employees sing karaoke at like a company event i mean there was just some stuff where it like it it like uh yeah i mean because because karaoke is fun and awesome um but um so that was actually something they said you did yes yeah and what was the bad part about that oh i mean that's what i said but it was that uh they had to listen to his singing that's really what they should have called out um i will say that uh wasn't for lack of trying in that um i had uh family members friends neighbors who uh all received this sort of in interrogation if you would sit for it oh yeah like that there was all sorts of um effort to try to unearth skeletons.

1:15:26Andrew Yang:And what do they do? Do they offer money?

1:15:28Graham Stephan:Do they say like, hey, here's a$50 ,000 reward if you give us some dirt?

1:15:32Andrew Yang:There was a lot of cajoling or there were a lot of efforts and elbow grease put in. And one thing I will say to you guys is that some people just find talking to the press really appealing because you end up maybe quoted in the New York Times or whatever, but you also end up with a relationship with a reporter which is currency in certain circles certainly in political circles i mean there's a layer of professionals who actually interface with these porters and like feed them stuff and then they they get that you can hire them um for access so so what were they at so

1:16:09Graham Stephan:explain to me like boots on the ground what was happening they were showing up and they were like knocking on doors like hey you know andrew yang just yes acting as what what were they were they

1:16:17Andrew Yang:acting as a journalist be like hey yeah this is um you know journalist x from um from the new times let's use them as an example be like you know uh have you had any contact with andrea and you worked with him x years ago you are his neighbor you you know are like this stuff would happen um dozens and dozens of times and then if someone were to say to them it's like yeah yeah you know been his neighbor um like nice guy like fine whatever and then they would like ask him like five negative questions and being like, has he ever, um, stir? Has there been arguments from it? Like did it done? And after the person was like, no, none of the above, then they were just like, okay, nothing click.

1:16:56Graham Stephan:But then if the person was like, well, there is this one time, but I don't even know if it was, you know? And then they're like, we have story. You know what I mean?

1:17:03Andrew Yang:Yes. And, and so they would call all of the people that I'd worked with over the last 20 years of my life to try and find, that's where they got the karaoke story. But like, they, they, was that true? Well, I mean, did we have a karaoke event at my own company? Yes, we did. Like, you know, did I give someone a microphone that maybe it was like.

1:17:22Graham Stephan:So they felt pressured to do karaoke and perform. I don't even know if we can post this anymore. Well, you know, we might get too much interest. I think if you had an employee a microphone, they felt pressured that they couldn't hand it back because their job was on the line. And they're like, oh, I have to sing and I don't sing and I feel self-conscious and so mad. So that means that you should not be able to run for president. Correct.

1:17:42Andrew Yang:but that is the level of detail you know and you imagine what it would take to get that particular anecdote it's like call everyone that has worked and there are you know I've worked with a lot of people over my career so you like call hundreds of people and then if 80 of them are like Yang's good, Yang's fine enjoyed working with them they're like nothing here but then you find like a few people who might have like some axe to grind or ambiguous or like blah blah blah blah then they'll be like ooh and then there was one disgruntled person that I let go or whatever that they had stories for days out of.

1:18:16Andrew Yang:And so that stuff is infuriating.

1:18:19Graham Stephan:And that was everything. Here's what I feel. You have it easy in the sense that you growing up didn't have social media and things that you posted to MySpace back in 2006 that people, I'm sure, could unearth. And people who are our who posted everything to Facebook when they're like 13 to 16 years old, I'm sure there is stuff out there that you just would look back and cringe at that a president 40 years from now, they're going to have their entire life. I think every single buddy is going to have that though. That's the thing. No, you're right because I'm a Gen Xer.

1:18:59Andrew Yang:Yeah. And so social media did not exist when I was a teenager. And so my record is barely clean, you know, like social media or otherwise. because again, I'm a pretty boring individual. Um, and it's going to be very, very hard for lots of people of a certain generation, um, to take on any public facing role because I can find some really rancid things you said when you were 14 years old. And by the way, I don't think you should be judged for that because like, you know, our brains aren't even complete at 14. And if I trash talk, um, you know, I mean, one thing that really distresses me is when people unearth various texts i mean who hasn't texted like frankly you know like off color stuff um to your and so yeah so social media post i i don't even think most of that should be held against you until you're a fully fledged adult your brain is complete the age of 25 and you have a position of authority because if even if you're like a civilian spouting off it's like i don't freaking care

1:19:59Graham Stephan:everybody said something 100 and that's another thing it's like obviously you know not to harp on but like the locker room talk that everyone is freaking out of. Obviously, what he said was not acceptable, but also every guy. Sorry, and most girls, I know most girls say stuff that's just crazy for the sake of saying something that's crazy. The girl banter is probably just as rancid as the guy. It's probably worse. It's 100 % worse. I never said anything.

1:20:27Andrew Yang:The take I want to share, and one reason why I think you guys are very, very important is that you guys have created your own audience and institution and you're trying to help people it's positive like i find you to be very balanced um the the way that our politics have gotten divvied up is that you essentially have the folks who believe in institutions like some of these press organizations i was talking about and then you have the folks who don't many of whom have built up their own independent followings and voices and these two um worlds have been um sort of naturally oppositional because if for example your independent media one of your natural things is like oh like legacy media dumb slow like you know kind of full of it maybe um politically compromised like all of the above now you look at this independent universe and i think that there are good actors and not so good actors and then if you're a good actor within this universe fantastic you know you're like doing people a lot of good and young people are going to actually be seeing your stuff more much more than they're going to see um some clip on cable tv yeah or whatnot so i i think i'm probably like you know someone jokingly called me uh you know it's like i'm somewhere in this zone um and i'm someone who understands look these institutions are disintegrating and faltering and somewhat compromised and corrupt um and my goal is to try and get them to modernize and be better and do better and help solve some of the problems that are on the ground, which I do think you're going to need government to do at scale.

1:22:05Andrew Yang:What's been your experience with lobbying?

1:22:07Graham Stephan:So like on the receiving end, have people came to you with a bunch of money saying, hey, if you could pass this one bill that makes it so gambling is one, you know, gambling loss is 100 % write-off. Bring the gambling age down to 15. Yeah, bring the gambling age.

1:22:22Andrew Yang:So first, you know, I'm not presently in control of government. So if anyone wants to send me money to lobby for the government, like, send on over. That said, I've actually had breakfast with it with my, you know, for example, a U.S. senator who was there to get lobbied. And so each person at the breakfast, myself accepted, had donated between five and ten thousand dollars to have breakfast with the senator. And each person went on the table is like, hey, you know, like we're trying to get like what the export tax lower. It's like, hey, we're trying to get a subsidy for this. And the senator was bored out of his mind.

1:23:00Andrew Yang:He was like, oh, my God, this breakfast sucks. And then I was there lobbying for, you know, like anti-poverty measures and he perked up. He was like, oh, I actually don't mind talking about this. But there's this lobbying industrial complex in D.C. and lobbying pays off huge. I think someone did a study and found that the return on lobbying investment is something like 1700 percent. In other words, if I put, you know, 20 million into lobbying, I'm going to get 17x. I'm going to suggest that everyone here would make that investment five ways from Sunday. Wow, that's crazy. So smart companies are lobbying and our political system right now is highly subject to it.

1:23:43Andrew Yang:Highly subject to it.

1:23:44Graham Stephan:Any other experience though? Because this is the type of stuff that everyone, you know, if they think about the conspiracy theories and how there's some rooms that they don't have access to and it's what all the powerful people are doing and there's massive you know seven digit numbers being wired from one person to another so they can just see this bill in where they just say hey this was their salary and then all of a sudden they buy like a nine million dollar house so like how did this person go from zero to like nine million dollar house and these bills passed yeah i mean there's there's a

1:24:14Andrew Yang:lot of um stuff going on uh and am i you know like um have i been in rooms where i'm like you know like i have a feeling and i i also will say too um you have these members of congress and senators who everyone they hang out with is loaded that's one of the things i will say too and then they're the center of attention and so then the people that are around them that are loaded it's like hey but get you in on this deal hey like i've got this tip for you and then the members like oh like uh you know like i have all these fancy friends who want to help elevate my way of life. Some of them have private planes.

1:24:54Andrew Yang:They're like, hey, you want to take this trip to like blah, blah, blah. And so that is pervasive. It's all the time. And the American people have picked up on that.

1:25:05Graham Stephan:But then how does the money end up in the government officials pocket? Because there's a difference donating to a campaign where the money has to be spent on campaigning. Yeah. But then how come everyone goes into office, they come out a few years later, and they're worth$50 million.

1:25:19Andrew Yang:So the member all the time is getting pitched various deals and it's like, look, there's like a special insidery deal. And I just want you to reverse position. Let's say I was like a big shot real estate investor. I had some sweet, sweet real estate investment where I'm like, ooh, this thing's going to yield, you know, 500, 1 ,000%. I'm pretty confident in it. And you knew a member of Congress. Would you be like, look, just put a bit of money into this deal and you're going to get 5 to 10x? You probably would because you know that member of Congress is going to love you and take your calls forever and thank you.

1:25:49Andrew Yang:And so that's what's happening is that the member is getting access to all sorts of sweetheart deals because on the other end, someone wants access and influence.

1:26:00Graham Stephan:But then why is that not made public? Like that seems like if you polled all Americans, let's say we have 400 million Americans, I would say maybe less than 10 % would disagree with making all that information public.

1:26:13Andrew Yang:Yeah, totally. I mean, so 80, you know, 75 % of Americans are for something called term limits, as an example, you know, because we think people should maybe do their job and come home and not just make a, you know, perma career out of it. 83 % of Americans are for trying to get some money out of politics because we can sense that everyone's getting bought and sold. um the the problem and i have i've actually given a ted talk on this topic i don't know if it's part of your research um that popular will is now getting refracted in a way that we're not actually getting any of those things like i can give you like a bunch of things that 75 to 85 percent of americans are foreign and we're not getting them um so uh but what you're saying is totally correct I mean, everyone would love transparency and everyone would love to go through both members investment deals and government expenditures with a fine tooth comb.

1:27:08Andrew Yang:We'd find all sorts of crazy stuff.

1:27:10Graham Stephan:How common is insider trading? I love these accounts that break down like Polymarket and Kalshi and they say like, hey, this trader has 100 % success rate. Just put like$50 ,000 on this obscure thing to happen. Yeah.

1:27:25Andrew Yang:Again, they're getting. so I'm you know I'm not going to pretend I have all the access that you know a senator has or whatnot but even I sometimes catch wind of various things that are going to happen before they happen like my joke is I don't know if you guys play basketball but like one of the things people say is like just be around the hoop you're on the hoop that sometimes the ball comes to you and like you know get get a cheap two um so I I would describe myself as being sort of hoop adjacent but there are um various officials who are just like standing underneath the hoop and they catch wind of everything i mean if you're on certain committees like you see all these deals that are uh you know happening before they happen before they get announced like all the time and then the very natural thing is to be like hey you know i hear this deal's happening and then and then it could be your wife it could be you know a family member just the elbow i mean that stuff's I'm sure.

1:28:21Graham Stephan:If you could just let us know, you know, we will not take advantage of it. If you tell us, you know, you got information about something's going to happen. Tell Jack. We're not, we're not going to take advantage of it. You know, I'm sure you would never do such a thing.

1:28:32Andrew Yang:And you would never then share it with your listeners. No,

1:28:35Graham Stephan:behind the paywall, of course. So you got to pay.

1:28:38Andrew Yang:That's the definition of premium content. We do have a membership. We have a membership. We do have a membership.

1:28:43Graham Stephan:It's great. It really helps us out a lot and supports our editor, Mikey. So did you ever get one crazy lobbying offer? where they were like, hey, we'll take you on a private jet, you know, first class vacation. I guess that's why we're going to take you over here. Private jet, first class. They wanted to offer you a bunch of money in order to slip something through the bill.

1:29:02Andrew Yang:I have been as I have been offered like all expense paid luxury trips and things of that nature for people that wanted to get me on board with, you know, their interests or cause like that sort of thing has happened. But no one's ever gotten so blatant and just been like, here's a check for like excised for you to do our bidding. It hasn't gotten to that point. It's possible if I'd said yes to the luxury trip, that check would have been waiting for me. On the flip side too, it's like I am married, I have two kids. I say no to a lot of things, particularly international travel, because it needs to drive one of my goals.

1:29:48Andrew Yang:um and i since i ran for president thank you to everyone who supported me if you didn't miss your chance maybe you know maybe we'll get another one um i've been trying to alleviate poverty which i see as the most addressable major problem that we have um because again 83 000 uh per capita gdp and a big up arrow attached to it ai's uh you know separating now the the fiction between like, hey, if you're a good person, you're on the good side of the curve. And if you're like a lazy, dumb person, you're on the bad side of the curve. It's like, yeah, the curve, the curve doesn't matter. It doesn't care.

1:30:28Andrew Yang:It doesn't care how moral you are. So my efforts in that direction have been political through Humanity Forward, which super proud that we increase the child tax credit by 80 billion per year. And that's going to go to poor american families with kids so to the extent i have one crowning achievement uh 80 billion a year i mean that's like you know it's pretty good career accomplishment now you know saying you like if you want you can dig into um you know i wrote something about it called like fewer poor kids um on my blog a number of months ago um and then i co-founded this political party the forward party which now has 79 elected officials and i'm convinced that the two-party system is not going to address any of the things that we talked about because both of them are you know i mean they're doing their thing and um one of the things i i point out what do you guys think the approval rating for u.s congress is as we're having this conversation 45 i'm gonna say 50 15 percent oh wow 17 percent um like if you look at historic low yeah yeah i mean it might have been that high like you know x years ago when you were in high school or whatever but now it's 30 years ago now let's call it um 15 what is the re-election rate for incumbent members of congress it's probably like 80 oh yeah i'm gonna say 90 94 wow so you have the biggest gulf any of us can imagine and one of my jokes is like hey what if 85 of your customers were unhappy but you changed absolutely nothing uh year after year i mean that's how american politics feels to the vast majority of americans that's one reason why most of the people who are watching this try to avoid politics which i get um and so um so i've been trying to cure the political system um through the forward party.

1:32:31Andrew Yang:And then the third thing I'm doing, because I'm a cool entrepreneur like you guys, maybe not as cool, whatever, is I looked at the average American's cost structure and said, how can I get more money into your hands without waiting for DC to do it? So do you guys know Mark Cuban?

1:32:48Graham Stephan:Oh, no, not personally. I've talked to him on Instagram. See, there you go.

1:32:53Andrew Yang:So Mark and I are friends and he started a company called Cost Plus Drugs. a number of years ago, which I think is awesome. And so we've been talking about a lot of broken marketplaces and public policy problems. So Mark being a baller was like, Hey, what if I just buy generic drugs in bulk and then make them available to the American consumer at a 15 % markup, which is enough for me to like build a business, but not like gouge everyone. And so I saw that and was like, Oh my God, Mark Cuban is saving hundreds, maybe thousands of lives every quarter because some people are able to get drugs that they wouldn't have gotten otherwise so i looked at mark and then i said um is there anything else we can cost plus in american life um so the average american household's cost structure goes housing health care education food fuel transportation fuels heating too transportation media it's where you guys come in yeah and then uh wireless data and connectivity.

1:33:56Andrew Yang:So I'm now going to ask you a question that I'm deeply interested in, but maybe no one cares. Who is your wireless carrier? AT &T Boost. The average American is spending$83 a month on their wireless connection. So everyone listening to this can calibrate against that. Guess how much the average European is spending?

1:34:16Graham Stephan:$25.

1:34:17Andrew Yang:Yeah, I'm going to guess 20 something. It's$35. So it's a little bit higher. But that$48 a month difference times 12 months uh it's like let's call it yeah it's it's closer to 600 um times the hundreds of millions of americans with a wireless plan comes to a hundred billion dollars a year that americans are spending on their wireless in excess of what europeans are spending and if you look at where the money is going so you have this extra hundred billion in wireless spend Verizon is paying its shareholders$11 billion a year in dividends. It has a 6, I think it's like a 6.4 % dividend, which if you give people investment advice, you're like 6.4 % dividend is freaking dope.

1:35:01Graham Stephan:Stock price just keeps going down now.

1:35:04Andrew Yang:Yes, but AT &T, 4.7 % dividend. Both of these companies, the primary appeal to shareholders now is the cash. These two businesses are now taking money from consumers who are spending on average, let's say, like it's probably higher than 83 it's actually more like 90 and then giving it to their shareholders the tune of 18 billion a year that you can identify just in dividends then you have marketing spending a bunch of other stuff so i looked at this and said wait a minute if i can get you to 35 uh a month or close to it i could save the average american 600 bucks a month directly times all the years you're going to be a wireless subscriber which is like let's say 40 years minimum 40 times 600 is 24 ,000 and then you put any interest rate on it and compound it like what is that it'll make you a millionaire probably or something maybe make a lot of money a few hundred grand with noble mobile we the average noble mobile user is paying 42 a month when you go abroad we charge you five dollars a day and then cap it at 10 days so the most you could pay is 50 plus we'll discount you on domestic data where we'll rebate you up to 20 a month based on data you don't use so um so when i went to europe like i didn't get charged for domestic data because i didn't use any so what we've done is we've cost plussed the data that americans are using in order to try and get more money back into your hands and then reward you if you use less data the point though is that we're going to cut the average american's wireless bill in half um and then any money that you save on this data rebate, which we call the data dividend, we pay a five and a half percent interest rate.

1:36:38Andrew Yang:So it becomes a set it and forget it savings plan. That's cool. That also has the upside of getting you to doom scroll a little bit less. The average Noble mobile user spends 17 % less screen time in subsequent months because the less screen time you use, the more money we give you at the end of the month. So our hook is like get paid to use your phone less. Now that only applies to data you use when you're outside of like Wi-Fi in the house and office. So this is like when you're out to dinner with your friends. But it's, you know, so that's my big commercial effort to try and get billions of dollars back into American consumers' hands.

1:37:13Graham Stephan:Why can't you just offer free phones, free service, but just sporadically you have to watch an ad to like open your phone or like you're in the middle of texting and just a five second ad comes up and you say hey in the day you're going to get x number of ads but everything is free

1:37:31Andrew Yang:there are ad supported models out there we looked at it um i didn't hate it like i was trying to get things as uh value priced as possible um where we landed was that most people um wanted enough data where it would have been tough to do with just pure ad support um just by the math like we probably could have gotten your bill down somewhat um but uh it we don't think we could

1:37:58Graham Stephan:have zeroed it out if it was purely ad supported i bet you could do crazy ads if you allow them to share their data and what they're browsing online and let's say they're looking for a mortgage

1:38:08Andrew Yang:that is worth so much money it yeah so there's probably a business to be built around what you're describing we actually went the other direction where we pledged never to share your data uh like we're um so when i ran for president i was like look your data should be yours and like you know we should pay you for it and stuff like that um so with noble we said look we we don't even have data of yours that we can share uh and so that would diminish the upside for an ad supported model because you'd need to know a lot about a consumer in order to monetize effectively

1:38:41Graham Stephan:but there's probably a business there in terms of running for president i'm curious does it matter and to what degree if you run as a Democrat or a Republican? Like how much strategy goes into choosing a side?

1:38:52Andrew Yang:It'd be a lot, depending upon what's going on in a particular cycle. So I'm just going to call out RFK ran for president as a Democrat in 24. And then the Democrat said, we're not going to have a primary. And then he switched to independent and he wound up endorsing Trump down the stretch. So I ran in the Democratic primary in 2020. and the party with an incumbent for the last couple cycles has essentially shut down their primary entirely you guys might not remember this just no one does but in 2020 donald trump was the incumbent and there were a couple of republicans who tried to run against him in the republican primary and the republican party was like yeah we're not gonna have a primary and then the democrats did the same thing in 24 so the first thing you have to make a determination of is like which party will actually have a contest um if you were to decide to run for president as a republican and let's say i mean trump theoretically will not be back on the ballot 28 but um but uh you know like they they wouldn't actually count votes and like uh hold debates and any of that stuff whereas the democrats 100 will in uh 27 28 like i think on the 28 side Republicans, it's going to be J.D.

1:40:07Andrew Yang:Vance. And I do not think there's going to be like a robust, genuine primary. Who do you think is going to run against J.D. Vance? Well, this is the point, is that the parties have become less and less interested in having a genuine contest. And so if J.D. Vance becomes, let's say even he becomes president before 2028, he would truly be running as the incumbent. And so I'm not sure the Republican Party will have a genuine primary against him. I think it might just be J.D. Vance. What about the other side? On the other side, it's going to be everybody. It's going to be dozens of candidates. And I know a bunch of those folks.

1:40:49Andrew Yang:But every -

1:40:49Graham Stephan:If you were to make a prediction, though, and say, hey, I think it's going to be this, who would you say?

1:40:54Andrew Yang:You mean, like, you want me to list dozens of names or do you want me to list the front

1:40:58Graham Stephan:runners? I want you to list the front runner who you think has a good chance to go up against J.D. Vance.

1:41:02Andrew Yang:Well, right now, if you were to look at Polymarket or Calci, any of those things, I think that they'd have Gavin Newsom as the front runner. Yeah, that's what I think. And he is taking advantage of the current media environment to stake a claim. I will say I've met the vast majority of these human beings and Gavin commands a room and is a better political athlete than the vast majority of other Democrats that are going to be running. He's just really, really good in a room. He's tall. He's good looking. He's got good hair. Like, you know, I mean, the dude, it's been a fascinating experience because I've been in these rooms now.

1:41:38Andrew Yang:The guy does have like that kind of TV president vibe. Is it that it factor? Yeah, no. I mean, you tell him when he's in the room. There are various candidates that don't have that.

1:41:51Graham Stephan:Is that important to have? Do you think you need to have that it factor and that presence?

1:41:57Andrew Yang:That it factor makes a big difference, particularly now in this media environment. It helps on the ground in these states. It helps with social media. It helps with all that stuff.

1:42:09Graham Stephan:What do you think about Zoran Mamdani? Because he clearly had the it factor. He got so many people just completely obsessed with the idea of him winning the mayoral election of New York. I haven't seen someone capture a mayor election like Mamdani. His engagement just alone on Instagram is insane. Millions of likes. Even people in LA were like, I wish Mom Donnie would come here. I've never seen someone captivate a young audience like him. What do you think of his rent control policy slash fiscally very liberal policy or fiscally progressive policy, I should say?

1:42:44Andrew Yang:So Zoran and I are friendly. We've known each other for a while. And he's young himself. It's one reason why this stuff clicks online because he's actually native to it. Um, so I, Andrew Cuomo might've been 60 years old and Zoran might've been 35. Um, so when you talk about who's going to be using Instagram and TikTok and right now that stuff is a huge advantage, uh, in terms of your ability to move and build with these tools. Now Zoran's policies, um, some of them I don't like at all. Some of them I, you know, like I'm very, very amenable to like, do I, do I like the idea of subsidizing childcare for, for working families in New York?

1:43:32Andrew Yang:Yeah, I do. It's like childcare is really expensive. And if you can like make it, you know, less of a burden, great. You know, that probably means like the parents will be able to get to work more. And like, you don't have someone who has to stay at home. Like that's a win. I thought the government grocery stores was a terrible idea. And so like, you know, like I, I, I think he's backed away from that one because enough people have gotten to him and been like, yo man, like, like that's dumb. Um, so there, um, and you know, like, I, I think I wrote something up to this effect, trying to differentiate between some of these policies.

1:44:01Andrew Yang:Like, I think free buses is a really bad idea because there are folks who are going to be really poor or homeless adjacent or just going to use them as moving shelters. And then like the working class New Yorkers trying to get to work will be like, yo, like this bus is much worse than it was when I was paying. So some of these things, you know, we're going to we're going to see like I will say as someone who spent time with Zoran, he's a smart dude. He's adaptable. And so if something isn't working, like he'll be like, hey, this is this turns out it's not working.

1:44:30Graham Stephan:Sometimes what I feel is that you get a person who has that it factor, who is just charismatic, good with people, understands how to read someone, knows kind of what to say and has just, I think, complete confidence. You take that person and then you apply certain policies to a voting base that let's just say is like 52 percent. And let's just say in New York City, it's renters. As long as you could just appeal to that 52 percent, you're going to get voted in. Not because the ideas are better, but just because you have appeased the 52%. Graham is a very strong proponent of having some sort of IQ test for people to vote.

1:45:10Graham Stephan:Graham says that we should disqualify some of the uneducated. Because sometimes you just throw out ideas. I'm not saying you, but I'm just saying people throw out ideas that just sound great on paper, but would never work, that don't actually apply, but they sound good. And people who don't know the difference just say, yeah, I want that. Like rent control. Yeah. Who could ever get upset? Freeze the rent. Make grocery stores free. You may as well just say, hey, everyone gets a Lamborghini. A Lamborghini should never cost more than$15 ,000. Everyone should have a Lambo. Everyone should have a parking spot.

1:45:46Graham Stephan:And then people say, wow, that sounds awesome. But they don't think, OK, well, who's going to pay for that? How's that actually going to work? but then they get elected because they have every other characteristic more of what you're

1:45:57Andrew Yang:describing is definitely going to happen now because we're in an age of social media fueled charismatic leaders and candidates and hundreds maybe thousands of people saw what Zoran did and were like oh my gosh like I have to try and do that and now most people are not as talented as him and there's not going to be as much oxygen and a lot of other races that are not the New York city mayoral to sort of a sexy like high visibility race but they're going to be a lot of people cripping from this playbook that are going to try and make similar appeals yeah so i'm going to make

1:46:30Graham Stephan:a prediction here's what i think is going to happen i think we've swung so far into the realm of capitalism that it's alienated 90 of people that weren't able to get on that roller coaster ride and participate and because of that we're going to swing so far to the other side that i think we're going to see a similar person, if not Mom Donnie, running for president who is going to significantly raise taxes, stifle innovation, limit business, implement wealth taxes. I think it's going so far in the opposite direction because, again, the 90 % of people that weren't able to participate in capitalism are now left behind.

1:47:06Graham Stephan:And the only thing they could do is let's go for these 10 % that have gotten ahead. And we deserve some of that. And let's tax out the wazoo and since we're not going to cut social security we're not going to cut government spending we're not going to cut the national debt the only way out of it is to either print more which impacts the 90 or it's to tax the people at the top that's what i think that is what i was trying to avoid

1:47:32Andrew Yang:when i ran for president in 2020 and i would say to very wealthy friends of mine in silicon valley guys this is enlightened self-interest because if you don't make the system work for you know like the bottom 80 or whatever the number is like the pendulum is going to swing in a way that is really really bad for innovation um and so a number of years ago around that time frame actually um i was approached about doing a tv show called the future of with andrew yang future of transportation future of health care and they pull they market tested and said hey andrew bad news americans don't like the future you know and and so i was like and they were like okay, you tested well, but like future people are scared of it.

1:48:14Andrew Yang:Um, and so my argument to my, my friends, uh, who are entrepreneurs and whatnot, I was like, guys, we have to make America's optimistic about the future. And I feel like they're included in it, or they're going to turn on the system and all the people that have been successful within it and castigate everyone. And like, that's what you have to avoid. So I'm not disagreeing with your characterization of where the winds are going to blow and where the pendulum is going to swing because there's a lot of frustration. Yeah.

1:48:39Graham Stephan:I've spoken with a few really wealthy people too, who have said that they want to start taking their money out of the United States and setting up accounts elsewhere or putting it in gold, silver, certain other assets that could easily be moved, Bitcoin, because they feel like at some point there is going to be a substantial wealth tax or a penalty for being successful, saving money.

1:49:01Andrew Yang:By the way, when I ran and even I think like last month or whatever, I think wealth taxes are a disaster because wealth is portable. yeah you saw what happened in california is wild all the people that left and and so i joke with people i was like guys you cannot think that rich people are rancid assholes um but that they'll stick around if you decide to like tax it's like those two things don't exist in conjunction but

1:49:25Graham Stephan:it's but it's but again but that goes back to my point that it's popular that people uh the the the 90 that didn't participate it's easy to to have a scapegoat of like this is the problem and it's a person or it's this entity it's this corporation they're the reason and it's so easy to explain people grab their mind around like oh it's oh it's that it's that person it's jack you know

1:49:48Andrew Yang:it's one reason why i loved what michael dell and um ray dolly and his wife did with like the trump accounts where it's like super wealthy people if you take the government out as a middleman will they give billions of dollars to poor kids apparently yeah like they're more interested in that than giving it to the government who they think it's going to end up like you know wasting a certain percent of it and like yeah exactly it's like if i can just give it straight to the kids and i know it's getting to the kids i am down yeah and that would that should be like the the vision is you go around to people and be like look i get it you don't trust the government to do it right to administer they're going to hire a bunch of people bloat all sorts of weirdness let's just get it straight to the poor kids you know like and then and then you could go to americans and be like, see, like, look like there's like a real effort.

1:50:38Graham Stephan:This is kind of a broad question, but on the topic of progressive tax policy, how much tax is too much?

1:50:46Andrew Yang:I mean, I'm, I'm a numbers guy where it's like, you want to, uh, you don't want to discourage things that you want more of. Um, so one of the things, by the way, I I'm actually pro people working. Um, and so having income taxes on people's jobs, it's like in some ways, like not very smart like if you can find other ways to get the money you need um when people ask me it's like hey yang how do you want to fund a lot of things you want to fund it's like look do i think there should be like an ai robots compute tax like i do uh and some people will be like oh you can't do that because then we're going to lose to china it's like i do not but the ceo of anthropic dario amade said look we're going to gut the the entry-level white collar workforce and when asked what we should do he said you should tax us um and i agree with him it's like like the the ai competition with china in my mind is going to be determined by a number of things but it's not going to be determined by like the last 10 cents on the dollar you know what i mean like if um and uh and again you want to avoid an environment where everyone's turning on each other and and so i i think dario's making the right case like i'm more interested in taxing that that I am taxing labor because I like labor.

1:52:03Andrew Yang:Like I'd like people going to work. I like all that stuff. Um, you know, like my joke was, um, you know, when I was running for president, it's like, I don't care what the town dentist is paying. Like I care what, um, you know, what AI is paying. Yeah. Are you going to run again for president? I know I say to folks, like I'm almost too young not to where you know like love this country dearly like we'll probably run again sure I mean I think you're too young

1:52:31Graham Stephan:to do it I think you need to get like 40 more years on you if you want to run for president you need at least 50 more years of experience yeah when you're 80 I'll be right there

1:52:41Andrew Yang:you know I will say I get asked all the time and it's very encouraging you know so thank you to those of you who supported me if you didn't support me you know again you'll probably have another chance at it

1:52:50Graham Stephan:And if you do run for president, it would be amazing if then we could have you back on the show. But also, also. I've heard about this before, but I am after. I truly believe, because we just had Rick Caruso on the podcast. And he's. Really like Rick. Yeah. Same. And we were telling him that everyone runs their campaigns so poorly. And obviously, during this last election, getting on podcasts and utilizing social media in an effective way kind of determined the election in a lot of people's eyes. so we're happy if you do run for president reach out to us and we will 100 bounce any ideas back and forth with you because we know like the social media landscape very well well guys i would love

1:53:31Andrew Yang:that you will be among the first people i call thank you for that that means a lot i would be

1:53:36Graham Stephan:so under this we were talking to uh before we even did a podcast with rick and i'm like oh my gosh if rick just does like xyz and goes on this podcast and does this thing and makes these tiktok posts and post this like i'm like it's so easy it's so for you later yeah i am sorely disappointed that

1:53:53Andrew Yang:he did not decide to run for us too uh i thought governor mayor i thought for sure i was i was uh

1:53:59Graham Stephan:thinking he would make a bid for governor i was so hoping that um i don't know if i saw that post it was disappointing i mean i would love for him to run because it's just like if he could run california like he does the grove and his malls he would be running the whole state like disneyland you would show up in california and it would be like you thought it was in the movies in the 90s with palm trees everywhere and girls in bikinis running around and everyone is a tan when when i

1:54:27Andrew Yang:sat with him it really seemed like he was going to run so i'm genuinely wondering what changed i mean you guys probably got the same vibe when you sat yeah percent yeah that message came out of the yeah well rick not too late you could always change your mind um on on my side for your listeners uh we're offering three free months our best offer for frankly people who follow me but it's noble mobile.com slash yang for three months off your wireless bill which would save the average american household 250 bucks or so um you guys do awesome work trying to educate people as to how they can uh you know strengthen uh their own futures uh and i'm thrilled that we've had this long overdue conversation i feel like we should have done this a long time ago i would

1:55:11Graham Stephan:have loved to. Last question I have for you. In 2019, you made a series of predictions. I want to say pretty much all of those came true. What is your prediction for 2026 and beyond?

1:55:22Andrew Yang:Wow. So I did write a column, 10 predictions for 2026. And so I'm like thinking which one your people want to hear about most. It's probably stocks, housing, AI. yeah yeah that it was those i think that uh the ai investment um environment has gotten ahead of itself and is uh overblown um so i i think we're going to see a down draft uh over there um and two things can be true at the same time you could have a bit of a bubble um in terms of valuations and also have the underlying reality uh be real um so i'm old enough to remember something called the dot-com bubble i don't know where you guys were at that point i was 11 years old yeah and so uh this reminds me of that where pets.com and like all the dot-coms were like we're gonna take over the world and they got ahead of themselves but then the internet did change everything yeah it just took a little bit longer and some of the initial investors lost their shirts um i feel the same way about ai right now where it's like ai is going to change everything but um some of

1:56:26Graham Stephan:these valuations are out of whack does that mean to short the market or does that mean that we could be going to short at &t because there's a new new name in town new boss yeah yeah i should

1:56:37Andrew Yang:i mean don't do it for the dividend they might have to cut that thing um so that the problem in all of these stories is the timing is that you just don't know how long it's going to go on for So I, as you can tell, am pessimistic, but like, you know, like you can't figure out when to retrench. But I will say that right now I'm fairly negative on some of the like most famous companies in the space.

1:57:05Graham Stephan:One thing I will say before we wrap up is that they were calling for a dot-com bubble, 1997. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. 1999. Three and a half to four years before it burst, they were saying this is a bubble and it kept going up higher. And what's funny is that you see where they called it a bubble and where it actually popped was so much higher. Like you just see these year-long green candlesticks and it's like bubble at the very bottom and then green candlestick and then green candle and then big green candlestick. You just can't know. You just can't know. So if you had sold out when they had first said it's a bubble, even the place that it fell was higher than the first bubble.

1:57:45Andrew Yang:Completely agree because I was there. Yeah. And yeah, like you didn't want to get in the way of it. No. But then when it did pop, it popped pretty hard. it was um you know i i had an anecdote where i attended a launch party for a.com and then the closing down party um within like 15 months of each other i mean those things did happen um back then and when i started noble vc said look if you just put ai in the name and the thesis like i'll cut you a check right now um in a way i was like okay i sense a theme going on um so uh you know you can take that for what it's worth cool well thank you so much for coming on

1:58:31Graham Stephan:the iced coffee hour that was an amazing conversation thank you guys so much for watching of course at the end of the day we would not be here if not for you how cool is this okay this is unreal so cool if you had told me this in 2019 i wouldn't have believed it no oh well

1:58:45Andrew Yang:thanks guys really i'll come back anytime and keep listening to these guys they're very very savvy Thank you very much. Come to Vegas. Come see us there. Oh, crap. Yeah, we're going to have a freaking party in Vegas.

1:58:54Graham Stephan:That's happening. You guys want to go to the party? You can hang out with us there. That'd be great. Thank you, guys. We'll put some sort of link in the description. Until next time. See ya. By the way, if you enjoyed this episode, we just posted our next one early for members. So if you click the join button, you could literally begin watching our next episode right now. Really hope you enjoy it.

1:59:21Graham Stephan:Rinse knows that greatness takes time, but so does laundry. So Rinse will take your laundry and hand deliver it to your door expertly cleaned. And you can take the time pursuing your passions. Time once spent sorting and waiting, folding and queuing, now spent challenging and innovating and pushing your way to greatness. So pick up the Irish flute or those calligraphy pens or that daunting Beef Wellington recipe card and leave the laundry to us. Rinse. It's time to be great. you

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Timestamps:
00:00:00 - Intro
00:01:34 - His most accurate predictions
00:03:48 - Jobs AI will replace
00:06:21 - Jobs safe from AI
00:11:10 - AI replacing courts?
00:16:10 - Sponsor - Huel
00:17:51 - How people can use AI
00:21:13 - His $1,000/month plan
00:25:15 - Is it easier than ever to get rich?
00:34:09 - Sponsor - Plaud AI
00:48:50 - Thoughts on DOGE
00:49:36 - Government overspending solutions
00:54:07 - Government budgeting explained
00:57:11 - Auditing the government
01:01:20 - Sponsor - Airbnb
01:02:36 - Sponsor - Relay
01:04:03 - Why he ran for president
01:05:20 - Most surprising part of politics
01:07:46 - 2020 primaries and Kamala Harris
01:21:33 - Experience with lobbying
01:26:37 - Insider trading in government
01:28:18 - Craziest lobbying offers
01:38:11 - Republican vs Democrat run
01:39:42 - Who could run against JD Vance
01:41:37 - Thoughts on Mamdani
01:50:06 - How much tax is too much?
01:51:44 - Will he run again?

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