The crowded field is actually in Yang’s favor. If the list were smaller, he might have been cut off. At this point, in order to cut him off, they’d have to cut out a lot of people.
While I knew about the debate qualification rules, I just found out that there are 169 declared Democratic candidates according to filings with the FEC. Only 20 of those people will hit the debate stage.
The DNC already set the rules for qualifying to the debates. Either poll 1% in 3 qualifying polls or get 65K donors from 20 or more states.
Yang has met both qualifications. The cut off is 20 people. So far, only 19 people qualified. Of those, only 13 people qualified on both qualifications. Yang was one of those 13.
The DNC just instituted a 2% rule where those people polling over 2% will be randomly split between the first and second night and people polling under 2% will be randomly split between the first and second night with 10 participants each on 2 nights.
They’re trying to avoid the “kiddie table” format of past debates. On each night, there will be someone polling higher and someone polling lower.
Because the Freedom Divident (UBI) is opt-in, depending on what the disabled person is already getting in benefits, that disabled person might get more than a healthy person. If the disabled person is currently receiving more than $1,000/mo in benefits, the disabled person would opt-out to continue receiving the benefits they have now.
Minors are not given a Freedom Dividend because the money would legally go to a parent who might not give it to them. The 17 year old would get the $1,000/mo when they turn 18. A 17 year-old disabled person might be getting disability benefits which wouldn’t change.
Capital gains taxes are already included in the analysis.
The reason for choosing a VAT is to get around the fact that many of the biggest corporations in the country don’t pay corporate taxes. Raising corporate taxes on corporations claiming zero income would yield the same zero taxes. Companies like Amazon, NetFlix, GM and others, all paid zero income taxes.
Also, any tax that corporations did pay through an increase in corporate tax would likely be passed through to the consumer at the same rate as a VAT which would make the corporate tax regressive to the consumer.
Based on a study that aggregated pass-through rates on VATs, the average pass-through rate was 55% for increasing VATs.
Wouldn’t the same be true of an increase in corporate taxes as well?
IANAL but “maximize shareholder value” is not necessarily the same as “maximizing profits”. In the most simple case there is R&D that diminishes the net profit line but long term may increase shareholder value. Is there case law that define what counts as shareholder value? It cannot be as simplistic as short term stock fluctuations or the years final profit loss line.
New Zealand is the first western country to build its budget around well-being. Yang’s human-centered capitalism shares some of the same goals, but of course specific to the US. Although Yang’s policies don’t call for a budget item, the idea is that the things people measure are the directions people move, so some of these measures will be highlighted as goals.
One of the goals would be changing the downward slide of lifespan in the US. Some of those statistics are depressing.
Someone on Reddit did a macro to show how the age range of males committing suicide has changed from just the very old to people across the age spectrum from from 2005-2015. All-American Despair
For the past two decades, a suicide epidemic fueled by guns, poverty and isolation has swept across the West, with middle-aged men dying in record numbers
Rep. James Clyburn says that Yang has some innovative ideas and that he wouldn’t be surprised to see some of the other candidates take on his ideas. “And that’s good!”
Perhaps it’s a coincidence and the ideas are floating around, but I saw Elizabeth Warren’s plan on increasing apprenticeships based on the German model, and it reminded me of what Yang’s been saying all along about increasing job training. He gives the stat that about ~5-6% of education in the US is based on the apprenticeship model whereas it’s ~56% in Germany.
Yang’s stance on higher education is that although he’s favorable to higher education (he’s Asian, after all, he jokes), the statistics on higher education is that the percent of college graduates has been in the low to mid 30% for a while. 52.9% of students who enrolled in 2009 finished college within 6 years. The underemployment rate of recent college graduates is 44%.
Taken together, that means that a lot of students who are steered toward college won’t finish and of those who do, many of them won’t need a college degree to do their job. They will also have accumulated an average of $38K in debt to do it. Yang is for a loan forgiveness deal for students. He also proposes that in order for schools to get federal funds, they have to reduce their administrative personnel percentages.
It’s good to see Elizabeth Warren pushing for the same thing. Perhaps she’ll pick up or coincidentally have some of Yang’s other ideas. Yang speaks of her highly often.
Yang is scheduled to be on The Young Turks on Thursday 6/6/19 and on The Bill Maher show on Friday 6/7/19.
The Bill Maher interview and Overtime went great, IMO. Donations are up, twitter responses from people who saw the show are up, and there seems to be more social media buzz.
Over the weekend, Cenk Uygur from The Young Turks held a rally to publicize a pledge that he was holding progressive candidates to sign. Yang didn’t sign it but had a nice interview with Cenk about it. A reporter snapped apicture of Cory Booker and Cenk Uygur looking interested in something Yang was saying.
Fair Media Watch called out MSNBC for excluding him on its candidate list. This has been happening for months with on-air personalities getting notified every time it happens. Real Clear Politics average of polling.
Chris Cillizza did a piece on Yang and his internet popularity. Inside the internet-fueled rise of Andrew Yang I don’t agree with Cillizza on much, but I do agree with him that even if Yang goes no further, he’s already accomplished a lot to get to this point.
Rashida Tlaib just introduced legislation to give a UBI-like subsidy of $3K to individuals and $6K for families that stacks on welfare and that cuts off at $50K/$100K of income. It’s like UBI in that it’s not a trapezoid type benefit that tapers to nothing the less income the person makes. Hopefully, the people who criticized Yang’s policy of not stacking on welfare will join on Tlaib’s legislation. Ali Velshi mentions Andrew Yang in his interview with Tlaib.
Yang made a comment in the Iowa convention about Biden’s non-appearance, saying that Biden must not like to travel. Biden responded that he was busy with family obligations. His granddaughter was graduating, and it was his daughter’s birthday. He noted that he (Biden) would skip his inauguration for that. Yang tweeted back that other candidates probably had family obligations that they missed as well. NBC did an article about it. There were a number of reporters tweeting about it. Washington Examiner article with the tweets.
A nice twitter shout-out from Howard Fineman, journalist and MSNBC news analyst:
She also has tweeted about how UBI wouldn’t cause inflation. It’s nice to have a PhD economist speaking favorably on Yang’s policies. I’ve seen a couple now posting favorably in tweets.
Yang just did a TYTinterview. This is a bootleg copy, so it might disappear. Yang also did a Pod Save America interview set to release on Friday 6/12/19.
The campaign is focused on getting to the third round of debates. He needs 130K donors, of which he already has 118K. He also needs 2% or higher in 4 polls after June 28. This poll doesn’t qualify, but he hit 2% in Nevada.
Yang’s wife, Evelyn sent a beautiful letter to the Yang Gang about how she felt about Andrew and how much his family means to him. There was an article very early in the year, asking all the men Presidential candidates how they handled their family obligations. For some of the journalists, Yang’s answer stood out. Evelyn asked the Yang Gang to send their support to him on this Father’s Day, so people sent their good wishes to him.
After the Bill Maher show and the TYT show, there are more people supporting Yang and also more journalists attacking him.
Bill Maher gave a shout out to Yang [at about minute 8] saying that Yang is out of the box.
Paul Krugman took a slam at Yang and Yang responded.
Yang was on CNN with Brian Stelter where they discussed the missing MSNBC graphic. Stelter made it seem like an oversight, but it went on for months with people on Twitter notifying them every time it happened. They also talked about the alternative media routes that Yang has taken since mainstream media was not interested in him until the debates were announced.
Yang’s campaign gave the most detailed responses on cybersecurity of all the Democratic candidates from a reporter on cybersecurity.
Personally, I really appreciated that. The thought of Rudy Giuliani heading the cybersecurity for the nation was not reassuring.
Of course, most of the attention is on the debate. Yang will be on the second night, June 27. With a week and a half to the debates, Yang is moving up on a few polls to 2% or 3%. Hopefully, that momentum will continue.
A poll by Business Insider called Yang telegenic and said that Yang and Klobuchar are the most anticipated by people in the poll to see on the debate stage.
After the Bill Maher show, the tone of Yang’s social media that Yang doesn’t have control over has changed a bit, IMO. There are more people joining every day, but also a few more trolls than there were. And there are well-meaning people who now want to change the sub to their liking since they’ve now joined. It’s inevitable, but the change is noticeable because it’s so quick. The positive tone is still very much predominant though, which is nice. Yang does his best to try to keep it positive, so that helps.
Some people do change their tone after seeing something like this.
Amy Webb, futurist, author and professor at NYU, agreed with Yang.
I was happy to see Nick Hanauer, entrepreneur and venture capitalist, writing similar ideas to Yang on education. Hanauer changed his ideas on what he thought the answer was to the problem of wealth inequality, then he wrote about what changed his mind. Basically what changed his mind are some of the same stats that Yang used to form his theories on how to fix the educational system.
Hanauer is a huge proponent of a $15/hr minimum wage, but even in that article, that idea wouldn’t help his hypothetical family get the $29K they would have gotten if wages kept up with GDP. A UBI would do more for that. From what I’ve seen, it looks like Hanauer backs Buttigieg. I haven’t seen him write anything about Yang. I don’t know if he knows anything about Yang.
Hanauer talks about the theory that if the educational systems were fixed, then wealth inequality would be reduced. He recently realized that wealth inequality needs to be fixed first before the solution of education can take hold on a broader scale. Yang emphasizes the fixes for wealth inequality but also emphasizes other forms of education such as jobs training as well.
Hanauer then notes that if wages kept pace with productivity, an average worker would be making $29K more per year.
Yang can imagine a raise for about that much for every family. He calls it the Freedom Dividend. A family of two adults would get $24K or almost a $29K raise. The fixes that Hanauer mentions such as strengthening unions and a $15/hr minimum wage wouldn’t actually help the average family get that much of a raise.
Hanauer then notes why some people still want to believe in educationism.
Yang is scheduled to be on The Stephen Colbert show on Monday 6/24/19. Spiderman (Tom Holland) is also scheduled for that night. Yang is a Spiderman fan.
Then it’s the DNC debates on Thursday 6/27/19. (This picture and the caption made me laugh.)
Yang is definitely going to be interesting to watch over the next few weeks. It’ll be interesting to see if he can transition from being the internet candidate to a more household name.
Right now, in my own unofficial power rankings, I’ve got him ranked about 6 or 7 out of the field of 24 (25?).
I gave $3 to Yang as a vote for him to be on the debate stage. So I get regular email from his campaign, along with the Warren, Booker, and Buttigieg campaigns. (I also asked Harris and O’Rourke to stop emailing me.)
The difference in tone was striking. As all the candidates were focussed on making the debate, Booker (who had qualified) wrote me scary emails about how the rules would be tighter in the future (presumably for the second) and I had to give more money now. Yang (who hadn’t quite qualified, but was looking good) wrote an upbeat missive about how the Yang Gang was going to do it. And a few days later, I got an equally upbeat letter about how he was one of (fewer than 20) who had qualified under both standards.
It’s been quite a week for the Yang Gang. It started with Yang’s visit to the Stephen Colbert show. The Yang Gang made a good showing in the audience. Colbert was forced to mention it. Colbert’s derision was less evident than when he was roasting Yang in his monologues. Yang seemed to be having a good time.
A slightly racist and cringey decision in walk out music on the part of the Colbert show. The interview went pretty well. It was entertaining. It’s got over 500K views on youtube.
On the show, Yang announced that he would be giving a Freedom Dividend for a year to a random person who retweeted his tweet and followed him on twitter. There are 128K retweets as I write this (129K as I finished writing it), and he has more than 150K followers more than he had before the show. He got 50K of those followers after the debate.
Jack Dorsey (ex-CEO of twitter) and Casey Neistat (popular youtuber) both retweeted Yang’s tweet. That gave it a lot of exposure.
Then it was on to the debates. Going into the debates, the big issue in the media was that Yang wasn’t wearing a tie. People in the media seemed to be affronted by it. The Yang Gang didn’t seem to notice. Yang doesn’t ever wear a tie.
During the debate, Yang had 2 questions, spoke for under 3 minutes and didn’t challenge anyone. The Yang Gang was befuddled. A couple really loud people were super negative about it. (It turns out that at least one of them was a troll who wiped his account today.) The mood of the sub was down. Yang looked dispirited. As Yang gave interviews in the Spin room, he was asked if he was intimidated by the people on the stage. Yang answered that he travels with these people, so no, he wasn’t.
Meanwhile, the Yang Gang was trying to remain positive. Then there was word that Yang gave a supporter rally where he claimed that his mic was shut off during parts of the debate. As a bit of backstory, MSNBC had been leaving Yang off their Presidential graphics so many times I lost count. There was one graphic that was supposed to be debate participants where Yang’s picture was missing but someone who didn’t make the debate had taken the space.
The Yang Gang got a hashtag #LetYangSpeak going on twitter that was trending to at least #2 by the next morning.
Yang went from:
to
in an hour. After that, his humor and light-heartedness was back.
In a way that no one was anticipating, Yang made it to the front page of r/politics on Reddit twice in one day for not getting more time to speak in the debates. The bigger one got over 4K comments and over 14K upvotes. Redditors were mostly very sympathetic. Both a Bernie fan and a Pete fanshowed up in the Yang sub to donate some money to the campaign in support of Yang getting such limited time in the debate. Yang only got two questions while others polling much lower got up to 5 questions.
As a result of some of this boost in donations, Yang made it to the 130K unique donor mark today to make it to the Sept. debate.
according to a 538/Morning Consult poll that polled the before and after impressions of the debate, there was only a slight downtick after the debate from 1.3% to 1.2%.
On the other hand, most of the youtube videos I’ve seen of Yang’s UBI piece from the debate has the most views of the other clips of other candidates.
On balance, this could turn out positive. Onward and upward.
Unfortunately for Yang, he is still mostly an internet candidate at this point. People are Googling his name, but it’s not necessarily translating into real visibility at this point.
That being said, I am in agreement that Yang should have gotten more airtime. I was surprised that Williamson, who was actually tracking lower than Yang, got to speak a lot more frequently. But I’m not sure if that was because Yang’s mic was off. It didn’t seem like he was necessarily fighting to speak; he just seemed a little confused by the whole format, which is really more on the candidate. Yang probably assumed that he’d field more questions, but he just kept waiting and waiting for his turn and it never came.
I suspect that Yang is right: other networks might be more accommodating than MSNBC and Telemundo. These moderators were clearly leaning hard to the political left and were really a lot more interested in asking social justice questions and talking about other pet left wing issues than entertaining discussions about UBI and VAT taxes.
It might feel unnatural but Yang is going to have to be a little more assertive next time and he needs to learn the art of delivering ‘zingers’. Political debates are theater. He needs to learn how to act.
How is that even remotely similar? Wang Chung is a British new wave band. It’s not accosiated with anything Asian, except the name which apparently means "yellow bell"in Chinese. Yang just rhymes with Wang. Chill out.
While I personally think we are living in a “way too easy to offend era”, I can definitely see the similiarities in the two and as well as the hypocrisy of one being OK and the other not.
The fact that the band who performed the song is British, has zero relevance and is not germain to the discussion… in my opinion. :dubious: