Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin - Taylor Swift for President with Andrew Yang

Episode Date: September 8, 2023

Wouldn’t it be cool if we got $1,000 a month from the government? Yeah, that’s what Andrew Yang thought when he ran for President. And somehow he… lost? Nicole and Andrew catch up on why he still thinks that’s a good idea, his new political party, his upcoming thriller The Last Election, why he thinks Taylor Swift should be President… and yeah, that bodega video.  Reserve your copy of The Last Election now, here: https://www.akashicbooks.com/catalog/last-election/

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Find a co-host at Airbnb.com slash host. I'm Nicole Lappin, the only financial expert you don't need a dictionary to understand. It's time for some money rehab. Wouldn't it be amazing if you got a thousand bucks a month from the government? Yeah, it would be. And that's what Andrew Yang thought when he ran for president. And somehow he lost. We catch up today on Money Rehab and talk about

why he still thinks that's a good idea. His new political party, his upcoming thriller, The Last Election, and why he seriously thinks Taylor Swift should be president. I agree. Oh, and yeah, that bodega video. Andrew Yang, welcome to Money Rehab. It's great to be here. Thanks for having me. Thanks for being on. I feel like we should just get right into it. Are you running for president in 24? Oh, my joke, Nicole, is apparently I've got another 40 years, but I don't think that I'd be helpful in this particular cycle.

My goal would be to try and help someone good win. Like who? Well, we'll see who's out there. I will say that I'm in the majority of Americans who wish we had some better choices. Maybe people who we weren't worried about their health on a daily basis. So that would be great. And we're trying to make that possible in races around the country. So somebody younger than the current president. Well, I mean, if it is Biden versus Trump, their combined age is 160.

And I don't think that's a great way to run any outfit, much less the country. So I hear you're a Swifty. I am a huge Swifty. What about Taylor for president? I think Taylor would win

as someone who attended an Heiress Tour show. Anyone who went to an Heiress Tour show would be like, yeah, she would totally win because she's got tens of millions of loyal fans and deservedly so. At this point, we would trust Taylor to make decisions for the country more than just about any other elected official. Okay. If you were to run within the next 40 years, would you have a Swift song be your campaign song? And if so, which one?

Gosh, if she were to let me, certainly the last thing I'd want to do is not have her approval on it. Maybe Karma. Let's go with Karma. That's a great one. That was the last song she sang at the concert. Yes, it was. And you know, the song has been stuck in my head since before then. You and me both. I take the Taylor Swift presidency thing very, very seriously. I think she would win. And one of the problems right now in our political system is that if she were to win, it would be very hard for her to win as either a Democrat or Republican because the machines would try

and get her. And so she should run as an independent, which is in many ways what the forward party is trying to make possible. If you can imagine a race where Taylor Swift and The Rock and Matthew McConaughey and Mark Cuban and Oprah and others were running. And millions of Americans could actually vote for it on their smartphone. And then the legacy parties would be left saying, no, no, no, that's not real. Be like, wait a minute, I actually feel like my voice is being heard. And I like these people. That would be democracy in action. And that's a vision I think we're going to see come to pass in the next 5-10 years. Have you talked to Taylor about this? I have not talked to Taylor about it. But Taylor, if you want to run for president,

we're the way to do it. So you don't have to show up and get shivved by some party bosses who want nothing to do with you. America wants something to do with you. Who would want to run against Taylor? That's what I'm saying. We'd all just get out of the way. Taylor, I would be happy to serve in your cabinet. You can put me to work doing whatever the heck. I could be chief of janitorial services. It doesn't matter. Okay. So it sounds like presidential candidate is TBD under resume for the near future, right? Well, I'm just trying to make good things happen for people around the country. And right now our politics is not helping.

So the way I'm trying to change that is I'm now the co-founder of the third biggest political party in the country, the Forward Party, which just wants to make good things happen and wants to free us from the left versus right fake fight. So you're very outspoken about your concerns about how divided our bipartisan

government is. What is the platform and why did you create your own political party? The platform is that we should reconnect people to our leaders. And right now we're not connected. We have this fake connection in the form of the two party system where what the two parties have done is they made it so that 90 percent of the races aren't actually competitive. So most of the people listening to this right now are like, does my vote actually make a difference? And our goal is to make it so that they actually have to listen to us for a change by getting rid of the party primaries, making it so everyone can vote for whomever they want, getting money out of politics, things like that. Let's take a look back for a second at your 2020 presidential campaign.

I've always wanted to ask you this question because a key differentiator of your campaign was this freedom dividend plan. And we're obviously on money rehab, so I'd love to follow the money trail. You wanted to give $1,000 a month to Americans over 18. Some people love this idea and some people thought it was completely, totally unrealistic. And then whammo, months later, COVID hit and a stipend came around the same amount. So I have to say, it was kind of giving freedom dividend vibes, if you will. How do you feel about that?

Well, my phone was ringing off the hook during those weeks. Everyone was like, what do you think now that they're doing it? And the thing that people don't realize, Nicole, check it out. Here's the math. The government dispensed in various forms about $5 trillion in COVID relief. There are about 330 million Americans. So that's about 15K a pop. And that's around the order of magnitude of what I was going for.

I was going for $12,000 per person per year. But no one listening to this got checks for anywhere close to $10,000, $12,000, $15,000, probably got one or two. So where did most of the money go? Most of the money went into the pipes, into corporations, into city and state governments. And some of that you can say, well, that was a fine decision. of that you can say that well, you know, that was a fine decision. But in my mind, the ratio was way off. But right now, families and people got about 17% of the $5 trillion, it should have been 83%. And then if you take care of people, then you're not as concerned about either the pipes or the corporations or whatnot. But instead, we took care of the big guys and not the little guys and gals. And that was wrong, in my opinion. And we're going to be digging out from that for years.

So the freedom dividend is a form of universal basic income. Can you define UBI for our listeners who might not know? Sure, that everyone in a society, let's call it America, gets a certain amount of money to meet your basic needs. No questions asked. And it's not Andrew Yang's idea. Martin Luther King was for it. Thomas Paine was for it. Just everyone gets a certain amount of money. I was saying a thousand bucks a month, which coincidentally puts you right below the poverty line in most cases. But if you had a family with, you know, a couple of adults, then you're looking at twenty four thousand dollars and one of you has a job, you're in pretty good shape.

So big counter argument to UBI and your freedom dividends specifically was the cost of it, not surprisingly, especially with the government being so deep in debt. What's your answer to that argument? There are all sorts of ways to address that, Nicole. Part of it is that if the money comes into our hands, it ends up growing the economy, making us stronger, healthier, more likely to actually learn stuff in school, more likely to start businesses, more likely to give money to local nonprofits and churches. So the money doesn't disappear. The money ends up just going back into the economy in various ways. When someone becomes broken and dysfunctional in American life, it gets very, very expensive.

If someone's homeless, we're spending $50,000 a year on them. Someone's in jail, we're spending $60,000 a year on them. Someone winds up in our ER, we're going to spend tens of thousands of dollars on them. So in a way, putting this money into our hands grows the pie, saves us money on dysfunction, and circulates many times over. There are different ways to make it so that it works. I would say that in many ways, what happened during COVID is kind of proof. Because when I was running for president, people were like, this is impossible. And then it happened and be like, oh, I actually kind of like that. If you look at the polling right now, two thirds of Americans want something like the freedom dividend I ran on. If it was that high when I was running,

who knows, maybe I'd be president today and you and I'd be having this conversation in the White House. That would be cool. For the concept of a dividend to work and ultimately cost us less, that takes a while. Have you estimated how long it takes to infiltrate in the system? Gosh, I mean, if you look at the data on the enhanced child tax credit, which is getting money into families' hands, and people who are listening to this might remember this, where in 2021, you were getting 300 bucks a kid for most of the year. So if you had two kids, you might be getting 600 a month. And that had immediate impacts on families, nutrition, mental health, education outcomes, it brought down domestic violence, it brought down child abuse.

And that happened immediately. So when you're talking about how long it would take, it would happen within the year. But when you look what happened to that enhanced child tax credit, it got discontinued in 2022 because of bad politics. Bad blood, if you will. Yeah, bad blood, really. So check this out. I run for president, which, by the way, took a minute. It was like 2018, 2019, 2020.

I was on the road for years saying, hey, we should probably do something about poverty in this country. And we can do something about it. Quick math, just again for fun. So our economy is now $25 trillion. And there are 330 million of us or so, which means you're looking at an economy that's around 75k ahead. So if you're producing 75k per human, you probably can afford something like 12k ahead and you know, like be

totally fine. So I spent years running on that stuff. And then during COVID, we actually make a big move, which is we start giving families 300 $600 a month. We brought two, three million American kids out of poverty. And I felt like I might have had something to do with it, which was the greatest feeling in the world. Like I might have helped alleviate total unnecessary human suffering and misery. And then we stopped doing it against the advice of 100 plus economists and social scientists who say, look, this child tax credit is literally the best thing we've done against poverty in a generation. We should totally

keep doing it. So, of course, we stopped doing it because our politics are so stupid. So imagine being me and being like, wow, I might have really done something positive I can feel really good about and be like, oh, now it's gone. And then after it left, I then went to see, well, are there going to be any protests or any of them? And again, people listening to this might remember this, like you were getting checks for your kids. And you're like, Oh, this is great. And then you stop getting checks around 2022. And then there was nothing, which broke my heart, too. But most of the families that were benefiting from this money aren't in position to exactly, you know, go protest or hit the streets. I mean, most of them just have their heads down trying to make ends meet. So I'm super frustrated.

Two thirds of us want something like this. There is no reason in a country as rich as ours, there should be this much poverty and suffering. And we should hold our leaders accountable. Hold on to your wallets. Money Rehab will be right back. Hold on to your wallets. Money Rehab will be right back. I love hosting on Airbnb. It's a great way to bring in some extra cash. But I totally get it that it might sound overwhelming to start or even too complicated if, say, you want to put your summer home in Maine on Airbnb, but you live full time in San Francisco and you can't go to Maine every time you need to change sheets for your guests or something like that. If thoughts like these have been holding you back, I have great news for you. Airbnb has launched a co-host network, which is a

network of high quality local co-hosts with Airbnb experience that can take care of your home and your guests. Co-hosts can do what you don't have time for, like managing your reservations, messaging your guests, giving support at the property, or even create your listing for you. I always want to line up a reservation for my house when I'm traveling for work, but sometimes I just don't get around to it because getting ready to travel always feels like a scramble, so I don't end up making time to make my house look guest-friendly. I guess that's the best way to put it. But I'm matching with a co-host, so I can still make that extra cash while also making it easy on myself.

Find a co-host at Airbnb.com slash host. And now for some more money rehab. Your next book, The Last Election, is coming out. Can you tell us the premise of the novel? So I have been trying to get various ideas out for years, and I determined, you know what, some people really dig a good story. So I sat down with a novelist named Stephen Marsh and broke down what I thought would happen maybe in this next election if an independent were to run. And so the independent campaign manager

is one of the protagonists, a journalist named Martha who finds this juicy, explosive piece of news as another protagonist. They, of course, are old flames from way back because it's a novel. Then we go through the months leading up to the next election, which could be our last if we don't get our acts together. And I give people as much as I can the inside scoop of what it's like to actually run for president from the inside, where you can have people trying to do the right thing, and it sometimes results in the wrong things. So we have our work cut out for us. But most importantly, it's an entertaining read.

People who read it were like, wow, I actually didn't think I was going to enjoy it this much. And Hollywood is looking at it for movie adaptation. So you know, it must be good. Okay, Andrew, how much of that is art imitating life? Wow, I mean, the two are converging really quick, which is super unfortunate. Even with this novel, we tried to be a little bit speculative, but it turns out that facts might be catching up to us. Can you share like what? Let's just say that I'd be skeptical that there are only going to be two major candidates on the ballot in 2024.

And so figuring out what happens with more than two candidates might become a very, very relevant thing in American life. I would say that one of my biggest frustrations is that we're clinging to a really dumb voting system that makes it so that the smartest thing I could do if I wanted a good guy to win would not be to run a good guy. It would be to just run the most crazy bananas, batshit individual who might suck votes away from the bad guy, whoever the heck you believe the bad guy to be, and vice versa,

where there are arch conservatives who are supporting people who are not arch conservative because it's going to help their person win. And that's because we have this really stupid zero sum voting system. If we had something called rank choice voting, then anyone could vote for anyone and no one would be stressed at all. And there are other countries that are already doing that. So we're stuck in a bad design of our own king. So in the book,

I assume there's three candidates. There are three major candidates. Yeah. And the independent candidate, I will say there's a little bit of me in there just for fun. And because, you know, I know my own story.

The candidate slogan is something like do the math. Yeah, I love that. Actually. The actual slogan of the campaign, I think is unfuck America. Better. Yeah, better, right. But do the math is one of their taglines from like a reality show he was involved in. So there's a little bit of Mark Cuban, a little bit of me. I'm into it. And how much of the behind the scenes are you showing in the book that didn't come out in other media? A whole lot, I'd say, particularly in terms of the characters and the interpersonal dynamics. Because one thing folks don't realize as much, Nicole, is that if you run, there's you. But then there's the campaign manager, and then there's the comms person, and then there's the finance person, and then there's a data person, and then there's a field ops. So each campaign ends up taking on this character and personality.

And you hope that everyone is on the same page, but sometimes they're not. Do you have technology as a character in this? We do. There is some AI machinations, a little bit of speculative use of AI. The thing that most people don't realize is that AI can reduce the incremental cost of communication to near zero. So you could be bombarded with messages all the live long day in a way that wasn't possible even a few years ago. That sounds like it increases efficiency in comms. I mean, it increases efficiency for the campaigns.

But if you're on the receiving end, you're like, oh, I'm tired of these emails already. Like, do I really need another million that are tailored to me? So one of the things that's happening out there is that we're reacting less to the alarmed emails. Grassroots donations are down 25% because so many people are exhausted. And so what is the reaction on the part of the machine? It's like, oh, I guess we got to take it up a notch. And that's not great for any of us. So what's the answer? The answer would be that

you try to actually get money out of politics to the extent you can and create better mechanisms so that reasonable people want to run and can run and win. And the best way to make that happen is to get rid of the party primaries, because the party primaries end up dragging people towards special interests and points of view that most of us don't actually hold. And if this sounds like a magic trick, you're not going to believe it, everyone. But three states have already voted to get rid of their primaries. And there are another 22 states that can do the same thing.

So you get rid of our primaries. And all of a sudden, the folks in the middle feel like our voices are heard instead of the folks who are currently controlling things. Voila! Democracy saved. And then after that, maybe we can get rid of poverty too. So that's the Andrew Yang master plan. But Andrew, that is a long plan.

Yes, we've already seen some states start to get on the bandwagon. But, you know, politics, politicians always looking for that quick fix, the shot in the arm. Oh, yeah. So what's fun about me is that I'm like short, medium and long term all at once. So I'm very freaked out about what's going on. I'm trying to do as much as I can as quickly as I can. Obviously, I'm somewhat impatient. I ran for president. But then now we settle in and we get done what we need to get done. And that involves

trying to fix the incentives so that if you got a good person in, they can actually start solving problems. Now, that doesn't sound as sexy, but I'm convinced that it's one of the necessary steps to the sexy stuff. And do you think technology and tech companies can do more for good? We've talked about some of the issues with AI. Obviously, we've seen a ton of social media and tech issues. What do you think is a potential benefit or upside that Silicon Valley can bring? There are a lot of good things that are going to happen with AI, particularly in medicine. We might find cures for cancer and Alzheimer's treatments and things that were not possible. There are at least a couple of companies that have found, I shouldn't even say this out loud, but I'm gonna

say it, maybe even make aging less negative for health in various ways. So some real sci-fi type stuff is on the table, in part because AI can speed up our ability to discover various compounds. So I guess the linkage to politics there is that some of the older politicians should explore more longevity advancements. What you'd hope is that you had political leaders who wanted to do the right things and say, look, let's try and harness the good things. And one of the darkest parts about American life now is that even if I have a good thing on offer, a lot of times it gets killed by someone who's making money off of the current setup.

That does happen, Americans. I think you probably sense it. I guess I'll give an example. I met with an inventor who invented a portable dialysis machine. It would improve the standard of living for a lot of people that could do dialysis at home. But the in-place, inpatient dialysis centers make so much money that they just lobbied furiously to make it so you had to go to the center. They said it was unsafe to do it at home, even though it was fine, it was perfectly safe. And so you had a reduction in our health and standard of living so that some company could make more money. And there are examples of that throughout the system. So how are we going to empower folks who actually want to say, look, I'm going to do what's

right for people and the company can go hang? That's one of the biggest challenges in American life. Believe it or not, Andrew Yang is still working on it. And I'm both patient and impatient simultaneously. You are impatient on social media, although your social media game is so strong. Your recent clip with the margarita sound was quite hilarious. I'm so glad my staffer who came up with that deserves a promotion. And then, you know, for me, it's just like, what do you want me to do?

Sure. Okay, I can do that. You know, I'll take your word for it that it's going to be good. You've had some misses, though. I think we can both agree. Right. And I've been there, too. When you ran for mayor of New York, your bodega video went viral, but maybe not in the way

you intended. I've had some misses for sure. Okay. But you know what a bodega is, right? Sure. Yeah, completely. I even know what a bodega cat is. Oh, I don't know what that is. It's pretty much a cat what a bodega is, right? Sure. Yeah, completely. I even know what a bodega cat is. Oh, I don't know what that is.

It's pretty much a cat in a bodega. So with that, I have closure. I have peace in my life. Thank you. I end my episodes by asking my guests for one piece of money advice listeners can take straight to the bank. Oh, gosh, I'm really passionate about this stuff because, you know, I grew up the child of immigrants and my family was very, very careful with money. I think they brainwashed me and my brother into thinking that the next meal was going to be your last potentially. So we were very scrappy growing up. And I think financial health is really important to feeling like your future is going to be positive and bright. The main thing I'd say would be trying to avoid recurring costs because they add up. So, you know, if you do something

once, it's probably affordable. But if you do something that ends up keeping you on the hook in perpetuity or not maybe like a year or something like that or more, then think twice about it. Money Rehab is a production of Money News Network. I'm your host, Nicole Lappin. Money Rehab's executive producer is Morgan Levoy. Our researcher is Emily Holmes. Do you need some money rehab? And let's be honest, we all do. So email us your money questions, moneyrehab at moneynewsnetwork.com to potentially have your questions answered on the show or even have a one-on-one intervention with me. And follow us on Instagram at moneynews and TikTok at moneynewsnetwork for exclusive video content. And lastly, thank you. No, seriously, thank you. Thank you for listening and for investing in yourself,

which is the most important investment you can make.