Soul Boom - Andrew Yang: Let's Ditch Our Political Parties

Episode Date: October 29, 2024

Andrew Yang joins Rainn Wilson on Soul Boom to delve into America’s political quagmire, questioning the deeply entrenched two-party system and exploring whether systemic change can lead us toward a more united, fair society. They discuss alternative models for democracy, like ranked-choice voting and community-driven leadership, while dissecting how corporate money and partisan competition fuel divisive politics. Together, Rainn and Andrew contemplate an optimistic path forward, comparing today’s world to sci-fi futures and pondering how digital democracy and grassroots movements could reshape our government. Tune in as they tackle whether U.S. politics could be re-imagined for a fairer, inclusive America. Andrew Yang is a former presidential candidate, entrepreneur, and founder of the Forward Party, an initiative advocating for political reform and breaking through America’s two-party divide. With the 2024 election heating up, and candidates like Donald Trump and Kamala Harris at the center of the debate, Yang’s ideas offer a fresh perspective on achieving unity in a polarized nation. Thank you to our sponsors! Airbnb: http://airbnb.com/host Waking Up app (1st month FREE!): https://wakingup.com/soulboom Fetzer Institute: https://fetzer.org/ MERCH OUT NOW! https://soulboomstore.myshopify.com/ Sign up for our newsletter! https://soulboom.substack.com SUBSCRIBE to Soul Boom!! https://bit.ly/Subscribe2SoulBoom Watch our Clips: https://bit.ly/SoulBoomCLIPS Watch WISDOM DUMP: https://bit.ly/WISDOMDUMP Follow us! Instagram: http://instagram.com/soulboom TikTok: http://tiktok.com/@soulboom Sponsor Soul Boom: [e-mail] Work with Soul Boom: [e-mail] Send Fan Creations, Questions, Comments: [e-mail] Produced by: Kartik Chainani Executive Produced by: Ford Bowers, Samah Tokmachi Companion Arts Production Supervisor: Mike O'Brien Voicing Change Media Theme Music by: Marcos Moscat Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey, Soul Boom Generation, I've got a really exciting announcement for you. We've got a substack. If you love the Soul Boom podcast and book and ideas, then you're going to want to get our weekly newsletter substack sent to your inbox. It's magnificent. There's going to be fantastic guest authors. Some are written by me. A lot of them delve into the ideas around the podcasts that we're doing that week. So sign up. Please subscribe. Go to soulboom.substack.com. Thank you. You're listening to soul. We're in a period of multi-decade, maybe even multi-generational disintegration as a country based upon things like income inequality, sure, but also around institutional trust in government, in schools, and the media.

And there are studies for this. I'm a data guy. Eventually, we come back. Societies do improve as well as devolve. Yes, we're in a devolutionary period. But then one reason I'm again excited to spend time with you is that there are going to be people that are helping to build the solutions and the path forward. So you can believe that these institutions are full of it and still say it is worth my time to try and make things better. Hey there, it's me, Rain Wilson, and I want to dig into the human experience.

I want to have conversations about a spiritual revolution. Let's get deep with our favorite thinkers, friends, and entertainers about life, me, and idiocy. Welcome to the Soul Boom podcast. Andrew, there's so much I want to get into with you. Let's go. Soul Boom. Brain Wilson, Andrew Yang, the collab.

No one knew they wanted. No one knew they wanted to see the two of us have a conversation. But this is freaking awesome. I love the way that you think about big ideas and big swings and gigantic changes to our culture, our economy, our political system, economics. You're not about like just tweaking a corrupt system a little bit. You're about some really big swings. To everyone's favorite subject, politics. Politics. We are going to solve the American political system right now. I believe that our partisan political system is absolutely broken. And it is astonishing to me that there are so few people who are talking about a

reimagination of how politics might work in the United States. Yeah. People talk about, oh, this candidate is better or that candidate is better. We need to, we need to, you know, let's vote for Kamala or let's vote for Trump and that's going to save the country. There's that dialogue every two or to four years. But no one talks about how broken the system is. And no one is trying to, to completely change it from the inside out.

talk about ending gerrymandering. They'll talk about campaign finance reform. And those are super important, right? But the fact is, the fact is that our partisan political system is based on the very worst and most corrupt elements of the human condition. Politics itself means power. It's the pursuit of power. So in that case, if you're just seeking power, the ends justify the means. You could cheat, lie, rob, embezzle, hide, you know, dirty, dirty deeds behind the scenes in order to gain power. And it's the whole system is flooded with money. It's hundreds of millions of dollars every campaign cycle. All of that money is goes into campaign ads that no one watches, right?

And campaign events that no one goes to. And all of that. money could be used to alleviate poverty like we were talking about it could be used for so many different things and so here you have corruption money and the abject pursuit of power by all means tearing down the other candidate and this happens every two to four years and we never question it we're just like that's just the way it is yeah it's getting worse not better too um and certainly limiting it to two parties is a huge part of that problem, but it's even deeper than that. So how would you reimagine an American political system that's not based on corruption, backstabbing, and the

pursuit of power at all costs? No, I'm so glad you're defining it in these terms, Rain, because most Americans are fed up. At this point, a majority of Americans now say they're independence, so they're not loving the vibes. 51%. Yeah, and among young people, it's even higher. It's something like two-thirds don't like either parties very much. So you can sense that the trends are just going to get stronger and stronger. In 92, when Ross Perra ran, it was 25% are independent,

and so it's more than doubled since then, and it's just going to keep on. And what percentage of the vote did he get? 19. So if you had the right candidate today, I think that they could do much, much better than Ross Perrault did, particularly in that long ago period when you had Trump v. Biden and, you know, people were like, what's going on? Like, how do we get this matchup? Yeah. So totally agree with your read on the problem. And some of the numbers I throw out to people are that Congress has a 15% approval rating right now and a 94% income and re-election rate. So when people to think about that contrast. Wow, that's staggering.

Yeah, and I joke with business people. I say, how would your customers feel if eight out of ten of them were unhappy and you change absolutely nothing year after year, which is the way politics feels to most of us? Well, there's the healthcare system works that way, and so do the airlines. I mean, a lot of it. And so this, this, by the way, is what drove Trump's rise to power, in my opinion, is that tens of millions, hundreds of millions Americans are like, okay, like, I don't matter in this system. Yeah, and then.

I'm fed up. I'm fed up. and I can't take it anymore. Yeah. Network. And then Trump comes along and is like, hey, like I'm a jerk, but, you know, I'm like a burn it down, stick it to the man, drain the swamp. And then a bunch of people were like, sure.

Like, let's do this. Yeah. And by the way, we've also cut the country into red zones and blue zones and made it so that like either person starts with 45% and hates the other team. So, you know, you have like a recipe for bad leadership. And so I try and unpack the numbers like, okay, like how is it that you have a 94% reelect rate if you have a 15% approval rating for members? And it's because of money. It's because of the way that 90% of the districts have been drawn to be either quite blue or quite red, which make them non-competitive.

The dirty secret that most people might understand is that both parties hate competing with the other party. So they try and avoid it if at all possible. So they'd be like, okay, you take Los Angeles that will. take Missouri, yeah, whatever it is. And so there's not a lot of... You hear about in Washington, D.C., you hear about the fact that people, for the most part, are pretty good buddy buddies, Democrat and Republican, and they get along and they high five, and they glad hand, and they have lunch and stuff like that.

And then they get in the front of the cameras, and they're like this, and then they take on the other side, the political right or the political left with great acrimony. it's really all for show, it's for their voting base back at home, and to stoke those same fires of controversy and competition. Yeah, and it might be worth unpacking a little bit some of the dark incentives you just described. So the myth in American life is that our leaders have to make 51% of us happy to win re-election, but it's not true because if you have 90% of districts that are uncompetitive in the general, the real incentive is to keep the base happy. And that's the 10 to 12% most extreme and ideological voters.

So you're right that like, hey, I've going to put a show on. It's not for the general public. It's for the 10 to 12 percent who control whether I win my party's primary. Because if I win my party's primary, there is no general election I have to worry about. Which means that both... Let me slow that down a little bit. That's a really interesting idea. I hadn't really thought about that before.

This is all about an area of Iowa where, or let's say Kansas, like Red State, Kansas. you know it's going to be a Republican, which Republican is it going to be? And then that decision is made by a very small percentage of the actual voters in that county or that district. And so everything is catering to them. So there's a chess game power politics going on

with whose name gets put into the general election, which they will definitely win. Well, they'll definitely win. So the biggest threat you can use on anyone in Washington, D.C., is we're going to primary you or you're going to get a primary challenge. So if you're in Washington, D.C., you've got a 94% reelect rate. And I do want to paint a picture just for a moment. So a U.S. Senator said to me in a group, we're at a point in American life where now a problem is worth more to us unsolved and solved. Because if I don't

solve it, I can get you mad, I can raise money, I can get votes. If I do try and solve the problem, then the base gets mad at me. I worked with the enemy. I was ideologically impure. My job security goes down. Oh my gosh. That's insane. That is what is happening.

That's staggering. And so the person who's in D.C. with their 94% reelect rates, like, okay, how do I make sure, like I stay in office? If the party bosses get mad at me and say, we're going to primary you, then that is the only real way I can lose my job.

I cannot lose my job from the other party because I'm in Red Kansas or whatever. So if the bosses in D.C. say, hey, we're mad at you, we're going to have someone primary, and then we're going to give them the money and resources that they need to compete, then you can lose your job, and you maybe even will lose your job. And so you're like, okay, okay, okay, like I will not do anything to piss you off party bosses or the 10 to 12 percent, most extreme base voters. And so what happens to the general public in terms of, you know, climate or whatever, like

the big hairy challenge of the moment is, poverty. I'm going to put that one in there. like it is irrelevant to my winning re-election. All that's relevant is keep party bosses happy, keep base happy, bingo bingo done. And I have a counter example to this is that there were 10 Republican House members who voted to impeach Donald Trump after January 6th. And of them, only two made it back through their primaries because they had run afoul of Trump who was the de facto party boss. And then he said, we're going to primary you. So all of them got primary challengers. and then the base voters said, hey, you know, you went against Trump, we don't like you anymore.

So of the eight that got wiped out, that's Adam Kinsinger, Liz Cheney, Peter Meyer, Anthony Gonzalez. And by the way, they made that vote at obviously great professional risk, but also even personal risk, because a lot of them were getting death threats at the time. So it was just a demonstration that if you do the right thing in D.C., you probably lose your job. if you just keep your head down, keep the party boss happy, and your base off your back, then you're there for life.

So it's very dark. And so that's an illustration of why you and so many others, I'm sure Rain are like, what the heck is going on in there? It's like super frustrating. They're massive distortions. What's frustrating to me again,

I'm just going to come back to this thing, is like I talk to my friends who are fed up with current politics and I say, why can't we change the system? Why does it have to work the way that it works? and it's people they kind of are like, their jaws drop and they're not able to see a different way of working.

So how can we visualize a completely different system? Like an example that I put forward in Soul Boom is based on the Baha'i Faith and how elections are running. Which is a very, very, very, very inspiring example. You and I were joking about it. I was like, oh my God, that's how it goes. And by the way, one of the themes of it was that you, kind of want someone who doesn't want the job.

Right, right. So the idea is that you're in pancake flats, Colorado. They're fed up with partisan politics. They don't really want to be beholden to the Republican Party or the Democratic Party. So they, all of the people of the town gather in the local football stadium and silently, a silent ballot. There's no campaigning. There's no yard signs. There's no money spent whatsoever.

They vote for, you know, whoever they think could. best serve the general interests of their community. And you tally up all the votes and it may be someone that didn't run. There wouldn't be anyone running. Ideally it would be the guy who runs the auto parts store or it would be the school principal or whatever it is. That would be in charge of the town council or would be mayor and they would have to sacrifice for the good of the community. They'd have to sacrifice their job to give that back. Like, why? Why? Why can't we think about that possibility of a different style of democracy, not based on campaigning? One of the things that drives me crazy about campaigning is, are these debates, because debates, the winner of the debate is always whoever got the most insults in and whoever got the most zingers, which are pre-rehearsed and canned.

I know comedy writers in L.A. I know a bunch of them right now that are writing. for the Democratic Party. And they're trying to write those zingers that Kamala Harris can get in front of the, in front of the cameras and be like, Donald Trump, you said, blah, blah, blah, blah, that's a blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and it's just, it's like writing punchlines

for a host at the Oscars. And then on CNN, like, who do you think won that debate? Well, Kamala Harris sure got in that one joke. Remember that thing? Like, well, she won it. And how, in God's name, are we basing, our political system on who is better at insulting someone else. It is, it's crass, its lowest common denominator, and again, it's just another symptom of a much greater disease. Yeah, man, it is getting

darker and worse. And one of the things you can notice, too, is that neither party's candidate has a policy platform this time around because they decided it's more downside than upside to actually defining any policies. And in Trump's case, he might change his mind. So you're talking to one of the foremost experts on how we can try and reinvent American politics and make them better. Take it away. All right. One of the major reasons why we're so mad is that you have these party primaries that do distort a lot of things and we're like, what just happened? And then by the time the choice gets to you, there is no choice. So there are two states that have voted to get rid of their primaries, Maine and Alaska. And Alaska getting rid of their primaries meant that a woman named

Sarah Palin actually lost to a woman named Mary Paltola, who known. one here has heard of, because instead of it being Republican versus Democrat, which Sarah Palin probably wins because it's a red-leading state, it was multiple candidates in a multi-candidate race, and it was decided by something called ranked choice voting. So Mary Paltolla was more people's second choice, and so she wound up edging out Sarah Palin. And Lisa Murkowski, the Republican senator I referenced, was the only Republican senator who voted to impeach Donald Trump, who was up for re-election the next year. And if she went through a Republican primary,

she loses for sure because, you know, like her. But there was no Republican primary. So she was like, hey, guys, I voted to impeach Trump, but I'm like essentially an independent. Now I'm in the middle. And she managed to edge out the Trumper by 53, 47, again, in the second round of ranked choice voting. One of the problems with primaries

is that the two ends of the political spectrum gets so extreme. You could have a primary going on And at the same time, in a state like Minnesota, where the extreme left is saying, defund the police, pull all funding to the police. They're all racist and corrupt. And you could have someone on the right saying, lock up every illegal immigrant and bury them underground or execute them on the political right. And they could actually be doing very well within a certain small measure of their constituencies. This seems to be happening more and more and more.

And this is an issue with this, with the kind of. like deadlocked primary system that we that we have. Yeah. Both parties are getting dragged to their extremes because they have to cater to the 10 to 12 percent who are voting in the primaries. And then you have our media organizations who are separating, separating us into teams and tribes. And then you have social media pouring gasoline on the whole thing.

And so most Americans are looking up being like, why does this conversation not seem very reasonable, balanced, realistic? And then you have this ideal. class that leads us to hostility, uh, tears apart friendships and families. I mean, we're essentially now being just, you know, triggered, um, tribally and emotionally, uh, via cable and social media. And the problems are festering and getting worse. Um, and of these three layers of problems, and I'm, I'm eager to try and solve each of them. Um, uh, but believe

or not, fixing our primaries is actually the most, uh, like, realistic of these, um, layers of problems. And I even have numbers for that, where you can fix the primary system in five, six, seven, eight states for the low hundreds of millions of dollars. You know, the media organizations would take probably billions. And then social media, you likely need some sort of effective governance. So there's probably not a monetary figure. Though right now that, you know, you're probably getting tens of billions of dollars spent the other direction. There is a a way that if enough of us get together, we can vote to get rid of the party primaries in 25 states

that allow you to do that via something called a ballot initiative. Maine did it, Alaska did it, and there are four more states that have it on the ballot in November to get rid of their primaries. Those four states, if soul boomers are living in these states, please do check it out and vote yes on question three in Nevada. So it's Nevada, Colorado, Arizona, and Idaho. and then maybe Montana enters the picture.

So if four states vote to get rid of their primaries, then all of a sudden you would have eight U.S. senators who don't have primaries anymore, and I'm going to guess that they become all of a sudden much more... Free thinking. Yes, free thinking is the way to think about it. Right. So we're taking shots at that.

And then the big opportunity at the presidential level, which I know is what most people pay attention to, is that we can create a new form of primary that enables you all to participate on your smartphone you say, hey, I want, I'm going to put you up to this anyway. Okay. So Rain Wilson is running for president.

Andrew Yang is running for president. Oprah is running for president. Mark Cuban is running for president. Matthew McConaughey is running for president. You know, whoever your favorite, like not necessarily celebrity. They don't have to be an actor celebrity. They do not need to be an entrepreneur. Right.

Well, Cubans, you know, an entrepreneur. So it could be your favorite entrepreneur. It could be like, you know, know, someone who doesn't fit into party politics very cleanly anymore, like an Adam Kinzinger or a lot of Republican Party is now laid down. And you can vote for this person on your smartphone in a nomination process where you get millions and millions of Americans saying, I like Yang, I like Cuban, to return power to the people, genuine lowercase D-democracy. And then the legacy parties would be left saying, no, no, no, that's not a real nomination process. What is a real

nomination process is waiting to hear what 6% of Iowans think in February. Right. And then millions of us would be like, wait a minute, that doesn't make any sense. Like, why are you nominating people that way? Like, imagine an independent debate where you had me and you and Cuban and, you know, Oprah and whomever, like, it would be a ratings bonanza. And millions of Americans would be left saying, like, whatever's going on there, I'm more excited about that because I can sense that this is the free-thinking independent crew who's not beholden to, to the powers that be in the party machinery. And there are a lot of folks who I think would make great presidents,

to your point, who probably wouldn't run, honestly, because they're like, oh, you know, it's like, I'm not crazy.

But also wouldn't run because they know if they run in the Democratic Republican primary, they're not going to get a fair shake. And if you run in this independent primary, then you'd get a fair shake because you would just make your case directly to the American people. Right. Then a lot of folks to be energized and saying,

okay, the vision. And then whoever wins, let's say it's Mark Cuban, has like a small crew of wing people who like, hey, you know, like I didn't win the nomination, but I'm still part of this effort to retake government for the people. Fifty-one percent of us are independence four years from now. It's going to be probably like 55 percent or so. You need 38 percent to win. Can you get that kind of energy and escape velocity if you actually give the power back to the American people, that is to me the massive vision for the big race. But I'm also a pragmatic person where, like, you know, while we're trying to put the pieces

in place for the big race, let's take shots at your local school board. Let's take shots at city council. Let's recruit and build. So to reiterate, local offices, fulcrum in a legislative body like the U.S. Senate, change the primary so that our votes actually matter. and then lie in wait for the big dance, which people can participate on their smartphone in a way that's actually modern and representative.

So we're trying to create the next generation of American politics. Aren't we still playing with the same kind of broken tools? We're still about seeking power, raising money, you know, gaining leverage, shutting other people down, other parties that we disagree with, you know, putting them aside. There's a book that I quote a lot called The Culture of Contest by Dr. Michael Carleberg. That's talking about how all of our systems are currently based on contest and competition and also the aggressiveness that comes with it. And there are other human attributes and ways of governing that have to do with cooperation and collaboration

and community and collectivism that aren't about like every man for himself, dog eat dog, one-upsmanship. But you're still playing in the same soiled playground of partisan politics by doing the work that you're doing. Is there some other way to just set all of that aside, all of that like filthy, toxic, vitriolic, mean-spirited aggressiveness and kind of build something new and fresh based on the best human qualities?

I certainly hope so, Rene, and it's funny because in America's certainly political culture is, you know, somewhat pathological and dark and money-driven. And by the way, it seems like everyone's is. Is there a country you can point to that doesn't have a pathological and dark political system? It seems like... It's probably a matter of degree to your point, you know, but certainly we have the most expensive one that anyone's ever seen. But again, we're just looking at systems.

If you're an alien looking down on planet Earth and you're looking at political system in the United States, you're like, wow, it's bloodthirsty, it's cutthroat, it's back. stabbing. It's corrupt. It's about backroom deals. It's about who insults the other candidate the best. It's about who raises the most money from billionaires who are simply pursuing their own selfish interests. Aliens would just look at it and be like, this system doesn't work. This is unsustainable. Can't there be a system based out of like goodheartedness, ethics, morality, cooperation, community? I'd love for us to get there. I know that there's a lot of people rolling their eyes right now.

Like, oh, this crazy utopian idealist, you know, hippie-dippy weirdo. But that's what I'm talking about, about, you know, a complete rethinking of the tools that we're using, the mechanisms that we're using, the juice that's propelling, you know, public service. It should be about public service. So here's an idea, and that this might be like a synthesis of what you're describing. We should give every American $100 democracy dollars that you can use on any candidate you want. It's user to lose it. You don't use it just disappears. I like where you're going with this.

This is nice. It's like shrewd bucks. Yes. So everyone all of a sudden gets like a vote of, you know, up to $100. And you could wash out a lot of the corporate money because if you look at the math on that, you would end up more than like counterbalancing the current donation. the current donations, if any proportion of us, use these $100. And it would make everyone, like, a more active participant.

Because one of the things right now, people are like, oh, my vote doesn't matter. And, like, I don't have any money, obviously. So I'm not going to, like, participate. If you look at the proportion of Americans who actually donate to political campaigns, it's really low. Yeah. It's maybe 10% or so. I was going to say 20.

Yeah. Yeah. No. So maybe 12. I don't know. It's around that neighborhood. And it's one reason I was so grateful to all the Americans who donated to my campaign. It's very uplifting and invigorating.

but if you were to say, hey, everyone gets a free $100, like, you would see that skyrocket because all of a sudden it's like, oh, snap, maybe I'll actually watch this debate because, like, I'm going to send someone $100, so I might as well figure out who it is. Someone who right now, and I'm not even talking necessarily a presidential debate.

It could be even like a local debate. It could be like, oh, I've got $100 and I've decided I'm going to give it to, you know, like someone who's running locally. So let me figure out who's running locally. You could turn everyone into a participant. And that, by the way, has been done in various regions and localities.

And so it's doable. Actually, it's pretty easy to do. So that's a way you can empower people and then hopefully counteract the corporate money. There was a really interesting documentary made by Michael Moore, and I know he's a very divisive figure. And I think it was called Who Do We Invade Next? But that was a misdirect.

The whole idea of the documentary is like, hey, let's look around the world at systems that are actually working. Let's go, oh, look, Slovenia has amazing higher education system with free college for everyone. How do they do that? Oh, look, Portugal seems to have solved crime. Like, how do they do that? How is their judicial system so fair? And have you seen in your studies around the world, are there other political systems that are democratic in nature that seem to be much more fair, grounded, human, decent, and practical? You know, this is going to make me sound like just a Stan or something, but you know who's been good at this is Taiwan.

They invest in something called digital democracy where they broke it down the community level. And then you actually can provide input feedback and be like filters up. And then there's like a real response. And so you have like a genuine feedback mechanism in a way that Americans right now would just never imagine. Yeah. So and it also gets it. It's all right for us to talk about Taiwan on this podcast because I I've already been banned from China because I met with the Dalai Lama.

So, boom. Yeah, you know, I mean, my family lives in Taiwan, so I go back there once a year. So if you're in Taiwan, you see a guy looks like me, probably me. But they've been very good at it. Estonia has actually been very good at, like, different forms of also digital interaction and digital citizenship. So there are countries that are doing it. Now, they're not as big as United States, you know, and one of the things also. I hope no one, but most countries are also more homogeneous than we are.

And so, you know, the fact that we have lots of different types of people here makes some of these things less apt comps. But certainly there are countries that are doing a better job than we are. So let's go to universal basic income. Here's what I don't get about it. And I haven't done any reading or research whatsoever. I have a knee-jerk reaction about like, you're going to give people, money, even people that are sitting around playing video games all day and just smoking weed and

not contributing to society, why should they get thousands of dollars a month? That's where I go. There are a number of reasons why we think it'd be a good idea. I'll just argue from my own perspective. So right now a lot of those people are potentially receiving money from like a poorly designed bureaucracy. Like social security disability? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, let's use disability as one example. And I was in Iowa, and a woman came up to me and told me the story how she's on disability and she wants to volunteer at her local nonprofit, but she's afraid to do so because she's afraid someone's going to report her as not being disabled and then she's going to lose her

disability. And I thought, well, that's the darkest version of reality, isn't it? Because now you're disabled, you're at home, and then you're afraid to go and do something positive in your community because you have these. benefits that are attached to this program. And I thought, well, wouldn't it be better? I think most people would agree. It's like, how about we give you the benefits and you go volunteer and, you know, maybe

you even feel better and you're like perfectly actually able and like, you know, you still get the benefits. Like right now we have this negative set of incentive is attached to a lot of these programs. Okay. Where there's paternalism attached to them where you're kind of demonstrating that, you know, you need the money. And then if you get the money, then you're, you know, afraid of losing it. by running a fallout bureaucracy or some other thing.

So if you can eliminate the bureaucratic layer and say, look, you are a stakeholder, let's call the citizen of this country, and here is your part of the pie. The other thing is that when you put money into people's hands, they're more apt to become part of the community, part of the local marketplace, and in our view, more likely to act. actually do more, not less, that the reason why people are at home.

So it's not a demotivator, it's actually a motivator? Yeah, if people, by the way, there are studies to show this, too, that if you grow up in an environment where things work, then you become more likely to be conscientious agreeable and, like, think, okay, things will work. So if I do something, like, I'll have a chance. If you're in an environment where things don't work, then you think, oh, like, you know, like, no one cares about me. I mean, one of the, things I said I wanted to do as president is I wanted to look at every American in the eye and say, your country loves you, your country values you, and we're going to prove it. And here you go.

Here's your stake. Because as someone who's run organizations, people can tell if you're lying, if you say, hey, you're important and we're going to demonstrate your complete lack of importance every single way. This would be a way to attribute genuine value to people. Couldn't you do that with like free community college? Instead of universal basic income, aren't there certain other ways to spend that money that could be even more motivating?

For instance, education. What if all community college was free? And in fact, what if all state college was free? Now, you'd have to get good grades, and you'd have to advance and pass to, in order, to move forward, but that getting of education had zero obstacles for it. I'm not against free community college or other measures like that. One of the issues is that about 35% of Americans go to four-year universities, and if you

expand a community colleges, it's about 49%. So then you have half the population that is not going to necessarily see that benefit. and so, you know, but I'm not against different. But doesn't, but doesn't tuition provide a barrier for a lot of the people that would want to go? It does in many cases, and I'm for lowering those barriers. But it's one of the, by the way, it's one of the reasons why the Democrats' current messaging around like, hey, let's forgive college debt. It pisses off a lot of Americans because, you know, like maybe almost two-thirds of Americans are like, I didn't go to college. So, like, what's going on over there?

You know, I mean, if you're just benefiting elitist. Yes. If you're going to choose a category of debt to forgive that everyone could have gotten behind, it would have been medical debt. Yeah, health care debt. Because that stuff affects everybody. Yeah. So I'm not against all sorts of measures that give people a leg up. One thing I'm very, very passionate about is that we should be investing in technical apprentices and vocational. Trade schools. Trade schools. Free trade school would go hand in hand with free community college. Yeah. So, Ray, what's interesting is that the problems in the employment market are actually diverging along gender lines quite often, where only 40% of college students are now men. So there are different approaches you would take. I like it. I'm for taking multiple shots at it. But ultimately, this is where you have spent so much of your time and your energy is figuring out how the hell do we reduce poverty. Because if we reduce poverty, this will benefit everyone. It'll benefit. markets, you know, benefit entrepreneurs. It'll benefit the health care system, the political system, the eradication of poverty. That's a very Star Trek way of looking at moving forward.

In Star Trek, they have done it through technology and through the invention of the replicator, and maybe we just need to invent replicators. Someone put it to me in this way. Star Trek is utopian and a kind of practical technologically utopian. hey, if we stop fighting wars on the planet and put all of those resources towards uniting in a kind of a world global federation and then put all of that technological work into healing the planet, healing cancers, solving, you know, issues like poverty, then humanity can rise to its greatest possible kind of growth and achievement, right?

So in Star Wars, it's just kind of a continuation of what we have right now. The Galactic Senate is corrupt, divisive, power-seeking, and of course the empire is the authoritarian element within it. But Star Wars is kind of like more of the same. It's politics. And Star Trek has somehow eliminated politics. Star Trek, and you know about Treconomics, right? That's the idea that economics has completely.

shifted where there's no more money in the future in Star Trek. Everyone has what they need because we've invented these replicators and you can get a bowl of chicken noodle soup or you can get a pet sloth or you can get a new pair of, you know, crocs. I didn't know they can make sloths. Yeah. And but anything you want can be made so there's no need for money anymore. So it's a completely utopian system. And I know you feel the same way that and you said very aptly, earlier, I'm going to steal your quote that you said to me in my truck as we were driving here. There's two choices. There's a utopian version that we're moving toward, and there's a dystopian, there's a belief that we're headed towards some kind of dystopian future. And I was saying

with the mental health crisis and young people, they see increasingly the impossibility of a utopian future, of humanity getting through all of this garbage and uniting and heat. And healing and that they see more and more that dystopia is inevitable with climate change, with political toxicity and division, with war, authoritarianism. How do we move forward? Yeah, when I was running for president four years ago, I would say to folks rain, I was like, we're going to naturally veer towards either Star Trek or Mad Max, that you wind up moving in one of those two directions. And the simplest way to understand it is abundance versus scarcity, where our minds, but our economy is programmed for scarcity, which sort of made sense

when you show up in a new world, you don't have enough food to eat and whatnot. You say, okay, you've got to work hard. And if you don't work hard, you probably don't farm enough foods, you probably die. When you have resources, you've got to be very, very careful about who gets what and people having enough. We're about to flip to potential abundance from scarcity because of various technological advancements for the first time in history to put numbers on it because I'm the math guy. Our GDP now, if you were to use and I have problems with the measurements and whatnot, but our GDP is approaching $80,000 ahead, which if you think about $80,000 per person, it's like you actually could have a pretty decent standard of living or foundation on that.

When I was running for president, I said, look, we should have a universal basic income where everyone just gets $1,000 a month to meet basic needs. And I argued like that's totally affordable. If you have an $80,000 a year GDP and you give everyone $12,000, by the way, you're going to end up saving a ton on health care and incarceration and homelessness. Basic public services. Yeah, yeah. You know, I mean, and we can go into why we're not so great at delivering a lot of those services.

But big picture, for the first time in human history, we genuinely could just say, look, there's plenty to go around. Because with AI, and I'm concerned about a lot of things that AI is doing and can do, but it should create hundreds of billions of dollars worth of economic value. The question is, where does it go? And right now that economic value is going to get concentrated in the hands of a few mega companies and a few mega shareholders. that's not great. Like, that's not going to lead to Utopia. But if that value were being shared more broadly in a way that would make people feel like,

okay, we can be in this together and include people, even if they don't work for meta or whatever the heck, then you'd have a real shot at solving some of the biggest problems of our time. But what do you say to people that immediately, when you said sharing the wealth, went socialist, like just jumped to socialist communist. Like, doesn't work. Well, a lot of these technologies,

AI in particular, is based upon our data. Our data right now is being sold and resolved for hundreds of billions of dollars a year. And we're not seeing any of that. So even saying it's like, oh, you know, like this wealth, like, why would you want someone? It's like, well, the wealth kind of got built on our data, our society.

You know, it's like that they're, are various public resources that have gone into the creation of a lot of these products. Let's go back to Star Trek. Yeah. How can us Americans in 2024, with everything seemingly breaking down around us, visualize and aim for a utopian Star Trek future? All right. I'm so into it.

And so, by the way, what I'm about to say, my campaign manager made me swear never to say during the campaign trail. So you guys can have some fun with that. So people would ask me all the time. Look, I was the magical Asian man from the future who wanted to give everyone money. And I said something called artificial intelligence is going to come

and wipe out a lot of jobs. There are 2 million Americans at work at call centers right now. I think AI is going to be able to do that job pretty soon. And that's an obvious one. There are a lot of in obvious ones. There's a joke going around the internet rain.

Whereas why can't AI wash my dishes? Because it seems like AI is doing all the fun creative stuff, which it kind of is. Unfortunately, it's like eating. What's it eating? It's eating, design, writing, obviously, coding, certain forms of art, certain forms of music.

I mean, a lot of good stuff. It's starting to take over. So I would, so what, four years ago, I would say, look, AI's going to come, it's going to wipe out a lot of jobs. So what are we going to do? AI would be very good at podcasting, by the way. Yeah. We're not that far away.

I was on a news program. they're like, hey, when will AI replace anchors? And I was like, actually, they're working on that right now because you anchors are kind of expensive. I mean, it's dark, it's true. You could have a 3D hologram, and they know the questions to ask. You know, chat, GPT could do it right now. Yeah, I mean, they could replace both of us in this conversation.

Oh, my God. So, yeah, I mean, it's dark. So if you imagine that that is coming down the track, and it obviously is, then what do we do? And so my first step was, look, let's just eradicate poverty, give everyone at least a foundational layer, and that will help. And then people say, okay, let's say I accept that.

But then what will we do all day? And then what I said was, look, humans need structure, purpose, fulfillment, meaning, community. And a lot of those things we get from our jobs. Now, my wife was at home with our two boys, one of whom is autistic. And one of the observations I'd make on the trail was, how much does a market value my wife's work at?

And people would think about that and say, well, I guess nothing. And I was like, yeah, that gets a zero from our, you know, all-knowing marketplace. But we know that's nonsense. We know that the work Evelyn's doing is some of the most valuable work any of us can do. It's probably some of the hardest work any of us can do. It's just that it gets attributed to zero by our current marketplace. So what we should do is create a marketplace based upon the things we actually know to be valuable. So that could be nurturing and education

Like what my wife is doing It could be arts and creativity Which I'm gonna suggest a lot of your friends probably do It could be health and wellness And one of my observations That's gonna entertain some people Is that at this point we should probably be getting paid To go to the gym

Instead of paying to go to the gym Right, because it keeps you out of the hospital Yes, it keeps us healthier You know, it probably makes us mentally healthier Probably improves our relationships to the market I mean there are like a lot of you know, great things about,

um, exercise and being healthy. Um, so if you can imagine building, uh, an economy around each of these human values, that is what we should be pursuing. And,

uh, my campaign managers said never speak about this again, because it's too confusing for people. Um, I, so I feel, I, it's one reason I'm so pumped to be here in soul boom because I feel like

your people are going to just like naturally get and eat it up. But my campaign manager, my campaign manager was like, look, even just the giving people money thing. Right. Like is, like, you know, you have, that is your core idea. Like, stick to that and don't try and explain the economy of the future to people.

Anytime you say a collectively sharing wealth and collectively sharing resources, people have a knee-jerk reaction that that's socialism and that's anti-capitalist. And it's not going to work. And I don't want to be giving. my money to poor people who are sitting around on their asses not doing anything and not contributing. Why should I have to do that? So what I would say to folks is like, look, that that's a very, very kind of ridiculous way to even conceptualize the economy.

And this is one of the darknesses of this time reign, you know, though I think a lot of us can sense is that you have these false binaries, this, you know, black, white, like, you know, Capitalism, socialism is, by the way, one of those. And so when I was running, I was like, look, you can consider this capitalism where income doesn't start at zero. Or capitalism works better when people have money to spend. You know when it doesn't work so well? When you don't have a middle class, but like no one has any money to spend and you mind up and like, you know. That's a great way of putting it.

Yeah. Yeah. So there. I love that idea of false dichotomy around capitalism and socialism because we live in the United States of America, which is a socialist country. because we have large government programs that Medicare and Medicaid and Social Security and supposedly universal education for everyone. These are giant government programs

that benefit the collective. That's by definition, that's socialism. It's just where on the dial what role do you want government to play in the kind of like consolidation and upliftment of its general populace. Yeah, and a lot of these megacorp, have effective monopolies in a lot of these industries, you know what I mean?

And so it's like, you say like, oh, socialism. And then you look at their industry and it's like, hey, how do you feel about competition in that industry? It's like, oh, hate it. You know what I mean? I mean, we were joking earlier today that, you know, there are three wireless carriers. It's like, oh, that seems like a relatively small number. And they own all of the spectrum of the wireless communication.

Yeah. How many search engines are there really? like how many social media networks are there really like is there an alt for a lot of these so if you can get off off the false dichotomy what you do is you take reality as it is and say okay like how would you design this better how would you improve people's lives and to me poverty is the easiest place to start poverty is the most addressable problem it's a purely social problem we just had the will we could alleviate it for millions and by the way this was totally proven in 2021 when we cut child poverty in half through the enhanced child tax credit where

120 economists that is the best thing we've done in a generation. So anyone who thinks like poverty is intractable, all you have to do is point them to three years ago. Yeah. And say, we actually did. I want to slow down a second and underline what you were just talking about because I think people need to know about this. There was a program that briefly came and went during COVID, so it didn't get any press and it was a tax credit for poor working families for their children yeah and this proved that a government tax cut such as this could essentially eradicate poverty it came and went no one really knew about it tell us a little bit more about this program yeah it's the enhanced child tax credit it was passed during covid and during the

year 2020. Bipartisan? Yeah, those bills were bipartisan. And it sent, let's call it, you know, a few hundred bucks per child to working poor families. So if you had a couple of kids, maybe you were getting, you know, $400 a month to pay for their food and books and fuel and things like that. And it cut child poverty in the United States from 11% to 5.5%. It lifted about 3 million Americans out of poverty within that year. And the effects were, by the way, immediate. Immediate. Yeah. And economists then tried to track down what happened with these families and the money. And they found it went to literally food, fuel books. Like the most, yeah, the most benign like expenses you can imagine. And that you

saw an immediate improvement in ability to learn a lower incidence of domestic violence, lower incidence of abuse, pretty much anything you can imagine you were hoping for, you got 120 economists, including a few Nobel Prize winner, signed a letter at the end of the year saying there's the best thing we've done in a generation, we should keep doing it. And unfortunately, you can imagine how the story ends. We did undo it in 22 because it fell victim to party politics where this is something in a i mean dc does does some pretty dumb things but what they did was they said we're going to make this happen for uh a year and there's no way we could ever undo it so then like the future versions of us will then have no choice but to extend it um but then

they did not extend it and child poverty went from five and a half percent back up to 11 percent just like that in one year and yeah now it's an expensive program we're talking about you know, billions of dollars a year, right? Yeah, it's about 160 billion dollars a year. But the benefit is? Is fewer poor kids, which means better educational outcomes, better health outcomes, probably fewer truance, fewer people running afoul of our criminal justice system, higher levels of employment. And in that sense, a high tide raises all boats. If you have lifted these kids out of poverty, if you're just talking from a, you know, right-wing, left-wing perspective, from the more, you know, conservative element, you might say, well, then you're raising up a whole

another element to the middle class that is going to be able to be taxed more, that's going to bring more money into the economy, and we're going to gain that money back. That investment to bring kids out of poverty is absolutely going to be paid back. Oh, yeah. You can very clearly see that you'd get your money back and then some. I mean, if someone does wind up in jail or something like that, it's incredibly expensive. If someone winds up in our health care system, incredibly expensive. And to your point, rain, there are a lot of middle of the road Republicans who love this because it's good for families. By the way, it's also wildly popular. Like when they went out to their districts and their constituents would say, hey. What happened to that money that I was getting

sent for one year? Yes. And that breaks my heart. I have spent millions of dollars in D.C. trying to lobby for a revival of the enhanced child tax credit because it's such a no-brainer. And I'm happy to say I do see there's hope, but we shouldn't be in this position. I mean, you do something good. Everyone says it's a good thing. And then you undo it. And now you have families that have been struggling since 22. And, you know, like, they don't get that time back. Even if we do successfully end up bringing it back in 2025. I mean, it shouldn't be like this. Right.

Doesn't that partially have to do with systems and the fact... It has a lot to do with the systems. Because, well, but you have like 60% of Americans right now who don't believe that government is working for them. And I don't blame them. But if you don't believe that there are fair and just systems that can make the world better, then of course you're headed towards dystopia.

So, and this is where it gets, tricky for me and thinking about this because the thing I get most frustrated about is that we need a radical change. We don't need little tweaks to the system. We need big swings. We're talking about like, you know, universal basic income, like some big ways of kind of revitalizing the economy because we see where we're headed. But at the same time, we want people to believe that systems can help them and that whether it's government or non-governmental organizations that their lives can be improved by systems that not all systems are evil and bad and corrupt and there's a conspiracy theory around them and that's a that's a delicate tightrope

yeah i i agree with you on all fronts uh things are not going well people feel like uh cheated yeah people feel cheated people feel like they're leaders don't need to pay any attention to them. Generally correct, unless you're a megabuck donor and then you can maybe get a meeting. So there's a lot of very real disillusionment and mistrust. The question is how do we improve it? How do we make it better?

And how do we do it quickly so that it might actually get to us in our, you know, our lifetimes and not our, you know, grandkids lifetimes? And I'm someone who thinks that most of the trend lines are very negative. We're in a period of multi-decade, maybe even multi-generational disintegration as a country based upon things like, you know, income inequality, sure. But also around institutional trust in government, in schools, and the media. And there are studies for this. I'm a data guy. There's a model from a guy named Peter Turchin who studied the integration and disintegration of societies.

and according to him, we've been on a disintegration pathway since the 80s or so. So, you know, we've got 40 years of negative trends. Now, even Peter thinks that eventually we come back, that societies do improve as well as devolve. Yes, we're in a devolutionary period. But then one reason I'm, again, excited to spend time with you, is that there are going to be people that are helping to build the solutions and the path forward. And maybe they don't click, you know, like in year one or year two.

But then, you know, maybe in year 12, everyone looks around as like, oh, maybe we actually should roll out time banking at scale or alleviate poverty at scale. So you can believe that these institutions are full of it and still say it is worth my time to try and make things better. particularly because it's better for us as individuals. You know what I mean? Like one of the things that happens to me is, let's say I think there's a problem, which I do. The only way I can feel better about it

is when I'm doing something about it. If I'm not doing something about it, then what am I? I'm a complainer. I'm a someone who just turns to my person and like, you know, like my bougie friend is like, oh, aren't things shitty? And it's like, well, that kind of makes me shitty,

honestly, if that's my approach. Yeah. especially if I happen to be maybe someone who could do something about it. And for each person listening to this, there is something you can do something about in your own life, in your own community. Like you may think that... And it can be small. It can be in your cul-de-sac. Yes.

It can be at your kid's school, your neighborhood group. Yes. Yes. Yeah, yeah. Or, you know, even doing something for yourself or for someone who's super close to you. I mean, that stuff matters. So you have to be positive in attitude and action. even if you can recognize some of the negative, you know, like institutional trends.

Well, I talk about this in Soul Boom. It is a belief in my Baha'i faith tradition that part of our spiritual responsibility is to help try and make the world a better place. And Baha'u'llah says, all men should usher forward an ever-advancing civilization. That he also says, be anxiously concerned of the needs of the age that you live in. and be concerned on, you know, on its well-being and making it a better place. That this is a spiritual impetus. It's a spiritual responsibility.

People think of spirituality is like, oh, I'm going to, I'm going to meditate and I'm going to feel some peace inside. And then that's going to make me a generally more agreeable person with a higher, you know, quality of life. And that's all true. But what about a larger responsibility toward eight billion people, several billion of whom are living in a lot of misery to take our talents and faculties, which are God-given, which are divine, our creativity, imagination, spark, joy, humor,

whatever positive qualities you can think of that have a divine essence to them and put those toward, you know, social change. Let's freaking build, man, amen. Yeah. Like, you know, why do I have these capacities if I'm not using? them to try and build something that's going to help somebody. And Martin Luther King said, the most important question that we can ask ourselves is, what are we doing for others?

This spiritual imperative runs through all the different faith traditions, by the way. We've talked about how broken the income inequality is. We've talked about how broken the current political system is. You have presented some very tangible ideas, but for a lot of young people listening, right now, there might feel a general sense of despondency and powerlessness. What can you point toward? What kind of hope can you give young people that change is possible and that a Star Trek utopia is ultimately possible for our children and their children? Well, the first thing I would say is that it's probably more important what's going on in your own life than what's going on, you know,

like in American politics or these other things. And by the way, you have much more direct control over what's going on in your own life. And so I would actually have young people just think, okay, what can I do today that's going to make me happier, healthier, stronger, improve my relationships. There's something I can reach out to, like a loved one that maybe I owe a phone call mom. I mean, I really should be calling my own mom more often. And she's getting a bit older. So, and then like magic, my experience, as soon as you start doing things that are working in your own life, it will actually make you feel a little bit better about what's going on out there. And then maybe you'll be able to participate in some way that will inch us towards utopia.

And that can be something like, frankly, just being a good person and creating something good in your community. Like, start a book club. Heck, you know, go through the soul boom reading list. I mean, like that, that alone would actually be. a very, very positive thing and it would be making people happy. Well, I think what you're getting at is very important, which is about agency.

Yes. If we take some agency in our lives, in our emotional life, in our spiritual lives, and our lives improve a little bit. As Arthur Brooks says, there's no such thing as like a path toward happiness. It's just happierness, he calls it.

Like you just get a little bit happier. Then you feel a little bit of agency and you feel like, oh, I can make a difference in my own life. Maybe I can make a little difference in the life of my family, but don't stop there. Because your community is also your family. How can you make a positive impact in your community? But that comes from the belief that change is possible. If you can change yourself, you can change your family, then maybe you can change incrementally by small measure, something in your community. I would also say that if you had a time machine and found Rain in his teens and 20s, like you'd think,

oh, this guy's going nowhere. It's true. I was a pimply loser. Insert shot of me as a pimply loser. Thank you. And the same is true for young Andrew Yang. You'd be like, oh, what's going on with this guy? Where certainly I was brooding and angsty and unhappy. I listened to a lot of the cure and the smiths. That's just good taste, my friend. And the happierness you're talking about was very much. So this is one of the things I did when I was young. I was like, okay, like I'm sad. I'm lonely, I'm mopey. I'm going to do one thing today that gets my body moving, my blood pumping, and then, you know,

and then you can kind of go from there. And then look at me now, arguing for utopia, political reform, time banking, economy of the future. So, you know, like young you can morph in very interesting ways into middle-aged, me and rain, if that is a goal. Maybe you should have higher goals than being me or rain. I often tell young people when I speak in college campuses and they have advice or what advice would you have for yourself

when you were younger or what have you. And it always leads me to the same thing, is that everyone's capacity is probably much greater than they think it is. We view ourselves as having a very small and limited capacity, and our capacity is probably much grander, that we are bigger thinkers and bigger doers, bigger advocates, bigger altruists and philanthropists, better and bigger servants of humanity than

we think possible. So it's that gradual expansion and building of our own capacity, and that builds the capacity of people around us. Yeah, everything I'm doing now is a result of something I might have done in some earlier part of my life. And it becomes a layer cake. You know, you become like this cumulative thing. Someone asked me the other night, I was at a party. And someone was like, how the heck did you decide to run for president? And I thought, well, before that, I had started a national nonprofit. So I thought it would be kind of similar.

Did you know? Yeah, yeah. I was wrong-ish. But, you know, so if you do something positive and, you know, the here and now, then, like, you do end up feeling like, okay, this confidence that you can do more. Yeah, absolutely. Andrew Yang, thanks so much for coming on the old soul booms. Soul boom. There you have it.

Yes. Boom. The Soul Boom podcast. Subscribe now on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever else you get your stupid podcasts.