The Prof G Pod with Scott Galloway - Andrew Yang's Run for Mayor

Episode Date: February 21, 2021

Andrew Yang, a Democratic candidate for New York City mayor, joins Scott to discuss his campaign. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to a special episode of the Prop G Show. Today, we're speaking with Andrew Yang to hear about his run for New York City Mayor and how he plans to transform the city. Disclosure, I am supporting Andrew Yang. I got to know him a little bit during the presidential campaign. I think he is an innovative thinker and a decent man, and I'm supporting him. And I also want to send out an invitation to any other candidate. I think we have some great candidates running for mayor of New York City, but we are going to speak to Andrew, and I'm hoping to check in on Andrew. I think running for mayor is an interesting thing in New York. I find him interesting, so we'll probably do this several times. I'd like to think, I think New York of being kind of the capital of the world

and it's going to face some big challenges specifically around our eroding tax bases. There's this giant sucking sound from New York to Florida. And I think there's some difficult issues that New York and its leadership are going to have to face. And we asked Andrew about some of those things. Anyways, with that, here's our conversation with New York City mayoral candidate Andrew Yang. Andrew, let's bust right into it. So let's start off with everyone's favorite A&E biography question. You've had COVID. Tell us about it. So I was diagnosed and I had mild symptoms and then I was optimistic for a while that I would not experience the worst of it. But it just got worse and worse. And eventually it feels like a very, very nasty flu, at least it did in my case, with some added wrinkles of like a loss of taste. I had one practical piece of advice I'd have is like, I had an oximeter,

which is you just stick it on your finger and find out how your blood oxygen level is. And I got to say that thing is crucial. Everyone should just go out and buy one right now. It's like 20 bucks on Amazon because when I was miserable, I would just stick that thing on my finger and then find I was in a safe blood oxygen zone and then feel better and relax. So you're running for mayor. The terrible thing about crises is they always happen. The wonderful thing is they always go away. But assuming this at some point does go away, but at some point we will have another pandemic or at least we need to be prepared or better prepared next time. If you were the mayor of New York, what concrete steps would you take such that New York City was better positioned should this happen again? Well, one of the things that we're working on right now is having a vaccination passport so that you can quickly signal that you've been either tested negatively recently or you've been vaccinated, ideally. And so if you can imagine another pandemic rolling through New York, if you had that kind of infrastructure set up where people would be able to signal what their status was

in a way that people trusted, I think it would be very powerful to help us manage the next one, particularly if the next one we had to act together and actually had legitimate contact tracing early on so that we didn't go straight to social distancing and community mitigation efforts. That was the massive lost opportunity in the beginning of 2020, where when the virus wasn't widespread, we weren't tracking it meaningfully. So the goal would be to have the infrastructure in place so that we actually could isolate patients and contact trace and use technology to do so. And how do we ensure that communities that don't have as much access to technology might be intimidated by the idea of being on a list?

How do we ensure that this doesn't unwittingly end up being another form of segregation where, OK, wealthy people and people comfortable with technology get the passport, but people who, for whatever reason, aren't comfortable with technology and decide not to get it don't end up being excluded from basically what is life in New York. Well, you could have manual versions of it. Anytime you get vaccinated, you end up with a card that signals that you've been vaccinated. The app has utility in that it can verify against a signals that you've been vaccinated. The app has utility in that it can verify against a database that you've been vaccinated. And right now, about 90% of vaccinations are going to be available in a publicly aggregatable database, not publicly available in the sense that you or I can't get to it, but if your credential- Hit by compliance or or whatever some form of that yeah so you can have

manual workarounds um i'm happy to say that at this point um even folks with limited means tend to have smartphones as uh their primary means of communication uh but you do want to exert yourself to try to have access for folks who are older, for folks who are in communities of color that may just have lower levels of access and trust. Right now, as an example, in New York City, 29% of New Yorkers don't have residential broadband. So if you can imagine kids trying to learn in that context, very, very difficult. So one of my major commitments as mayor is going to be to get that 29% down significantly. And it's going to require resources because what's happened is that the telcos have done the math, and they've determined that they don't think they can make money by connecting those households

based upon what those households are willing to pay. Now, it turns out that 99% of New York City buildings are wired for broadband, which probably is not that surprising to people. So really, it's about trying to connect that last mile and putting resources to work. So I've got a plan to put up money on the part of the city to subsidize this partially, but then also ask the cable companies and internet providers to match those subsidies. And then I believe I can get some philanthropic commitments as well, because there are a lot of techies that are horrified at the fact that 29% of New Yorkers don't have high-speed internet and would be very willing to help change it. Yeah, it's kind of become the new water. So a crisis is a terrible thing to

waste. Some eras post a crisis have been some of the most productive in our society, but it requires bold leadership. Give us two or three things that you feel would be really bold, big changes that would foot to the opportunity or hopefully the opportunities coming out of this crisis. What is, what are the big ideas for New York that you're going to bring to the mayor's office? I think one of the ideas, and you actually incepted me with this one, Scott. You are so good, my brother. You are so good. Anyways, go ahead. So you said to me, if New York City were a country, it would be the 11th biggest economy in the world. And when you said that to me, I was like, wow, that's enormous. And you're right. It turns out we'd be right after

Canada. So if you have a nation-scale economy and you're suffering from, let's say, 10,000 plus failed small businesses and growing, which is where we are right now, what we need to do is we need to have new localized currencies that help flow through small businesses and get them back on their feet. And it's based upon something that's already happening right here in New York. So in New York, there are yeshiva schools that go to the parents and say, you need to buy $2,000 worth of vouchers to locally owned small businesses. And then they use those vouchers at the small businesses. The small businesses turn them into the schools, and then the schools give them the money minus 15% or whatever it is. So there is a massive fundraising element for the school, but this is a huge way to channel

buying power to locally owned small businesses. And it's happening right now in communities throughout New York. So we should be taking that principle and applying it to other neighborhoods. I'm calling this borough bucks and put money into people's hands that will flow where we would like it to flow, which is through these locally owned small businesses that right now are struggling to stay open. As advertised, I love this. The notion of creating cooperatives and buying power. I have an aunt who lives on a Moshav in Israel, and they do something similar.

So I'd love your thoughts, Ron. Go ahead. Sorry, Andrew. Yeah, no, but if you look at the situation we're in, Scott, I'm an operator. Yep. Over 27,000 of our friends and neighbors and family members dead from COVID. Over half a million infected. 60 million missing tourists. 700,000 missing jobs.

300,000 New Yorkers have relocated out of the city. Subway ridership is down 70%. Midtown Manhattan is 82% unoccupied as of a month and a half ago. So you're looking at a very, very deep, dark crisis. And the direct path out is the vaccine. So what you want to do is you want to focus on your lever out. Right now, one of the things I'm very excited about is that my campaign for mayor has over 3,500 volunteers who have signed up. We are going to be activating them this week toward get out the vaccine efforts for New York. So imagine thousands of people phone banking and text banking and even going in person to various folks and letting them know who's eligible in the neighborhood,

how they get vaccinated, talking to them in Spanish or Mandarin, if those are their native languages. This is where we need to be focusing our attentions because all of the horrifying numbers I just laid out are part of the devastation wrought by COVID. There is not going to be a meaningful recovery if we don't get the vaccine out broadly and efficiently, and then again, have a means to signal that people are vaccinated. Support for this show comes from Constant Contact. You know what's not easy? Marketing.

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is one of the, you know, the U.S.'s great migration taking place. And it's a migration of capital or specifically high net worth individuals from California and the Northeast to states that have two things, low taxes and sunshine. So you can practically hear the sucking sound from New York City right now, specifically Manhattan or Greenwich, down to Miami and Florida. It is striking, Andrew. And the tax, the destruction in the tax base, I think it's going to be staggering. What

do you do, one, to fill that hole? Because there's going to be, I think, unless I'm wrong, there's going to be a budget crisis. And two, what do you do long-term to ensure that we maintain, or that New York, quite frankly, is worth it? Because the swing between living in Manhattan and Florida right now is, I believe, around 13%. And if people start doing the math, it really, it's very, very meaningful. So filling the budget hole and two, what can you do to make New York more competitive against places like Florida and Texas? The budget hole will likely be significant. You're looking at approximately four to $5 billion in the city budget that's going to be in the red each year for the next number of years as an estimate out of a total budget of around $88 billion.

So you have to try to do several things at once. First, you have to try and identify inefficiencies. And I will say, I'm 100% sure there are very significant inefficiencies in the city budget. I've already heard of a number. And I don't get the sense that our current mayor is a hyper-disciplined operator. And so if you have eight years under a not very disciplined operator in a growth period, you're going to have a lot of things that you can cut without a lot of pain. But there are going to be a lot of things that are much tougher choices.

So then you have to be able to distinguish between fat, flesh, and bone. Start with the fat, and then you try and find the flesh that no one's going to miss as much, I guess. And then you try and avoid the bone. So the second direction you have to take is try and look for revenue opportunities. And I've identified at least two that I think are significant. Number one is that there are very big landowners in New York City that are exempt from property taxes and still enjoy city services of various kinds. Let's call them police and fire. So you can go to some of these institutions and say, hey, guys, like when Columbia University buys that dorm or buys an apartment building,

all of a sudden it becomes tax exempt and you're still enjoying various city services, maybe you should be paying what the previous landowner paid or something close to it. Because it's a drain on the city as these tax exempt organizations acquire more properties. But Andrew, come on, they only have a $12 billion endowment. They only have the endowment or the cushion of a small Central American nation. We shouldn't ask them to pay their fair share. I'm glad you looked that up. $12 billion endowment.

And when they buy property and stick their elbows out, those taxes get cleared from the scrolls. And then basically, which increases the taxes on residents, small business, renters. So an organization with a $12 billion endowment that charges kids $68,000 a year in tuition. I mean, that just feels pretty, what's the term? Fucked up to me. Anyways, the statement I want to put to you is European. It summarizes politics perfect for me. And that is some member of parliament in Europe said, we all know what needs to be done. What we don't know is how to get reelected doing what needs to be done.

I know you're an operator. I know you see the statistics that a mile of subway in Manhattan costs 11 times what it costs in France. It isn't exactly famous for its efficiency. You have unions, you have municipal employees gaming the system and just garnering such extraordinary compensation. And I don't even, you know, I think most people don't even mind that if some people make it into the middle class, the upper middle class, but the costs are so out of control in the city. It is so expensive to run the city and everyone's waiting for a mayor to come in and make the hard decisions and it doesn't happen. So I want to press you specifically what hard decisions other than, I think that's a really innovative one in the university, but what hard decisions and discussions would you have with various special interest groups and say, look, we have just got to figure out a way to bring the cost down?

No, New York City is not that different from a lot of the rest of the country, where if you look at what's breaking the backs of various budgets and are built into the union contracts you're talking about, Scott, it's healthcare costs. It's healthcare. So the health benefits guaranteed to pensioners or retired employees, is that what you're talking about? That's a huge chunk of it. The benefits for city employees, if you have a union contract, a lot of what they're negotiating for is healthcare benefits. And then the cost of those benefits just goes up and up over time, just like it has the rest of the country, even more so. New York's actually a little bit worse. So to the extent you have to tackle something, and there is one union here that has done something I think is pretty awesome. And I'm going to see if we can make it happen in New York because this could change the dynamic.

So there is a hotel and trade union that represents hotel workers. They're hurting right now, obviously, because there aren't many tourists here. But they noticed that all of their negotiations were going towards health care costs. And so they said, well, what can we do to try and bring those costs down? So then an enterprising union leader over there opened a clinic for hotel employees and said, hey, instead of like going to the hospital system, just go to the clinic. And then it was a hit. The hotel workers loved the clinic. It brought their costs down significantly and it improved their negotiating power immensely because all of a sudden, instead of just paying whatever the heck the insurance company or the healthcare providers were charging,

they actually were like, wait a minute, we actually have a clinic that's doing this, and it's a lot cheaper than what you're charging. And so that was a game changer for that union. And they ended up then being able to have more money go to their workers, which made the workers happy. And like, even for the business owners who are negotiating with the unions, like they were indifferent. They were like, look, like, I just the business owners who are negotiating with the unions, like they were indifferent. They were like, look, like, I just want to pay a certain amount. So if it's not going to go to healthcare and it's going to go to your workers, like, you know, fine by us. So that to me is one of the major cost drivers in New York City is that when you look at the costs for workers, a lot of it ends up just going to healthcare. And so one of the things I'd like to do as mayor is start a clinic for city employees and try and emulate what this union did. Because if you can

demonstrate that you can deliver some of these services cheaper than you're getting charged, then it can actually meaningfully change the cost structure and negotiation. But I will say that right now, Scott, you talk very passionately and correctly about the fact that universities feel like they'll just jack up their prices every year and people don't have a choice but to pay. It's the same in health care, maybe worse. Yeah, the two core services that have grown faster than anything, grown faster than housing, energy, are number one, health care, and number two, education. The things that, you know, one is you have to have, and the other is the, well, used to be the upper lubricant anyway. So give us, in your view, the state of play in the race. You've run for president. Now you're running for mayor. What do you think the state of play is? How is it different? How is the strategy, the media,

and the retail politics of running for mayor so far different than when you ran for president? It is very different, Scott. So different. So the campaign is going very well. The last poll had me up by something like 11 points. Up by 11 points. Now, okay, I'm going to just throw this out there. How much of that is name recognition? Is it just because we have name recognition and you're going to suck the oxygen out of the air for everybody? Up by 11 points. What's going on? How is that happening, Andrew? A lot of it, Scott, is that I have higher name ID and favorability than my opponents because the average New Yorker knows me and likes you. Yeah.

They just be like, hey, Yang. I'm with you. Can I get a selfie? That is the vibe I get every day on the street. And so if you ask an average registered Democrat in New York City, hey, have you heard of Andrew Yang? Do you like him? The odds are they will say yes, according to the numbers.

I think I've got something like 88% name ID and 65% favorability, which is very high. So that's the baseline. And that's why I'm up by 11 points, where if you pull a random registered Democrat, they'll be like, yeah, I like him. I think that I represent something that a lot of New Yorkers crave right now, which is a pragmatic, solutions-oriented problem solver who's also a cheerleader for the city. I would call it innovation. You have that association with your brand that everyone wants to herd around. And that is, I think you're seen

as an innovator who's willing to take a different look at a problem through a different lens. As I slobber all over you, Andrew, but let me just say, and I think there's a lesson to anyone, younger men and women, you ran a campaign and you ran in a race where quite frankly, every algorithm, every media story is pushing you into the middle of the high school quad and saying, fight, fight, fight. And it's, unfortunately, as a tribal species, we have an easier time believing negative things about opponents than we do believing positive things about somebody when they say, I want to do this. You really acquitted yourself well. You did not. I never saw you get personal. I never saw you make passive aggressive comments. I never saw you

in any way disparage anyone personally in the campaign. And it probably cost you. I think Kamala Harris, Senator Harris is, is vice president because she's an incredibly impressive person. I think she deserves to be vice president. I think it's overdue. But the moment for her in the campaign was effectively when she called Vice President Biden a racist. And you never went there. And I think it's paying off for you now. I think people not only know you, but they like you and you're not divisive. Anyways, I don't know where I was going with that, but I think being a good guy does pay off. Tell us before we go, how are you handling, how do you run a campaign? And yours feels endless, quite frankly, having started

running for president. I remember hearing from you on Twitter, what feels like two, three years ago. How do you manage your relationship with your wife and your kids in a time when relationships are just so difficult to begin with because of the pandemic? How do you, what are your hacks? You're just not going to be president. You're not going to win professionally, I don't think, or economically unless you have a solid base at home. What are your hacks? What are your observations? Well, first, Scott, I want to return to an idea you put out earlier, which I think was very, very key. You said that folks look up and say, well, like, I don't know how to do the right thing and get reelected. I am going to do the right thing by New York City every day of my term as mayor. And if I don't get reelected, but I can

look at myself in the mirror and say, I did really, really great work, and I helped us transition through the deepest, most painful crisis in generations, I will be thrilled. I'm running for mayor for one reason and one reason only, and that's because I think I can help the world's greatest city get back on its feet, save lives, save tens, hundreds of billions of dollars in economic value, retain the crucible for so many organizations and individuals and families that have led to incredible opportunities. I think you resemble this, Scott. I sure as hell resemble this. I was a 21-year-old punk kid when I showed up in New York City for law school. I didn't know shit about shit. I've been here 25 years, and I have had an incredible career

that 21-year-old me could never have dreamt of. I have a wife and two kids and a family that came about because of New York City. I mean, my wife grew up here. This place is the engine of human potential. And I'm going to be damned if I let this place not continue that transformative legacy if I can do something about it. So if I get voted out after four years, but like people I respect, like you, Scott, look at me and say, hey, I think Andrew made a lot of difficult decisions. And a lot of people were mad. But like, you know, it's like, I think he did some good

stuff like that is fine with me. Now, when you ask about my relationships and how I stay balanced, it's really just a lot of freaking good fortune marrying the right person because she is such a rock and a champ. Puts up so much. Certainly over the last couple of years, I've been not exactly dad of the year material. You know what I mean? The pandemic has been terrible on so many levels, but I will say I got a lot of family time. Like after I came off the trail, I bonded with my kids who I had not seen as much as I wanted to the previous number of months. And I'm happy to say the family is really strong and healthy and whole and happy. It makes me able to do what I do at a very high level.

Because when things are tough in terms of your foundation and the rest of it, it's hard. It's very hard to operate. And certainly, I've had those experiences too at various times. When our first son was born, he was a very difficult child. Turns out that he's autistic, but we did not know that as first time parents.

And so when he was, let's call it two and a half or three, he would melt down when he stepped on a different texture ground. Like, you know, if he was transitioning from concrete to grass or something like that. And you're a first-time parent, so you're like, do all two-year-olds melt down when they, like, step on a different texture? And so it was a very, very difficult time.

So we've had challenges. We've come through them as a family in a way that's really beautiful. And it makes me want to do more. I'll tell you, Andrew, from one dad to another, and you just can't communicate this to other dads and moms until it happens. The term I would use is singularity. And that is you never really feel the singularity you feel when one of your kids isn't doing well. It's like you have your world of work, you have your world of your relationships, your friendships, you have your world of hobbies.

And then something comes off the tracks of one of your kids and literally everything just goes away but that. It's really the i mean i don't it was the first time i really like understood what i call singular perspective is when something we've had similar issues and i mean everything becomes not even a distant second everything's tied for a millionth after that it really it really um rattles you anyways i'm glad your son is doing better do you have any messages?

So you're on the trail. Give us a couple surprising moments or moments that stand out in the last seven or ten days on the trail with Andrew Yang. Well, the last seven or ten days have been a lot of quarantining. So I'll go back a little bit further. So you're not testing negative? Oh, I'm testing negative. I'm fine now. But, you know, it's a recent development. Um, but there's one experience I had

that I want to go back to this place. It was so freaking cool, Scott. Um, so I visited Brownsville, which is a very tough neighborhood. Um, there are public housing developments kind of bookending this neighborhood in Brownsville. Um, and then, uh, some young people brought me to an urban farm that they'd created in a warehouse and it was fucking incredible. Um, it was, it's called universe city. Uh, and I almost couldn't believe what I was seeing. They had like a, like a fish farm. They had, uh, several small businesses, um, in this, uh, warehouse that had been repurposed very inexpensively, I might add. And I asked them, I was like, how much do you need to like create how many jobs in this thing? Because there was like, you could tell, like you and I have been in environments

where you knew that stuff was working, where there was like an entrepreneurial venture and culture that was capable of growth. And they gave me some numbers and like the low millions and believe they could create hundreds of jobs. Uh, and I believed them and I want to go back to this freaking urban farm in Brownsville with a camera crew and show everyone what I saw, because you literally are, are going through very tough neighborhood. It's struggling in various ways. There's been some violence. And then you almost step into like a whole nother universe when you go down a couple of relatively empty warehouse blocks. And it was the kind of thing you had to see to believe. And it made me feel really optimistic about amazing things being possible in New York City.

Like I'm a hard-nosed operator, but sometimes, you know, like I've been a part of incredible growth stories. And so when you see them, they excite you because you know they're going to transform lives. So that's something that you can keep an eye out for because I'm going to go back there and and hopefully um show hundreds of thousands of people um and one thing i do want to mention to your audience scott is that we just passed the matching threshold for new york city donations so anyone in new york city if you donate uh at yang4ny.com the city will match your donation eight to one yeah you give us 20 bucks they give us 160. you give us 50 bucks they give us 400 dollars i can't even believe that like that that that's the matter you're giddy you're giddy eight to one that's a pretty good match so bonus question i can't resist so andrew yang what do you think

of the gamestop reddit movement what are your observations i i i formulated a bunch of thoughts scott that i that had to be like ah be like, ah, maybe that's too far. Maybe that's too far. But like my basic gist was it's very, very hard to complain about a game being rigged when you've been rigging the game and profiting from it in the other direction for years and years and years. Like that was my general take. Yeah, they didn't do anything that hasn't been done.

Just not as well. They just use different methods and mediums. Right. It was an honest pump, but there's been honest pumps for a long time. Right. And it was just a different group of people. It's like, there's something in American life right now where if an institution does something, it is somehow acceptable. But if an individual does something, it is somehow acceptable. But if an individual does something, then it's problematic. And this was a group of individuals doing things that various institutions had already figured out and made a lot of money from for a long time. And frankly, if you give me

a choice between people getting money and institutions getting money, I'll take the people. But let me just, first off, 100% agree with you, but do you think it was really a transfer of wealth from institutions to people? My understanding, it was a transfer from one hedge fund to another, and then some retail investors made money, but probably I think we're going to find a lot more lost money. Well, I'd certainly love to see those numbers, Scott, because that would change the tenor significantly. I had the sense that there were individuals, and I talked to at least a couple of individuals who did well, And so maybe I extrapolated a pattern from that. Let's hope so. Right. Let's hope so. All right, Andrew. Uh, if people want

to find out more about your campaign, where do they go? You can go to andreayang.com and we'll redirect you, but yang4ny.com every donation counts. This is a very winnable race and it's a sprint. The primary is on June 22nd. So we've got about four months to help take the greatest city in the world in a better direction. Would absolutely love your help and support. Fantastic. Andrew Yang is an entrepreneur who's been in New York for over 20 years. He was a candidate for the Democratic nomination for president. He met his wife here 20 years and raised his two children and joins us from his home in New York. Andrew, stay safe on the trail.

Thank you, Scott. Appreciate the heck out of you. Our producers are Caroline Chagrin and Drew Burrows. If you like what you heard, please follow, download and subscribe. Thank you for listening to the special episode of The Prop G Show from Section 4 and the Westwood One Podcast Network. Like, I'm like a truffle pig of New York City. You know, I'm just going to walk around being like, what's the coolest shit that people are doing?

Like, let's, you know, try and build on this. Hey, it's Scott Galloway. And on our podcast, Pivot, we are bringing you a special series about the basics of artificial intelligence. We're answering all your questions. What should you use it for? What tools are right for you? And what privacy issues should you ultimately watch out for? And to help us out, we are joined by Kylie Robeson, the senior AI reporter for The Verge, to give you a primer on how to integrate AI into your life. So tune into AI Basics,

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