2020 democratic presidential candidate: Andrew Yang

Alex Toth

Age: 44

Experience: N/A

Fun Fact: Andrew Yang is the founder of Venture for America, a nonprofit organization that promotes entrepreneurship by training recent graduates and young professionals to work for startups around America.

Andrew Yang has received a spike in popularity on many circles of the Internet, as many young voters have jumped head first into the #YangGang, the name for those who support his bid for President.

Yang has made himself the most policy-oriented candidate in the race, with more than 75 policy proposals available for reading on his campaign website. The most prominent of these proposals is known as the Freedom Dividend, Yang’s name for what most people would call universal basic income. Yang believes that automation will take one-third of American jobs by 2030, and he says a UBI is the best way to help Americans deal with such a rapid change in the job landscape. Under the Freedom Dividend, every American citizen 18 or older would receive $1,000 a month, no questions asked.

To fund this ambitious plan, Yang would cut back spending on current welfare programs and implement a Value Added Tax (VAT) of 10 percent. Yang also says that this policy would grow the economy by $2.5 trillion and create 4.6 million new jobs, helping the plan pay for itself.

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