although oh my gosh incredible to be

here I want I want you to reflect a

little bit how on what brought you here

tonight because I was thinking about

what brought me here tonight

and the Democratic Party of the United

States of America is the greatest hope

and force for progress in our country

today and and you all are going to

determine its future it is not an

exaggeration at all to say that the

future of the country rests in your

hands

and thank you all the incredible work

that you do leading us every day and

fighting the fight I know it's been hard

this last couple of years but help is on

the way

now I'm not from here as you may may

have gathered my parents immigrated to

this country in the 1960s they met at

graduate school I was born in a town

called Stu connected in New York my

father worked for GE and then IBM my

father's a physicists my mother's an

artists my brother's a psychology

professor and I became an entrepreneur

and CEO I built an education company

that was sold to a public company in

2009 and I looked at the nation's

problems at that point I made a little

money and so I thought to myself well

what are the biggest problems that I see

and the biggest problems that I saw were

that so much money and energy and talent

was heading to the coasts and not to

places like Iowa including people who

were from places like Iowa many many

times they thought they had to leave for

better opportunities and so that was the

problem that I saw and I said we can do

something about that

so I donated 120,000 my own money he

started calling rich friends and said do

you love America and then the savvy

among them said what does it mean if I

say yes to that question

and then I said at least $10,000 and

then enough of them said I love America

where we launched with a budget of about

a quarter million today our budgets

about 25 times larger thousands of young

people have joined MIT or applied to

venture for America and hundreds have

headed to cities around the country to

help create businesses and help

businesses grow so that's what I've been

up to for the last seven years I'm an

entrepreneur and a problem solver who

likes math and I say that because people

have told me that the opposite of Donald

Trump is an Asian man who likes math

now I'm here tonight to tell you all a

story in numbers in part and I'm going

to answer a question that you have been

grappling with for the last two years

and it may be perhaps the most important

question of our time and that question

is this why did Donald Trump win in Iowa

by nearly 10 points in 2016 for that

matter why did he win Michigan why did

he win Ohio why did he win Pennsylvania

why did he win Missouri why did he even

win Wisconsin now that is the question

of our time and the answer is in the

numbers because again I love numbers so

I dug in and the most direct correlation

I found was that the more manufacturing

jobs were lost in a voting district due

to automation

the more blue turned to red in that

district the reason why Donald Trump is

our president today is that we've

automated away 4 million manufacturing

jobs in Michigan Ohio Pennsylvania

Missouri Wisconsin and nearly 40,000

right here in Iowa how many of you

personally know someone who has lost his

or her job in manufacturing over the

last number of years I'm sure a number

of you do and I've been in the in these

communities in the aftermath of the

plant closing I heard from Mitch right

here an old wine in Northeast Iowa what

happened there when jobs disappeared

that's when despair takes its place and

that's when blue turns to red so I have

some bad news I was just in Silicon

Valley last month and this is going to

get worse before it gets better

the engineers and scientists of Silicon

Valley are working on solving the

problems of today the business problems

of today but as they succeed in solving

these problems their solutions are not

going to improve your lives or our lives

together what they're going to do is

they're going to make human labor your

labor our labor less and less central to

the economy and more and more obsolete

now this may seem far-fetched are

futuristic to someone

you but it's the hard truth and if you

look around you

Iowa has lost 12,000 retail jobs since

2001 how many of you have noticed store

is closing in your neighborhoods or area

there are another one hundred seventy

eight thousand hard-working Iowans and

retail and trade right now and three of

your seventeen malls are in danger of

closing this is going to get worse there

are another over 30,000 Iowans who drive

a truck for a living and this is the

most common job in 29 states my friends

in Silicon Valley and I am friends with

some of them please don't hold against

me but my friends in Silicon Valley are

working on trucks that can drive

themselves they say that there are 98%

of the way there and these trucks will

start hitting the highways in five to

ten years so the question is what's

going to happen to the drivers at that

point there are thousands of call center

workers in Iowa how many of you saw that

Google recently demonstrated software

that can do the job of a call center

worker someone's not in here how many of

you saw that well you can google it you

know and it's there but these changes

are real artificial intelligence is real

autonomous vehicles are real this is the

greatest economic and technological

transition in the history of mankind

Donald Trump is the manifestation of

this transition and our government has

been decades behind in being honest

about it and addressing it

now before I deciding to run for

president I decided to try and talk to

various political leaders about the fact

that this is the core set of issues and

what do you think their responses to me

were go ahead and shout them out was it

be fun sorry go ahead

wha-wha

it sounds like you were in the room so

the the solutions I heard were these one

we cannot talk about that too we should

study that further and three we must

educate and retrain Americans for the

jobs of the future

now that third one sounds great I'm a

Democrat I love education

I love retraining but again I looked at

the numbers and we know what happens in

the aftermath of losing these

manufacturing jobs that only less than

10 percent of manufacturing workers

qualified for federally funded

retraining programs and if they did

participate the success rate was less

than 20 percent we know that almost half

of manufacturing workers that lost their

jobs left the workforce and did not work

again and that nearly 1/4 of

manufacturing jobs that lost their jobs

left the workforce and never worked

again so those are the numbers that is

the story the numbers are telling us and

this is the challenge of our era now the

question is what are we going to do

about it the problem is this big and the

answer is as John alluded to we must

fundamentally shift the way we perceive

work and value in our society and I have

a three-part plan to make this happen

and solve for the greatest issue that

threatens our way of life today now the

first is the freedom dividend where

every American adult would receive

$1,000 free and clear no questions asked

every month to pay your bills invest in

your families start new businesses and

do what you want to do because you know

how best you would use that money

already right now 31% of Iowans are

working full time and cannot make ends

meet and 59% of our fellow Americans

cannot pay an unexpected $500 bill they

are living paycheck to paycheck week to

week and you know that is the reality

for many of your friends and neighbors

and we can change that we can give

Americans a raise so that so many of you

might think wow that sounds phenomenal

too good to be true but I want to give

you some background in history a law

almost exactly like this past the

of Representatives in 1971 under Richard

Nixon Martin Luther King was for it a

thousand economists signed a letter

saying this would be great for the

economy and society and a plan just like

this has been in effect in one state for

36 years where it has created thousands

of jobs helped improve children's

nutrition and lowered income inequality

and what state is that you may or man I

know yeah it's on Alaska and they use

oil money and I'm going to ask you all

today Democrats of Iowa what is the oil

of today technology that's right that is

the oil of today so my plan the freedom

dividend would put 16 billion dollars

into the hands of Iowans every year so

that you could pay your bills and do

everything that you would do with a

thousand dollars more per month and

would create over 40,000 jobs in Iowa

immediately now this is a very very big

plan and a big move but it's something

that we can achieve because again you

determine the future of this country and

we need to build an economy that

actually puts human goals and values

front and center invest in our people

and build a trickle up economy the

Republicans have been selling that

triple down trickle down garbage for

decades and we know it doesn't work at

all

they even know it doesn't work they know

it's nonsense so we're going to build a

trickle up economy from our from our

people up our families up and our

communities up and that's the first big

move

I'll make as president the second is

that we need to get healthcare costs off

the backs of American families and

businesses I've been an entrepreneur and

CEO and I know it's harder to expand

your business it's harder to hire it's

harder to start a business it's even

harder to switch jobs we spent twice as

much as other industrialized countries

on our healthcare than other countries

because our system rewards activity and

not healthfulness and as president I