senior reporter with The Root,

and I'm here with 2020 presidential candidate, Andrew Yang.

- Hey man, thanks for having me, it's great to be here.

- Right on, right on.

I promise, I will be really kind to you.

- Oh good, you know, I got that vibe from you.

- Listen, I wanna talk to you

about the social media support that you've been getting.

We see hashtags like secure the bag and Yang Gang,

so tell us, who are the members of the Yang Gang?

- So I've been running for president for more than a year,

and the name Yang Gang bubbled up a long time ago,

and so we've had the Yang Gang

as like our official, you know, campaign headquarters

for a while, but then what you're talking about

is I became something of a social media phenomenon

over the last six weeks or so.

You know, like, the enthusiasm, I have to say,

when I go to college campuses,

it seems like it tends to skew young,

and very internet-y, like they make a lot of memes.

The energy at our rallies is sky high,

where we just had a rally of 3000 people

at San Francisco and then 1,000 in Chicago.

We were joking, it's like man,

we can plant the flag in a lot of places,

and apparently like hundreds,

maybe thousands of people come out.

So we're gonna test that out.

I'm doing a national tour starting in mid April.

But when you see the energy in person,

then it makes you very excited

about all the enthusiasm online,

because it's translating into the real world.

It's not just people making memes,

it's actually people who wanna

come out and make real change.

- You talked about how capitalism

doesn't center real people and you've called

for a more human-centered capitalism.

What exactly does that mean?

- Capitalism right now, it's become

this winner take all economy, particularly in the US.

You have this crony capitalism, and like,

you know, really wealthy interests just pulling the strings,

and then you talk about competition,

and a lot of the biggest industries

are getting much less competitive.

Like, you see consolidation in the big tech companies,

you see consolidation in

the big banks and financial companies.

So we need to start using different measurements

to try to drive our economy and society forward,

where if you just lose capital efficiency,

we're gonna lose more and more

to software, robots, AI, and machines.

So we should, instead of using GDP and capital efficiency,

we should be using things like

how our kids are doing, our own mental health

and freedom from substance abuse,

average income and affordability, clean air and clean water,

and then use those as the actual

measurements of economic progress.

- Everything that you're saying

sounds like you're centering people,

which to me seems like the antithesis of capitalism itself,

and it sounds like you are calling

for a reform to capitalism.

- We need to evolve as fast as possible,

because if you just rely upon capital efficiency,

and the example I used in a lot of context is look,

there are three and a half million Americans

who drive trucks for a living.

So in 10 years, if you have

trucks that can drive themselves,

it doesn't matter if you're a really hardworking,

attentive truck driver or a shoddy one.

The robots gonna beat both of you, you know what I mean?

It's not dependent upon your own individual characteristics.

So if we use who can drive the truck better,

everyone loses, you know?

And so we need to have better measurements

than that as fast as possible.

I think of it evolving to the next stage of our economy,

but I 100% agree that if you just use capital efficiency

as a measuring stick, we're all gonna lose.

- One of your main goals is to implement

what you've called a universal basic income.

- The freedom dividend.

- [Terrell] Yes, there you go, the freedom dividend.

You talk about the humanity of just the GDP.

- Yes. - Right.

So just tell us exactly what that entails.

- Well, so, GDP is something we made up

almost 100 years ago during the Great Depression,

and I'd like to talk about my wife.

My wife's at home with our two boys,

one of whom is autistic,

and her work every day counts as zero on GDP.

So GDP is not measuring the right things.

So if we were to measure how our kids are doing

and how we're doing, like how we're thriving or not thriving

that's actually the measurement

for our economy that we need to

move towards as fast as possible.

And the great thing is, as president,

when I'm in the White House in 2021,

all I have to do is just walk down the street

to the Bureau of Labor Statistics and say

hey guys, GDP, almost 100 years old, kind of useless.

And so we're gonna update it to things

like how our kids are doing, how our environment is doing,

how we're doing, like whether we're mentally healthy,

because there's a mental health crisis in this country.

- You make that sound a lot easier

than what many people think it actually will be.

- Well, taking the measurements is pretty easy,

but then changing the way our economy

functions is obviously a little trickier.

- Which is the point, right?

So how do you plan on working with congress

in order to carry that out?

Because what you're saying immediately

is gonna pop up in people's mind like you're a socialist!

And you wanna give people free stuff!

Then you're gonna scare the hell out of people.

- You know, what I'm happy to say

is that millions of Americans are waking up

to the reality that we can't use

these twentieth century frameworks

for problems of 2020 and beyond.

It's not like people in, you know, 1914

when they're drawing this stuff up

were like artificial intelligence,

like self driving vehicles.

They didn't see a lot of this stuff coming.

One thing I'm happy to say is that as president,

I actually don't need congress's approval

to change the statistics, like that's not

a congressional thing, that's like

an agency thing, a branch.

You literally can just walk down the street

and say hey guys, let's use some new stats.

- How come no one else has done that?

- Well, it's because we've been focused on the wrong things.

If you look at the big measurements

that we're using for the economy,

it's GDP, which is like near a record high,

stock market growth, which doesn't affect

the bottom 80% of Americans, for the most part,

and then headline on employment rate,

which even though it looks good right now,

there are millions of Americans

that have just dropped out of the workforce,

including one of out five prime working age American men.

So they just have the wrong measurements,

and as someone who's done a few things

that required you to actually see where you're going,

like, if you have the wrong measurements, you're doomed.

So I can't speak to why we've been

hanging on to this GDP measurement for a hundred years,

even though the inventor of GDP

even said this is a terrible measurement

for national wellbeing, we should never use it as that.

- So we need to completely get rid of that,

and replace it with something that deals more

with how human beings-- - How we're doing, right.

And one of the things I said to Breakfast Club

in that interview was that

the median African American net worth

is projected to be zero by 2053,

and now you have to ask like why the heck is that?

- What does that exactly mean for us?

You know, for black people by 2053?

What would that look like?

- Yeah, so and this is why I'm running for president,

why I'm so passionate about our need

to really evolve and get our heads out of the sand.

So if you look at the five most common jobs

in the US economy, and the African American community

will like, you know, it'd be occupying many of these jobs.

Number one is retail, and 30%

of American malls and stores are closing.

The average retail worker is a 39 year old woman

making between 10 and 11 dollars an hour.

So if 30% of those stores close,

what happens to those jobs and families?

Another top job is customer service and call centers.

Artificial intelligence is gonna be able

to do the job of that two and a half million

call center workers in the United States,

who now make 14 bucks an hour.

So then what happens to those workers?

So these are jobs that are filled

by the majority of Americans, including Americans of color,

and so then if you're automating away

those jobs as fast as possible, which is what we're doing,

then who bears the brunt of it?

And also who wins?

Like, the people who win will be

the big tech companies and the folks at the top,

and we know those organizations

aren't exactly the most, you know,

representative of the US population or the most diverse.

- Oh, not at all, which goes to the point

of closing the racial wealth gap.

- Yes.

- So how do you specifically plan

on addressing this issue, particularly for black people

so that the gap that we are experiencing closes before 2053?

- Exactly, and that's one reason

why I'm so excited about the freedom dividend.

Putting a 1000 bucks a month into the hands

of every American at age 18, which is what I'm proposing

and is what we can make happen in 2021,

when I'm president, but this is something

that Martin Luther King championed in 1967,

the year before he was killed.

He was prescient.

He saw a lot of things coming, and he said look,

we need to actually just move towards

putting money into the hands of African American families

and consumers and communities and businesses,

and this is the way to do it.

- How else would you address this gap,

particularly giving, you know, particularly

creating a plan for black people,

not specifically to everybody else?

- Well, so there are issues specific

to the black community that you need

separate plans to try and address.

What I'm suggesting is that first,

if you start with this 1000 bucks a month

in everyone's hands, then that disproportionately helps

people that are more excluded.

And by the math, it actually does reduce

the wealth gap and income inequality.

- By how much though?

By how much?

- It's really significant.

Like, you're talking about the single biggest move

that would actually close the vast wealth gap

that anyone has proposed, is what I'm proposing.

And so if you had 12000 per year

and imagine you had a household

with, like, you know, two adults and an 18 year old,