Hello and welcome to Off Script, NPR's series of conversations between 2020 Democratic candidates

and undecided voters from across the country.

I'm Noel King.

And today, we are in New York City with Andrew Yang, who is an entrepreneur and presidential

hopeful.

Thank you so much for being here.

ANDREW YANG: It's great to be here.

Thanks for having me.

KING: And I want to introduce our two voters: Hetal Jani runs a nonprofit here in New York

City.

It's focused on education and mentorship.

She's 36 years old, and she's the daughter of immigrants from India.

Hetal, thanks for being here.

YANG: Where'd you grow up, Hetal?

HETAL JANI: Here in New York City.

YANG: Wow.

What part?

JANI: Queens.

Flushing.

YANG: My wife's from Bayside.

JANI: Oh, very cool.

KING: And John Zeitler is an attorney for an insurance company.

He lives in northern New Jersey, but like a lot of people, he commutes into the city

for work.

He's 48 years old, and he is the dad of twin boys who are 11.

Is that right?

JOHN ZEITLER: Yep.

That's right.

KING: Thank you for being here.

We really appreciate it.

Alright, so we're in New York's Flatiron district.

We're in a restaurant called Baodega.

YANG: I know.

So clever.

KING: You picked the place.

YANG: Well, I'm very wise, because this place is delicious.

It's got a very clever name.

Yeah, I hope everyone else is enjoying it as much as I am.

Baodega, New York City, 7 West 20th Street.

KING: People do seem to be liking the food.

How long have you been coming here?

YANG: Well, you know, I've only been here once, but enjoyed the food when I was here.

And so I need to bring my wife.

I actually came here without her.

Sort of a problem because my wife's a huge foodie.

Not a huge foodie.

Not like in terms of like consuming excellent food, consuming food.

KING: You owe her a trip.

YANG: I do owe her a trip.

KING: Alright, before we get to the hard questions, do either of you guys have any fun stuff you'd

like to ask Mr. Yang?

JANI: Yes, I saw yesterday an Ask Me Anything and you ended with a question about anime.

YANG: I didn't end on that.

It was somewhere in the middle, but go on.

JANI: Oh, sorry about that.

What's your go-to karaoke song?

YANG: “Don't You Forget About Me” by Simple Minds.

The Breakfast Club soundtrack.

JANI: Yeah.

YANG: And then “When Doves Cry” by Prince would be a close runner up.

KING: Can you give us a couple bars?

YANG: [singing] “How can you just leave me standing alone in a world that's so cold.”

It's like Prince himself is here singing.

JANI: “Purple Rain.”

KING: John, how about you?

ZEITLER: I noticed you rode your bike to the restaurant today with the baby seat on the

back.

YANG: Yeah, like with the baby seat, that's what he means.

Not like motorbike or something cool.

Yes, I did.

ZEITLER: Did you always travel around on the bike?

YANG: I do.

My younger son is four, so I still bike him to school.

And I relish that because he's gonna outgrow it pretty soon.

Like my older is turning 7, and he outgrew the bike seat a couple of years ago.

So I ride him to school in the morning any time I'm in town, if I have the time, and

I find it much more fun to get around in New York City on the bike than sitting in traffic.

Better exercise.

You know you have to try and get your exercise where you can.

KING: Do you wear a helmet?

YANG: I do.

KING: Thank you.

YANG: I'd be a very bad role model, and my sons have the little bike helmets too.

Very cute.

KING: Too many New Yorkers don't wear helmets, and it makes me deeply, deeply anxious.

YANG: You know, I am running for president; I have to be a good role model.

I can't have people being like, “Yeah I think I just saw Andrew Yang come by helmet-less.

I guess I don't need mine.”

Just like you don't need a tie.

Just kidding.

KING: Alright, I want to start us off by asking about your signature policy proposal: the

thing that has gotten you a lot of attention.

Many people will know it as universal basic income.

You call it the freedom dividend.

YANG: Yeah.

KING: And what it means basically is that every American adult, if you're elected, ages

18 to 64, will get one thousand dollars a month from the government – no strings attached

– to do whatever they want with.

YANG: Yes.

No, it's actually 18 til death now.

KING: It's 18 til death now.

That's an update.

Right.

So…

YANG: We changed that number months ago.

KING: A couple months ago.

You think that this is necessary for a reason.

Can you spend a couple minutes laying out why you think this bold proposal is so necessary?

YANG: I spent seven years running a nonprofit that I'd started that helped create jobs in

the Midwest and the South primarily… helped create several thousand jobs.

And I saw that we are in the midst of the greatest economic transformation in our country's

history – what experts are calling the fourth industrial revolution.

I'm convinced that Donald Trump won in 2016 because of the early waves of the fourth industrial

revolution where we automated away four million manufacturing jobs in Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania,

Wisconsin, Iowa – all the swing states he needed to win.

And now that set of changes is shifting to retail.

Thirty percent of stores and malls are closing primarily because of Amazon, and being a retail

clerk is the most common job in most of the country.

The average retail clerk is a 39-year-old woman making between nine and ten dollars

an hour, so when her store closes there aren't a ton of options.

We're getting rid of call center workers, of which there are two and a half million

in the U.S. making 14 dollars an hour.

Soon, we will start replacing truck drivers, and being a trucker is the most common job

in many states.

There are three and a half million truck drivers, average age 49.

Ninety four percent men.

And there another seven million Americans who work at the truck stops, motels, and diners

that serve the truckers.

So if we do nothing, we are going to be in for much worse than Donald Trump's election

unfortunately.

The studies have a range of between 20 and 40 percent of American jobs subject to automation

in the next 20 to 30 years, which is not that much time.

And that's a lot of jobs.

I've seen it in the industries that I've worked in, and we have to get our acts together.

If we keep trying to respond to the symptoms and don't address the root causes, then our

communities will continue to suffer.

KING: OK.

Hetal, I know that in your job you think a lot about workforce development.

What questions do you have for Mr. Yang about a universal basic income?

JANI: Yes, I mean it's true that automation is taking away a lot of jobs.

Or I feel that automation is taking away a lot of jobs, but how does just providing a

thousand dollars a month to each individual solve that problem?

YANG: In many ways, it does not solve that problem, but your nonprofit works with women

of what age or children of what age?

JANI: High school students.

We're trying to grow up as well.

YANG: Yeah, so I ran a nonprofit for a number of years that I'd started.

And do you think that your nonprofit would have access to more resources if every American

was getting an additional 1000 dollars a month so the money ends up super charging not just

existing businesses but also spurs creativity, entrepreneurship, and risk taking?

Because if you feel like your survival is assured then you have a much higher chance

of striking out and trying to do something on your own.

It also supercharges nonprofits, volunteering, the arts culture.

Many...

NPR probably.

Like many of the things that we value but the market does not properly value, and I'm

willing to say that women and people of color actually fall into the same category that

the market will systematically undervalue.

And so if you say and I know this because I started a nonprofit and worked there for

a number of years.

Very proud of the work, and it continues to this day.

But you realize that most nonprofits are trying to address some of the ... some of the important

issues at the margins.

And you would need to fundamentally reconfigure the way our economy works if you're going

to truly get into the guts of that problem, and the freedom dividend or universal basic

income actually transforms the way of life for many Americans in a way that would make

us more able to solve the real problems.

JANI: So I mean how did you come up – I know your party slogan is “Math” –I

mean how did you come up with a thousand dollars?