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When I first saw it, I thought they might be some obscure group of Irish Nazis. One holds up a Shepard Fairey-style portrait of Thomas Jefferson bearing the caption “I want YOU to end the Fed.” I present as a reasonable, sympathetic listener, and they seem genuinely surprised when I say the flag makes me nervous. In the eastern corner, a group of four visibly libertarian stragglers is gathered by a green, vaguely fascist Kekistan flag, one of 4chan’s many in-jokes. According to his Etsy store, he’s made 10 sales online, with at least two more made in person at the rally. (“People say immigrants are taking the jobs,” he tells me, “but really it’s me.”) Farther back, a man named Joe is selling bootleg Yang2020 hats, copies of the “vaporwave” hats used in Yang memes. An iRobot engineer is holding up a “Humanity First” sign. I catch a few whiffs of weed but nothing unreasonable given the venue. The Boston crowd is mostly techies and earnest college kids. Left-wing think tanks like the Roosevelt Institute and Data for Progress have been pushing a basic income for years as an alternative to the current labyrinth of federal aid programs, but Yang is the first presidential candidate to build a campaign around it.Ī bootleg Yang2020 hat being sold at the Boston rally. That’s normally called a basic income, although the Yang campaign calls it a “freedom dividend,” since focus group testing found the idea was more popular in the language of corporate ownership. The centerpiece of Yang’s campaign is a $1,000 monthly check to every person in America, paid for with a Nordic-style Value Added Tax. Yang’s answer looks a lot like socialism, although he doesn’t use the word himself. If you believe that, the robot-obsessed startup guy could be your only option. Yang’s pitch was simple: automation is destroying American jobs, and we need a president with some kind of answer.
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It was a deep, analytic, two-hour interview, which is catnip for Rogan’s Reddit-centric audience. The tipping point was an appearance on Joe Rogan’s podcast in February.
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Yang has been campaigning for the Democratic presidential nomination all year, but audiences like this have only started to show up in the past couple weeks. Working with government partners in emerging and developing economies to build strong, domestic financial markets.There’s an iRobot engineer holding a “humanity first” sign Center for Regional Economics and California CenterĪnalyzes the dynamics that drive job creation and promote industry expansionĮmpowers philanthropists to effectively address some of the world's most urgent problemsĬlears roadblocks that prevent medical breakthroughs from reaching patients soonerĪddressing society's greatest challenges through a financial lens.Promotes healthy, productive, and purposeful agingĭevelops research, programs, and initiatives designed to envision and activate sustainable solutions leading to better health for individuals and communities worldwide. Extends the reach and impact of the Milken Institute to the Asia-Pacific regionĬonducts research and constructs programs designed to facilitate smooth and efficient operation of financial markets