Andrew Yang Is Ross Perot for Millennials
Andrew Yang likes to present himself as a serious policy thinker. But he's just the latest corporate salesman pitching a quack remedy to suffering people.
Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang speaks during the Democratic Presidential Committee summer meeting on August 23, 2019 in San Francisco, California.Justin Sullivan / Getty
There’s no law that you have to take a serious interest in politics, so it’s no crime to support Andrew Yang’s campaign for president of the United States. His chances of winning could be questioned. The formulation “snowball’s chance in hell” comes to mind.
These days the internet has become a hothouse for the germination of policy cults. Enthusiastic online constituencies congeal around novel ideas. One such idea is the so-called Universal Basic Income (UBI), which has found a new champion in Yang.
Popular enthusiasm for novel policy ideas is not altogether new. In the nineteenth century, Henry George’s idea for a single tax on land value spawned popular movements in the United States and elsewhere. In the 1930s, the Townsend Plan for a universal old-age pension (not unlike a UBI) helped stir public support culminating in the Social Security Act of 1935.
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