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Brian Lehrer: It's the Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone, and we'll dive right in today with our first guest, Democratic mayoral hopeful Andrew Yang, as we continue our month of May round of interviews with the eight leading New York City Democratic primary candidates. Our theme for this round, as many of you know by now, is economic recovery from COVID meets economic justice.

We know that any new mayor will have to guide the comeback after so many hundreds of thousands of jobs were lost. We also know the economic devastation was not spread evenly across the board in the city, and we know that fighting economic inequality was how Mayor de Blasio got elected eight years ago and yet that work already had many miles yet to go even before the pandemic.

Economic recovery from COVID meets economic justice. We'll also touch on a few campaign news items as we've been doing in this round. With us today on this is candidate Andrew Yang, best known for his candidacy in the Democratic presidential primaries last year and his signature proposal in that campaign of a government-provided universal basic income of $1,000 a month to reduce poverty and inequality and structural unemployment that was rising before the pandemic caused by automation of the economy, he said.

Now, a little more bio, as we've been doing in this round, because I know you're still getting to know most of these candidates. Previously, he was CEO of a test-prep company Manhattan Prep and then founded the nonprofit called Venture for America, the goal of which is to create jobs and innovative startup companies in economically depressed areas. Now, Venture for America inspired the Obama administration to designate Yang a presidential ambassador for global entrepreneurship in 2015. With that as a little additional background, Andrew Yang joins us now. Andrew, thanks for coming on again. Welcome back to WNYC.

Andrew Yang: It's great to be back with you, Brian. Thank you for having me.

Brian Lehrer: Right to the theme of our main topic this month, you've been through an interesting arc in recent years on the fighting inequality front. Venture for America, which focused on creating jobs in low-income areas, followed by your universal basic income proposal, which I believe was based on the belief that there will never again be enough jobs. Can you talk about how your understanding of structural inequality changed through the last decade in the course of your work?

Andrew Yang: Thank you, Brian. I'm an entrepreneur, I used to own and operate a small business here in New York City. I love small businesses. I spent years trying to help people start small businesses and grow them around the country, but eventually, I concluded that there were major forces at play that were going to make it harder, not easier for many people to start new businesses and that our economy was going to get progressively punitive and inhuman as technology got better and better at doing things.

That's what led me to run for president when you and I met. I'm thrilled that my campaign helped galvanize millions of Americans around cash relief and basic income, which influenced the way that we responded to this pandemic with the $1,200 check, the $600 check, the $1,400 check. Now this child poverty tax credit that's going to lift millions of American families out of poverty. I want to take the same values and vision and bring them here to New York City. I want to be the anti-poverty mayor and make New York City the example of what we can do to alleviate poverty in major metropolis of millions of people.

Brian Lehrer: You told Vox in 2019, if I have your quote right, that it was hard to admit to yourself that the premise of Venture for America was wrong, and that article also cites VFA as creating only 4,000 jobs by then out of your original goal of 100,000 jobs in economically challenged areas by 2025, that's why you pivoted to universal basic income, but are they kind of the opposite of each other? Like VFA showed faith in the private sector, UBI seems to say, "No, it's up to government." What's the mix of that for you now?

Andrew Yang: One reason I became so passionate about basic income and cash relief, Brian, is that you have to see where the money is going to go. If we put money into the hands of struggling families in the Bronx or Queens, they're going to spend that money at the locally-owned small business, on food, on services, on tutoring for their kids. The two go hand in hand, where if you have buying power in people's hands, it will actually fuel small businesses, entrepreneurship, enterprise, and jobs.

The problem right now is that the money is getting concentrated in the hands of a smaller and smaller group of people. Those people don't need to consume in the same way, so we need to broaden the economic resources, and if we do that directly enough, then it'll actually drive small business growth and entrepreneurship and jobs.

Brian Lehrer: Your cash relief program for the city, for people who haven't followed this, is much more modest than the universal basic income that you were proposing as a presidential candidate, and that's because the city budget compared to the federal budget is so much smaller so it's not $1,000 a month for each person but just $2,000 a year and only to the poorest New Yorkers. Where does it fit in to a larger plan to fight the economic inequality that we already had and then was exacerbated by COVID?

Andrew Yang: I want to do everything in my power to combat this economic inequality that has grown much more severe and extreme over the last number of months really during COVID. You're right, we have a billion-dollar cash relief plan to help those in extreme poverty, which will help keep them in more stable situations. We also have a People's Bank that will channel hundreds of millions of dollars into minority-owned businesses in Black and brown neighborhoods that are going to get left behind if we rely upon the large city banks and JPMorgan Chases of the world to get them the capital that they need.

I want to make the city an actual partner to small businesses that are trying to reopen their doors. Right now, the balance is wrong, Brian, we have city agencies still finding cafe owners who are just now trying to reopen. There are a lot of things that we can do to try and make this recovery more inclusive and equitable, but we have to face facts that it's going to take the public sector. It's going to take the city government leading the way, and this is where we should be investing a significant proportion of the federal money that is coming into our coffers that we need to spend in the next two years.

Brian Lehrer: We did a series on this show this year called West Farms 10460 about that neighborhood in the Bronx, much of which is in the congressional district that's been identified for decades as the poorest congressional district in America. It's become just like a catchphrase label for that part of the Bronx. I will note that the new Congressman from that district, Ritchie Torres, has endorsed you, but if your campaign is about a fresh look at things from an outside-the-box candidate, what's your analysis of why the same New York neighborhood can't break out of income last place for so many years?

Andrew Yang: It's because the ladder to mobility is broken, Brian. The fact is if you were raising kids in that part of the Bronx, they start out with a deck stacked against them from day one; everything from parental time spent with them, to nutrition, to access to daycare, and then by the time they show up to school, they're already behind.

I'm a public school parent, and it breaks my heart what's happened to our kids this past year. If you want to attack poverty and its impacts, you have to start early and also go broader than some of the approaches we've had in the past.

It's one reason why I, for example, have championed an Educational Opportunity Fund that would put a $1,000 into the hands of every family with a child in our public schools that is either below the poverty line, an English language learner, or has an IEP and has special needs. This would channel millions of dollars right into Ritchie's district in the Bronx, tens of millions of dollars to families around the city that could use those funds to help their kids have a firmer foundation.

Brian Lehrer: My guest is Democratic mayoral hopeful Andrew Yang in our May round of interviews with the eight leading candidates [unintelligible 00:09:16] on economic recovery from COVID meets economic inequality. Andrew, on the question of experience, this is so central now to whether you're going to get this nomination or somebody else is, your supporters believe you would be a breath of fresh air. Your detractors say you just don't know enough about city government.

We have tweets coming in right now that say, for example, "This is a joke. Why should New Yorkers trust a total newcomer to New York City government to be the mayor in the most difficult time in the city's history?" That's one. Another one says, "Please ask Yang what makes you different from every other rich guy who has done nothing in government and he thinks he can run it?" What would you say to those tweeters?

Andrew Yang: I would say that most New Yorkers I talk to don't think that government has been working for them for the past number of years. As one illustration, our city's budget has gone from about $60 billion 10 years ago to about $90 billion today. Who listening to this thinks that our city services have gotten 50% better in that time? New Yorkers sense that this is not working, and we need to change. I've run a private company that became number one in the United States.

I've run a nonprofit that created thousands of jobs and was honored by the Obama administration, and I initiated a popular movement around a different vision of what our economy can be for us and our families. Right now, we need a different form of leadership than we've been getting. If you elect someone who has been rattling around dysfunctional bureaucracies for years, nothing will change.

Brian Lehrer: Let me compare you or get you to compare yourself really to one other particular candidate in this respect. The latest poll shows three of you within five points at the top of the pack, Eric Adams, then you, then Kathryn Garcia just two points behind you.

My question is, why in particular would you be more likely to make a better mayor than Kathryn Garcia who's rising now with the New York Times endorsement and yesterday, the League of Conservation Voters endorsement? You know she has this reputation as a super-competent manager and troubleshooter as Sanitation Commissioner and appointed to run things when there was great need in other parts of government, like after Sandy and in NYCHA and being the city's food reliefs now during the pandemic, how would you convince voters that without any of that kind of experience or reputation for managing big organizations successfully, that you would be a better mayor than Kathryn Garcia?

Andrew Yang: I like and admire Kathryn and appreciate her service to the city, but I do think that there is a different sort of leadership that's needed in this moment. We talk about her experience as the head of the Department of Sanitation. Right now, New Yorkers complain to me just about every day about the piles of trash that we're seeing around us that get higher and higher. There are a number of things that the next mayor is going to have to do.

We have to manage city resources in a way that's effective and reactivates our economy in the two years that we have, but we also have to get New Yorkers from different backgrounds and industries involved in our recovery, including the private sector, the philanthropic sector, even the tech sector, and then we need someone who will provide a positive vision of optimism and confidence and help rally people back to New York. Many people have been despondent for months and know that we need something different. We need someone very different than Mayor de Blasio, and Kathryn, despite her service to the city, is part of an administration that a lot of New Yorkers know has not worked.

Brian Lehrer: She was in Bloomberg also. She was the designated Superstorm Sandy fix-it person under Bloomberg. Did the city work better under Bloomberg, in your opinion?

Andrew Yang: I think that the city had a lot going for it under Mike's leadership. I'm concerned that Bill de Blasio's administration has been really undisciplined about its use of resources, where right now they project that we're going to see a $5 billion deficit in 2023. I think common sense dictates that if you project the deficit at that level, you should probably be planning for it right now, and we're not seeing that sort of planning. We're not seeing even basic cost efficiencies being asked of agencies and that they haven't been asked to examine their costs in years.

Brian Lehrer: You're identified with the tech sector. Let me get your take on housing costs as a driver of inequality and the failed Amazon headquarters for Queens, which they said would be bringing 20,000 or more jobs, many of them well-paying tech jobs, but some people now argue there should be fewer high-paying tech jobs coming to New York out of fear that too many, like maybe with that rejected Amazon headquarters, will do more to displace current residents from their housing through gentrification because all these high-paid people will push up the cost of housing generally in those neighborhoods. More to do that than it will build prosperity with more good jobs and the money those workers would spend.

In a way, it's the opposite of Venture for America, more tech jobs in low-income areas equals more inequality, not less. Where are you on that?

Andrew Yang: One thing people don't talk that much about, Brian, is that in addition to the 26,000 high-paying Amazon jobs that were available, it would have supported another 100,000 or so jobs in restaurants, retail, laundries and the like that would have sprung up in Long Island City. This is an example of something that would have worked for people at every point in the economy. Even if you're not directly working for Amazon, there would have been more energy, more money being spent, more vitality in that part of Queens.

Right now, I think most New Yorkers, if they had a chance for a redo, would like to see those jobs right here in New York, and that's a message I'm very happy to send as mayor, which is that we need jobs, we need economic activity and recovery. If you want to do business in New York City, we want you to be here, we want to do business with you.

Brian Lehrer: You're running in a generally more progressive field than de Blasio ran in eight years ago when he got elected, calling himself the most progressive candidate in the field. You're not usually named as in the most progressive lane. How do you distinguish yourself on economic justice policy and including where policing comes into that for this question?

I know you got endorsed by State Senator John Liu this week, but he pointed out this is despite big differences that he has with you on police reform. He's more reformist than you are. How would you place yourself in the sort of left-right spectrum of the candidates here and for people who are looking for a progressive mayor in this era of inequality, what would you say to them?

Andrew Yang: Brian, I'm after what's going to actually work and improve our way of life. I championed cash relief, which I think at this point, millions of people think is very positive and has helped New Yorkers get through this time. I would push back on the kind of left-right orientation or the progressive, moderate. New Yorkers just want our city to work better, they want our streets to be safe, they want our small businesses to have a chance to reopen. They want our trash to get picked up, and there's no ideological way to pick up the trash.

There's no moderate or progressive way to do that. There's no question about the main concerns that New Yorkers have. We just have to get it done for us, for our families. The city's bureaucracies have been failing us right and left, and we need a different approach. If that puts me in a particular part of the ideological spectrum, I think it's whatever is going to work, whatever is going to solve the problems.

Brian Lehrer: Last question, let me get your take on something in the news today, Mayor de Blasio announced no remote option for students in the public schools this fall. I think it's fair to say nobody liked the hybrid system, but some families had wanted an all-remote option for their kids if they don't feel safe yet in September, based on pandemic conditions at that time, and also somewhat based on inequality, those continuing to choose all-remote now, as you know are disproportionately-- parents of Black and brown children, also some Asian American children who don't want to go out in this era of random anti-Asian hate being so prevalent.

They're upset, and they say, "Look, why doesn't a family get the choice in September rather than the city forcing everybody back into the classroom?" Where are you on that?

Andrew Yang: I'm a public school parent, Brian, and I understand their concerns, but as a parent, I believe that our kids learn better in school, and studies bear that out. Remote learning is 30% to 70% less effective in terms of schoolwork, and that doesn't even include socialization, extracurriculars, athletics. I agree with a clear vision of reopening schools five days a week and having our kids back in the building. I think that's right for our children. The fact is my kids don't love the idea of going back to school either, but I think it's best for them, and I think the city is leading in the right direction.

Brian Lehrer: Andrew Yang, thank you very much. We appreciate you coming on again in this latest round for the candidates on the show on economic recovery meets economic justice. Thank you very much.

Andrew Yang: Thanks, Brian. Great to be with you.

Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Much more to come.

 

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