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The Iced Coffee Hour
"Your Job Won't Exist In 6 Months!" Why AI Is Becoming The #1 Threat To America | Andrew Yang
02:03:31
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- [00:00]
Andrew Yang
Fiscally responsible financial geniuses, monetary magicians. These are things people say about drivers who switch their car insurance to Progressive and save hundreds. Because Progressive offers discounts for paying in full, owning a home and more. Plus, you can count on their great customer service to help when you need it. So your dollar goes a long way. Visit progressive.com to see if you could save on car insurance. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states or situations. Over the last number of years, we have automated away 4 million manufacturing jobs. And unfortunately, I'm here to say things are going to get much, much worse.
- [00:44]
Graham Stephan
Why did you decide to run for president?
- [00:47]
Andrew Yang
I've been trying to alleviate poverty, which I see as the most addressable, major problem that we have. I have a lot of friends in Silicon Valley and I went to them and it was like, gu, Is it just me or are we going to eliminate millions and millions of American jobs? And the response I got in private was like, oh yeah, what we did to the manufacturing workers we're about to do to retail workers, fast food workers, truck drivers, and on and on through the economy. AI does not discriminate between the hard working, conscientious truck driver or the drunk one. It's going to get you either way. And so the question is, what is the path for those people we have to make America's optimistic about the future? And I feel like they're included in it. If you don't do that, then you wind up with a very angry 80% that eventually gets the pitchforks out.
- [01:41]
Graham Stephan
Andrew Yang, thank you so much for coming on the Iced Coffee Hour.
- [01:44]
Andrew Yang
Yes, I'm here. This, don't, don't drink that coffee every day.
- [01:49]
Graham Stephan
This is so, you have no idea. This is so exciting for me to do. I've been looking forward to this for, you know, months now to try to get you on. You made some extremely bold statements back on Joe Rogan's podcast predicting the future. And I recently looked back at it and everything you had said came true. How were you able to see these things before they came true?
- [02:11]
Andrew Yang
I've got a crystal ball, my Yangstradamus crystal ball. Now, I, I have a lot of friends in Silicon Valley and I went to them in 2018, 2019 and was like, guys, is it just me? Are we gonna eliminate millions and millions of American jobs? And the response I got in private was like, oh yeah, like that's definitely happening. And then I said, are you willing to say that to the press? And like, why would I say that to the Press, because all it's gonna do is get me a spotlight I don't want. But the folks who are conscientious were like, someone should do something about this. And I even said to them, it's like someone should run for president on AI Fourth Industrial Revolution, Universal Basic Income. And they would say, yeah, yeah, yeah, someone should. And then I asked, do any of you want to do that? And they said, hell no. And then I said, okay, I'll do it. You guys should donate to my campaign, though. And they said, how much? And then I said, the max at that time was only like 2, 900 or something. So the better one said, sure. But that was the genesis of both the campaign and my certainty that AI was going to eradicate a lot of American jobs.
- [03:19]
Mikey Chen
In which ways would you say you were most right?
- [03:21]
Andrew Yang
I feel pretty good about 98% of the case I laid out. The part I got wrong, maybe in terms of emphasis, was the sequencing. Where I did not talk about in 2019, hey, we're going to eliminate all these entry level white collar jobs and recent college grads. Grads aren't going to be able to get consulting jobs or whatever. Now that would probably have been a pretty lousy, unappealing political argument anyway because, like, no one cares about that population. I would argue that they should because everyone's a person and everyone has professional aspirations. And if you end up, let's say, loading up a young person with tens of thousands of school loans and then they don't find a job that's really, really bad for the individual and also for the economy and for society. But, but I was talking more about trucking jobs, call center jobs, blue collar jobs, when maybe I could have been talking more about white collar work.
- [04:21]
Graham Stephan
And so what's a career today that people think is safe but that you think is going to be replaced entirely?
- [04:27]
Andrew Yang
I. The first thing that jumped into my mind when you said that was lawyer law school applications, last I checked, went up 21% last year. And I would suggest that was a flight to safety and that stuff's not safe at all. Law lawyering is highly structured. It's very process oriented. It's kind of the ideal environment for AI. And I have friends who are partners in law firms who say, look, I'm giving AI work that would have taken a second or third year associate a week to complete, and it gives it back to me in 20 minutes. So why on earth would I hire a small army of these associates when, you know, like, I can frankly keep the billables and the revenue and then go to my client and say, hey, great news, I got this done more cheaply. And then yeah, the savings. Because when you are a first year law firm associate, which I was back in the early 2000s, you're a cost center for the first two years of your career where the law firm's kind of eating costs to train you up people. And the incentive to do that's going to be non existent for most of the big firms.
- [05:39]
Graham Stephan
I hate to say it, we run, or at least I run a lot of the contracts through Gemini, ChatGPT and Grok and it's surprisingly accurate. I still have a person reviewing everything who's a proper lawyer, who could give me the guidance. But so far the guidance that the AI gives me is almost the same as the actual lawyer who I'm spending like three to four hundred dollars an hour.
- [06:00]
Mikey Chen
And it's slower with a lawyer. Yes. Like with ChatGPT you could literally just upload a PDF and then immediately gets you back whatever you need to know.
- [06:07]
Graham Stephan
Yeah. And it's just like what am I missing? Is this good, is this bad? And it's called out so many red flags that I've later addressed and fixed for free.
- [06:16]
Andrew Yang
Yeah, yeah. Law and accounting are two domains that are very, very rules based and really ideal for AI. Now I'm with you. I also have a human lawyer. But what happens is that you have relatively experienced attorneys who we're going to keep on using. But the folks who are coming up now out of school are never going to get the training to become that person that you trust and that I Trust to review AI's work. So you're going to have a real chasm for law school graduates and college graduates starting essentially last year.
- [06:55]
Mikey Chen
Which jobs should young people pursue because they will be unaffected by AI?
- [06:59]
Andrew Yang
The jobs that are going to be unaffected. So writ large, 44% of American jobs are either repetitive cognitive or repetitive manual. And those are the jobs you should try and steer clear of because those are the jobs that AI is going to decimate. So non repetitive manual jobs are still jobs that most people who are listening to this don't want to. And the example I use is cleaning a hotel room. You're probably going to have humans cleaning hotel rooms for quite some time because having a robot recognize like a wine stain on the pillow or whatnot, and then being able to manipulate all the odd sized objects in hotel rooms, a pain in the ass. And the human is really inexpensive. So you're going to have humans do those jobs for A long time. So if I say, hey, you should become a hotel cleaner, I mean, no one's going to take that advice, which, you know, I mean that there are a bunch of jobs that resemble that, that are persistent. Another one's a H vac repair. It's very, very hard to get a robot show up to a structure and figure out what's wrong with the air conditioning unit. That's going to be a human electrician. Human for quite some time though. Eventually if you had a modern building, then it would become self monitoring and the rest of it. But you have a lot of old structures and a shortage of that kind of work. So if you're handy, that stuff is a good idea. The other stuff is non repetitive cognitive, which you guys do. I do on a good day. So. So this is entrepreneurial, creative, bossing the AI around. The issue is that we all like you. All. I mean, you, you have very successful media properties, you've generated a ton of value through real estate. Like, you know, people tune in for your advice and congratulations. Thank you to both of you for improving people's lives in this way. I'm very passionate about people's financial literacy and you guys are practitioners, which is to me, awesome. The question for someone again who's like 22 or 24 is like, how do they get enough money together to have or audience to be able to live that kind of creative or enterprising or entrepreneurial journey? But that stuff's still going to be there. I mean, there are a lot of inefficiencies still. So those are some of the more resilient jobs. If you look at a Microsoft report that came out a few months ago, the resilient stuff is like sledge operators or people who have to change out the flooring or something like very gritty stuff that's very physical. The other jobs are jobs that interface with people all the time. So a teacher asked me, hey, do I need to worry about my job? And I was like, teaching will be the last thing to go. We're not going to replace the teacher with like a screen and a really.
- [09:51]
Graham Stephan
I thought, why do we even need teaching?
- [09:53]
Mikey Chen
Like there's no point. I learned so much more. And I can learn if I apply myself with ChatGPT to ask questions and learn. I can learn probably 10 times faster than in a classroom or YouTube video.
- [10:06]
Graham Stephan
People upload these entire master classes on Twitter and they spend hours just going over one specific thing that you could learn. You just gotta watch the video.
- [10:15]
Andrew Yang
All right, so the person who was Asking this question. This was on an NPR program that I was on a few weeks ago. It was like an 8th grade teacher, and the 8th grade social studies teacher said, is my job safe? And I was like, your job is safe insofar as your community has budget for you and that there are still kids. So our birth rate's going down, the number of kids showing up is diminishing. And so eventually these teachers unions and whatnot are going to be under downward pressure because, you know, it's just demographics. But in terms of right now, that school administrator or principal looking around that school and saying, you know what, you 8th grade social studies teacher, I'm going to replace you with, like, that's just not going to happen because the incentives are not there for that individual administrator. And there is a union in this case. So some of the most secure jobs are going to be unionized jobs. Now, that applies to about 10% of American workers. But you're going to see a real flight to safety in that way. Like, the law school degree is not the flight to safety. The flight to safety is, hey, is there going to be a union who demands that, for example, a human radiologist needs to review this film and that it can't be AI? There's going to be a lot of lobbying for persistent jobs.
- [11:39]
Graham Stephan
And how far do you think this should be allowed to go? Like, can you see AI replacing people in courts or coming up with policy decisions? Because I could see a point, you know, at some level in the future where you go to court and it's just like this AI little beacon that you just, you say your case to it and it processes.
- [12:00]
Mikey Chen
It's just green around. Right.
- [12:01]
Graham Stephan
Just jail spits out a decision.
- [12:04]
Andrew Yang
It could be using John Cena's face. Yeah. Or it could be using someone, like, very trustworthy who would be like, arbiter of American injustice.
- [12:11]
Graham Stephan
Does something. But, but like, I know with, with legal contracts, it's just like, I could tell when the other side is using ChatGPT back to me, and then I'm putting that in ChatGPT. So it's just ChatGPT negotiating against itself.
- [12:23]
Andrew Yang
You know what's funny is that reminds me of the, the dating apps is that dating apps learn your behaviors, and then so over time, you could have AI to AI chatting, and then they could determine your compatibility.
- [12:34]
Graham Stephan
We came up with this idea a while ago. It's called the perfect match. But when AI has enough information about you and your preferences, it could match you with anybody in the world who it believes is your best Match because statistically there's one person in the world who's the best match from everybody.
- [12:51]
Andrew Yang
Well, they could essentially have two folks simulating each other and then they could play out years of a relationship, you know what I mean?
- [12:59]
Graham Stephan
Yeah. For just for marriage, for business partners, for business partnerships.
- [13:04]
Andrew Yang
Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of me out there, so AI simulating me. Like I've seen it, it's pretty eerie. It's pretty good. The first time when I was running for president and they said, look, we want to write an email in your voice. I was like, you know, you can't do that. And then they did it and I was like, oh, it's actually pretty good. This is even, this wasn't even AI at the time. And then AI came along and then, you know, the Andrew Yang simulations are not half bad. So you're hitting something I think is very, very important, Graham, which is disability decisions, for example. There are hundreds of thousands of them each year. And you could have AI determine who's being frankly, like who, who's showing flags for fraud, who, who's honest. Like you could do a lot of stuff and that would be much more efficient on the part of the government. The problem right now is that the government has no incentive to replace itself with AI because that would decimate their own jobs. There's no lobby for either better decisions or better government efficiency. And so there are all these inefficiencies. The healthcare sector is going to be very similar, highly unionized environment. A lot of that money is public money. But if you go to one of these hospital environments, let's say, and I use radiology as an example, let's say AI could hypothetically do a better job than human radiologists, which arguably it could. But today what's happening is the, the medical lobby is like, hey, it's all well and good, but you need a human being to review the film at the end, which then sounds reasonable to everyone. And so there's going to be legislation being like, needs to be a human at the end. Now that's a job preservation move. And there are going to be tons of those sorts of moves. Even if AI could theoretically do the job, this is goes back to the teaching example, say, hey, AI could teach that group of students. As a parent myself, I know that a lot of the stuff that a teacher does is actually behavior management and regulation, then AI would have a lot of difficulty with. It's just keeping 13 year old from running out of the room and stuff like that. Like if you had the screen. Like you'd have chaos. And so you kind of need the human. But it's around organizational incentives. It's one reason why I made the predictions I made is that if I'm a like a corporation and I have 2,000 call center workers, it is a hundred percent in my interest to automate those customer service workers. I'm going to save money and they're non unionized. So if I made a prediction, I'm like look, that stuff's going to go by like that. But then you put me in a hospital or a school, I say wait a minute, there are all these political pressures and the incentive for this organization to actually deliver things cost efficiently is really low. It's one reason why everyone's frustrated with aspects of government. It's like if I were to say to you I could deliver disability decisions at a tiny fraction of the cost, which is probably true by the way, the government would be like well whoopty damn doo. What am I going to do? Fire all my employees who are all unionized and are there? I don't care if you can do a better job with the decisions. I don't care if you could save me money. We're just going to do it this way. And you can go throughout the public sector and find examples of that.
- [16:26]
Mikey Chen
But that sounds very doomer mentality for the viewer there. On the flip side, if they're listening to this and just feeling completely helpless when it comes to AI and how they're going to lose their jobs, lose their significance, not make any decisions for themselves, what's the best way someone can leverage today's AI landscape for their own advantage?
- [16:43]
Graham Stephan
Now, honestly, with all that goes on in day to day life, nutrition can often be one of the hardest things to prioritize. Whether you're stopping for fast food or microwaving your favorite frozen meal, poor eating habits tends to lead to a whole bunch of negative side effects.
- [16:58]
Mikey Chen
That's exactly why we are so excited to be partnering with Huel. Huel eliminates the hassle of cooking without sacrificing your health or your bank account.
- [17:04]
Graham Stephan
For those unaware, Huel is complete balanced nutrition in two forms. The ready to drink is a full meal that you could grab and go. And the Black Edition powder gives you a quick option that you could make at home without any of the hassle of cooking.
- [17:16]
Mikey Chen
The ready to drink is the most convenient option. It's a complete meal with 35 grams of protein and 27 essential vitamins and minerals. It's gluten free, contains no Artificial sweeteners, colors or flavors and requires zero prep while still being filling.
- [17:29]
Graham Stephan
It's also under $5ameal, which makes it a practical alternative to many quick breakfast or lunch options.
- [17:35]
Mikey Chen
The Black Edition powder works super well for days at home or when you want something just more customizable. It has 40 grams of protein per serving, mixes extremely easily. It can be blended with ingredients like fruit or milk, depending on your preference.
- [17:46]
Graham Stephan
Having both options helps keep routines consistent. You got the powder for more flexible or customized meals and they're ready to drink for busier days.
- [17:54]
Mikey Chen
Honestly, it's just a super simple way of staying on track with prote and overall nutrition without needing to plan every single meal. I kid you not, every single morning I go for a walk, I drink my hu every single morning without fail. I get in protein, vitamins, minerals. It tastes great and I feel amazing.
- [18:09]
Graham Stephan
Now if you want to try it for yourself, you can get 15% off at Heal by using our code ICED15@Heal.com ICED15. This offer is for new customers. Thanks again to Huel for partnering with us and supporting our episode.
- [18:24]
Mikey Chen
What's the best way someone can leverage today's AI landscape for their own advantage?
- [18:29]
Andrew Yang
I think you guys are an example of it again. Now, if you were to say to someone watching this, like, you know, would I trade places with the two of you that they, you know, 99% of them, I'm sure would like that. Same with me. The people who hang, who follow me, I think are hoping that, you know, like, I'll help them inform their futures. What you want to do is the simplest way to think about what's happening. And you've actually written about this, Graham, where you have this K shaped economy. So you have the top 20% are then taking off to the right. And that crew is going to be the crew that leverages AI in various ways. Whether that's through their media and getting a following, whether it's through a business, whether it's through real estate investment or anything else, like if you can use the tools, the three things I think of, it's AI, it's money, it's attention. And if you have a combination of those three things, then you can become super powered. If you're absent any all of or absent all of those things, then it's like a real struggle. Now when you ask what someone should be doing to me, they need to try to adopt many of the financial principles you guys talk about to try and put enough money together so that they wind up one of the beneficiaries of the AI wave.
- [19:47]
Mikey Chen
So if we're going to break that down, you said money. How much money do you need?
- [19:51]
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- [20:21]
Andrew Yang
Well, I mean, you, you know, you know what it takes to be in the top 20% of Americans. So that should be the goal. Now, that, that may or may not be realistic, but at every life stage, you can try and position yourself in that direction. It's one reason why I think you guys do what you do and I do what I do. But, and I'm sure because we have a lot of time to talk, but like, I can talk about what I'm doing right now with Noble Mobile, which I think will save people, you know, $500 to $1,000 a year, which then if you extrapolate that over compound interest. Yes, yes, yes.
- [20:53]
Graham Stephan
Yeah. But what do you think about Elon Musk's statement that money is not going to matter because we're going to become so efficient at things that you're not going to need money in the future?
- [21:01]
Andrew Yang
So it, if you look at the top line, Elon may be correct. The issue is how all of this value gets transferred to the people who are watching this at home, to the former Uber driver, to the former customer service worker, to the 22 year old who's coming out of college and is like, hey, no one wants to hire me? Like, how does that person enjoy the bounty? And to me, the logical way that that person enjoys the bounty is some sort of public policy. Now, there, there are issues with different methods. When I ran for president, I said, look, let's just give everyone a thousand bucks a month, no questions asked, call it a day. I mean, not even call it a day. It's like you make that a starting point. And in my mind, all of the things that work provides around community, training, structure, purpose, fulfillment, that is not replaced by a thousand bucks or whatnot. You know what I mean? Like the thousand bucks is enough so you can make ends meet. Actually, now it'd probably be higher because a thousand bucks, 2,000amonth. It probably would be 2,000amonth.
- [22:15]
Graham Stephan
Wait, so explain the thousand dollars a month for skeptics who just think it's free money.
- [22:20]
Andrew Yang
My argument is that capitalism functions best when people can actually participate in the consumer marketplace. And so this is capitalism where income doesn't start at zero. I came up with a thousand dollars a month one because it was simple. And at that time the poverty level was maybe $17,000 ahead. And so it's like, look, we get you like 2/3 of the way there. Something along those lines. I also did the Math and thought $1,000 a month was feasible given the budget of the government, the size of the economy, like a bunch of other things. So Elon's argument is, look, AI is going to create trillions of dollars of commercial value, which it surely will. Now again, what I would like to suggest to folks is like right now, who's going to get those trillions of dollars? It's accruing to the stock value of OpenAI and Alphabet and Nvidia and the other major players. And so there's like a narrow band of Americans who might be shareholders in those companies who right now are seeing their stock portfolios go up and up and up. But that does not describe the 22 year old or the former customer service representative or all those people. So what I was saying is like, look, let's take some of the bounty from AI and transfer it quickly and broadly to the general public in a way that doesn't differentiate, doesn't stigmatize, doesn't mean tests. Like, look, we're transitioning from scarcity to abundance and we need to make people feel included as quickly as possible. Because if you don't do that, then you wind up with a very angry 80% that eventually gets the pitchforks out and gets really, really angry at whoever the winners are in the new world.
- [24:08]
Graham Stephan
Seems like that's already happening though. It seems like right now wealth is considered bad.
- [24:14]
Andrew Yang
Yeah, and it makes me super sad. So my parents immigrated to this country. I'm the child of Taiwanese immigrants and they believed that, you know, America was land of opportunity and it's the American dream and they came here for a better future for me and my bro. And it worked. And so I thought, America is awesome. We can just roll up our sleeves and work hard and make a good life. And now people feel like the system's rigged in a way that stigmatizes folks who have made a lot of money. And that makes me very, very sad because if you don't think you have a shot, don't think the system's fair, then takes the American dream and makes it seem out of reach for most people. And I'm a numbers guy, so I get it. I mean, if the average age of a home buyer is what is now,
- [25:08]
Graham Stephan
I hear different statistics now. I thought it was like, homebuyers over the age of 70 outnumber those at 35.
- [25:15]
Andrew Yang
Yeah. And like, I saw like the average age of a first time home buyer was like way too old to make sense. Might have been like 42 or something. Like, well, that's not cool. And so if a young person looks up, says, you know what? American dream is bullshit. It's out of reach for me. Like, I can work hard, I cannot work hard, doesn't that make a difference? Like, that is super the opposite of what you want. Like, you want an environment where someone's like, look, if I kick ass and work hard and adopt, you know, sound financial principles of my own life, like, you know, I can make it whatever making it means. For most Americans, making it probably involves owning a home, which, you know, it's like, I know you guys might have different advice on that. I was a renter for a long time, so I was like, cool with that. I was living in New York, and I guess that's pretty standard.
- [26:05]
Mikey Chen
I mean, that's a whole different vein that I'm sure Graham would love to go down. But first, I'm curious.
- [26:08]
Graham Stephan
We'll get to that.
- [26:09]
Mikey Chen
How much of that is mentality versus actual reality? The way I see it is there's more opportunity right now than there's ever been in American history. But more people feel like the odds are stacked against them now than they ever did in American history. So it makes me wonder, like, what is the reality? The way I see it, and from all of the people I talk to, everyone saying it is as easy as it's ever been to get rich, you
- [26:31]
Andrew Yang
know, again, I look at the numbers, and if you were born in the 60s or 70s, the odds of you doing better than your parents were, you know, like 80%, I think it was like 94% if you were born in the 60s, I mean sky high, and then you start getting into the 90s and then it gets to 50% and then starts going below. So statistically, the odds of a kid doing better than their parents are, are now sub 50% in a way that was not true when I was growing up. So in my mind, you should have an attitude like, look, you could give me any percent and I'm going to make it. Like, you tell me the top, you know, 30%, I'm going to make it. I'll be in the top 30%. You tell me it's 20, I'll be in the top 20. Because there's no upside to putting yourself in the bucket where you're not going to make it or the deck is stacked against you. I mean, that stuff is, it's not helpful. You don't, you just wanna. I mean, one of the things that I took to heart when I was younger, it's like, look, if you believe you can succeed or you believe you can fail, you're probably right.
- [27:37]
Mikey Chen
That's 100% true.
- [27:38]
Andrew Yang
100% true.
- [27:39]
Graham Stephan
It seems like from my perspective, though, anyone can make it, but it seems like the people who do have a smaller chance of making it, but when they do, they can make way more money.
- [27:49]
Andrew Yang
That's the truth. I mean, shoot, we might wind up with the first trillionaire in human history.
- [27:54]
Graham Stephan
Oh, 100%. I think Elon Musk has so many executives to hit the 1 trillion net worth.
- [27:58]
Andrew Yang
Yeah. Which is a crazy number that you would have thought. I mean, heck, a billionaire seemed like a crazy number not that long ago. And then now you might have. Have. It's probably Elon or Jeff Bezos would be the two candidates for it. So you have these extreme outcomes. By the way, in my mind, this is a real problem for young people adopting sound financial principles because you look at it and you say, okay, I need like a higher variance strateg in order to get into the winner circle. And so then you start seeing more aggressive behaviors and more speculative behaviors. Because it's like, if I make 12%, like, I'm not going to pat myself in the back. I got. I gotta roll the dice for something higher. Whereas, you know, for me, it's like you made 12%. Like, well, that's why young people are
- [28:45]
Graham Stephan
taking significantly more risk because they see it as their only viable option out of just mediocrity or that middle. And they feel like they have to take extreme risk to get to the top. Yeah, and that's.
- [28:56]
Mikey Chen
It's narrative. It's not reality. Like, technically speaking, in the middle is way more comfortable than it was to be in the middle 50 years ago.
- [29:03]
Andrew Yang
Yeah, I, I think you're right that. What is it comparison is the death of joy or something like that. Thief of joy. You have social media obviously bombarding you with images of what success looks like. And then you have people advertising their outsized winnings all the time, whether it's crypto or some investment or even some sports bet I made. I mean, like that stuff's pervasive. I mean, it makes me sad and a little bit angry that I can't watch ESPN or any of the sports programs without someone telling me how to bet. And I'm just like, come on, man. I mean, like. And by the way, the numbers show that when you legalize online sports betting in a state like investment behaviors go down. Because when I gamble, I actually invest and save less. And also, this is going to be super depressing, but domestic violence goes up by, I think it's 12%, 15%, something along those lines. And we all know what that chain of events was, which is that someone made a bet on a game or a parlay or something, and then it doesn't go right and then they get super mad. So you, you can tell that there are negative macro effects from the legalization of online sports betting. But then if I go on social media or turn on espn, like I just see it's like, oh shoot, like you know, DraftKings, FanDuel, and the rest of it. So there are all these forces that I think are pushing higher variance.
- [30:34]
Graham Stephan
What's interesting is that we have a mastermind group called the Index and we meet every quarter. And we met a few days ago and we were talking about why certain items are going up in price so much. I'm talking like Rolexes, Pokemon cards, certain cars. And one of the theories was that because young people are not buying houses and they feel like certain things of reach, like buying a house, something priceless is more attainable. And that might be buying a Rolex, spending the money in a car instead, because for them a house isn't even an option. But they could get that brand new Corvette or they could buy that $15,000 Rolex. And for them that's the new signal of success than buying a house.
- [31:16]
Andrew Yang
Yeah, I generally think that most people are rational and when they're doing things that seem aggressive or irrational, I try and figure out why they're doing it. And I think there's actually some hidden rationality in the risk seeking behaviors because the conventional method, maybe they don't believe in it anymore or the timing doesn't work out for them. And so they do things that I wouldn't have done when I was their age. But then when I look at it, because when I was coming up too, so I Don't know how much my background, you guys know, but, but I sold a company when I was in my early to mid-30s and made seven figures. And so at that point I was like, oh my gosh, I'm like a 34 year old millionaire. I can do no wrong. Then decided to become a bit of a do gooder. Started an entrepreneurship organization. It's one of the reasons why I love what you guys do in terms of trying to help people live better financial lives. I became convinced that entrepreneurship was what was going to get America out of its mess. But I, I, so my income might have been like, you know, low, middle, low, middle, low, like high, like zero. Like, like my income varied wildly from year to year. So I always acted like whatever money I was making might disappear tomorrow and I should be swinging for significant wins as opposed to, you know, like worrying about this expense or that expense. So it's kind of easy come, easy go. You guys read Nate Silver?
- [33:00]
Graham Stephan
No.
- [33:00]
Andrew Yang
You'd like him. So he wrote a book called on the Edge about risk taking. And he talked about people who've gotten lucky, gamblers who got lucky, and then they sort of gamble, assuming they're going to be fortunate. You guys are an example of this, in my opinion, where there's this experience of abundance where like you have a bet, then it works out and you have a bet and it works out and you invest in the business, it grows. You like do this, the audience gets, gets bigger. You know, you just keep on growing. For you, it probably started out with real estate sales. It did, yeah. And then, you know, the first thing you sold maybe was like, you know, x 100,000. And then like eventually got to a million. The first million dollar sale, you were like, oh, crazy.
- [33:40]
Graham Stephan
Yeah, my first sale was 3 million 550.
- [33:44]
Andrew Yang
Well, I guess maybe your first thing was crazy. Yeah, that's, that's way high. So, so you wind up taking these bets and these risks because enough of them have worked out where then you can just keep on progressing and that. That's a very different set of behaviors than a lot of folks who are hoping for, you know, a 4% raise from year to year. And like, are, are just trying to put a little bit of money away. So what Nate differentiates between is the, the river, which is what I'm describing. It's entrepreneurs, investors, financiers, also gamblers. And then there's the village, which is, I'm a teacher, I'm a, I work for the government, you know, postal worker, like where it's like A stable environment, and I might make a smidgen more next year than I do. And. And he said that these two groups are kind of at odds with each other culturally and increasingly politically. Anyway, so I realized from reading Nate's books, like, oh my gosh, I'm like a river person because I took a bet on my business doing well in my early 30s. And then when it did do well, then all of a sudden, you know, you get this windfall that most people will never experience. Then it makes you think, wow, if I could do that, like, I can, I can do lots of other things.
- [35:12]
Graham Stephan
Picture this. You just wrapped up a very important client meeting, but then you can't quite remember what was said at the very end. Does that sound familiar? In today's world, we're expected to remember thousands of pieces of information, which quite honestly could be impossible.
- [35:26]
Mikey Chen
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- [35:36]
Graham Stephan
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- [35:51]
Mikey Chen
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- [35:58]
Graham Stephan
Being the size of a credit card means that you could take PLOD anywhere. Think of it like having a dedicated note taking assistant following you around 24 7. And Plod won't complain to HR.
- [36:08]
Mikey Chen
So if you're done forgetting and ready to start scaling, PLOD is perfect for you.
- [36:13]
Graham Stephan
So stop leaving money on the table because the details fell through the cracks. If you want to try PLOD for yourself, you can get 10% off of all Plod devices by using our code. Ich@plod AI. Ich. Thank you again to Plod for sponsoring this episode. So do you think getting $1,000 a month for people would give them enough encouragement that they could start those businesses? And how do you ensure they just don't waste the. That it causes inflation or that they spend it on drugs or let's just say alcohol or things like this?
- [36:44]
Andrew Yang
Yeah, so again, I'm a numbers guy and when you put money into people's hands in various environments, and so there was like a Native American tribe that had a natural experiment because they had a casino and some families got money and Then some families didn't. And so then you look to see what happened to the families that got money. And you had very, very low rates of, well, so what they spend the money on, it was food and education and like in some cases, socking away for the future. But the most positive things you could identify were that families in the, that got the money, their kids grew up with much higher levels of two traits, conscientiousness and agreeableness. And so those traits map to, if I do the right thing at home, something good happens. If you're in a home environment where doing something good, bad doesn't really matter to your outcome, you don't get rewarded, your allowance doesn't go up, your parent doesn't say good job or whatever, then. So conscientiousness and agreeableness correspond to success in life, they correspond to successful marriages, they correspond to being a decent worker. You show up and you actually expect to have to do the work. And if you don't do the work, then there'll be consequences. So studies have consistently shown that's the kind of thing that the money enables. Would more people start businesses if everyone had a thousand bucks a month? Of course, in part because you just have more middle class, ish customers to be able to cater to. Right now businesses are bifurcating where you have the K shaped economy. And it's like, look, if I cater to the top 20%, I could have a good business. And then if I cater to like the, you know, the bottom, whatever, 50%, maybe I can have a good business.
- [38:38]
Graham Stephan
I want to share an example, and this might be very specific, but I have some friends of extended family in Canada and they practically live off the welfare system there and they don't work and they hang out all day, they smoke weed, they play video games, they get drunk. And I've talked to them about this before, like, hey, why don't you work? Oh, because if I work, I lose these benefits or if I make a certain amount, I don't get all this free stuff. So it's actually better for me not to work and just live off this. It was probably like 1300amonth of like what they were getting, but that was plenty for like a rural part of Canada. How do you prevent that not from happening here? Or do you just accept that some people will fall into that and that's okay because at least they're happy, they're staying to themselves, they're not hurting anybody. Let them be.
- [39:28]
Andrew Yang
I would say two things. The first is that you should not have A system that ever discourages someone from going out kicking ass, making money. And right now you do have that system in the U.S. sounds like in Canada where when I was running for president, a woman came to me in Iowa and said, hey, I'm disabled. I want to volunteer in my community, but I'm afraid to because I'm afraid that I'm going to lose my disability benefits as a result. There are millions of Americans who are in some kind of situation like that where if I make a certain amount of money, you'll take the benefits away. If I show that I'm able bodied, you'll take the benefits away. I'm going to suggest that that is terrible and messed up and that woman should be able to go have a bake sale or whatever the heck and not be concerned. We're going to take money away. So that's why you need a less negative incentive structure. Like what I was campaigning on, the Freedom Dividend was like, look, I'm going to give you a thousand bucks. You make more money. Sure. You know, like I'm, I'm not. It's like, like I don't want to punish you for being successful. And right now, a lot of the way government programs are designed do have this perverse incentive where if you do better, you get less. If you, if I give this to you into the second point. So if I give this to you, I personally, Andrew Yang would love it if you went out there and used it to start a business and kick some ass. And like, you know, you don't just chill out at home playing video games all day. But I think that is up to you. You know, my hope is that you'll want to get a girlfriend and you know, like do good things. And most girls aren't that into it. If you're at home in the basement playing video games all day, I tell, by the way, I have a 13 year old and a 10 year old and I tell them all the time like, this is not a path to, you know, getting girls. Then one of them will be like, what if I meet a girl who just loves playing video games all day? I was like, yeah, good luck with that. Like that's unlikely. So part of it is that we've all contributed to the development of AI in some minute fashion where the, the data that's getting sold and resold every year, if you had to put a dollar value on it, even putting aside the value of AI, the direct market value of the data that gets sold and resold in America every year is in the hundreds of billions of dollars a year. And that most Americans don't see a dime of that obviously because it's just getting siphoned off the top. Then if you include AI, then you could ratchet that value up significantly if you play out the value of AI over time. And so that person in rural North Dakota or whatnot.
- [42:07]
Graham Stephan
Canada.
- [42:07]
Andrew Yang
Yeah, Canada. Well, I was picking. But yeah, and that's, I, I called it the Freedom Dividend is like, look, this is your dividend from all the awesome progress that we're making here in the States. And I would like you to do certain things, but hey, it's yours. Like, one of, one of the comparisons I made was that most major companies, let's say Microsoft, they pay a dividend every three months to their shareholders. You guys, because you're experienced investors, actually enjoy the dividend income that various companies send you. And not once has one of those companies turned to you and been like, hey, I really hope you don't use that money to like get a hot tub or whatever. Like, you know, you're a shareholder, you get the money, like get yourself a hot tub, do whatever. I mean, like what I was trying to say was that we should apply that kind of ownership model to our data, to being an American society wide.
- [43:08]
Mikey Chen
Sure, but isn't wealth technically only significant due to how wealth is relative? Like for example, it's all about buying power. If you have more wealth, you technically only have more buying power because you have more wealth than those beneath you that have less. So if you give, if you give everyone a thousand dollars, then doesn't no one have a thousand dollars of fact effectively? Like, how are you going to ensure that that doesn't just cause massive inflation and then everything just goes up 10, 15%. Why would a landlord not just charge more money if he knows his tenant's getting an extra thousand dollars?
- [43:46]
Andrew Yang
So that this is, this is an in depth conversation that I, I enjoy where if you look at inflation in American life, it tends to be centered in a few sectors. And those sectors are, you probably can guess them all, housing, education, healthcare. And you use landlords for a reason. And then you have things like clothing, media, electronics, like that are getting cheaper in some cases or the same. And so when you start digging in, you think, okay, why is it that insurance is always more expensive? Like, no one listening to this has ever gotten a note from their insurance company be like, great news, your insurance policy is less this year. It's one reason why like health care is, is eating the economy is because the entire business model is like, I'm going to charge you more this year. I'm going to charge you more. I'm charging more. And. And then, you know, makes employers be like, oh, shoot, if I give you health care, it's going to end up breaking, breaking my back in various ways. So you have certain parts of the economy that are allowed to ratchet up prices all the time because you're captive. You have no choice. Colleges have been like that for a long time because it wasn't the family necessarily paying out of pocket. It was that you had this giant government program. It's like, look, I'm going to put this money out. And then I'm also convince you that whatever you pay, this is good debt. You can pay whatever for this college degree, it's going to work out. Obviously, that is now being questioned rightfully. And so the things you'd have to separate, really. It's like, look, if I put money into your hands, certain things, certain sellers are going to be like, ooh, you have more money. Let me try and ratchet up the price. But then there are other, other industries where it's still super competitive, where if, you know, like the cost of McNuggets, for example, might not shoot up if I gave a thousand bucks, because it's like a highly competitive marketplace. And so what you'd want to do is you'd want to try and introduce market dynamics and discipline into the really dysfunctional segments that you're seeing mostly inflation in. And so then that leads you to like, okay, why is it that the cost of healthcare keeps going up and up regardless of what happens? Why does the cost of college keep going up? Why is the cost of housing keep going up? And then you realize that there are different things that are making those things more expensive than, than money in people's pockets.
- [46:06]
Graham Stephan
I would argue that government intervention is causing those prices to go up. And when you look at housing, as soon as the government got involved and subsidized mortgages, people were able to access bigger mortgages at lower rates to buy more house, which increased mortgage rates and increased the mortgage size.
- [46:25]
Mikey Chen
Also same thing with transactions to housing building and making it difficult to build. If it was easier to build, you'd have a much larger supply.
- [46:31]
Graham Stephan
Also with student loans, as soon as the Department of Education got involved, you see admin just go through the roof. And then colleges charged exactly the amount that the government would subsidize. It just seemed like that pushed it up.
- [46:45]
Andrew Yang
So if government intervention, that is my, my big point, which is that the things that are driving the costs in these sectors are often born of the government and policies. And those are the things you want to attack and get to the root of as to why certain costs are going out of control. But then there are two different issues. It's like those things didn't get super expensive because everyone got rich, you know, like, they got just distorted. And so you want to, like, I'm all for loosening zoning restrictions, for example, because, like, that might make the housing market. Like, I'm all for trying to figure out, like, hey, what are the. I mean, what was Trump's idea? A 50 year mortgage? And like, 50 year mortgage, that just
- [47:26]
Graham Stephan
didn't make any sense.
- [47:26]
Andrew Yang
It made zero sense. So, by the way, I, I know you, I mean, you and I, and, you know, the three of us knew that immediately. I actually put out a tweet making fun of it where I was like, a 50 year mortgage is a good idea. You know what's an even better idea? A hundred year mortgage.
- [47:37]
Graham Stephan
You know what's crazy is reading the comments, how many comments were for the 50 year mortgage and said, thank you. Finally, this is a solution. This is exactly what we've needed. Finally, Big W Trump, and then when he said you could pull out money from a 401k to buy, everybody was for it. And it just seems like, why is there such a distance between what's factually and mathematically correct and what people think? And it seems like you throw up ideas that sound great and people just go for it.
- [48:05]
Andrew Yang
Oh, yeah, that's this era. And I, by the way, and I put this out there too, I love when anyone in power, Trump included, is doing something, trying to make life more affordable, reducing the cost of very various things. I love the Trump savings accounts for newborns. Like, you know, you argue against that and people be like, oh, it's not enough. It's like, you know, sure, shoot. It's something like, you know, a thousand, thousand bucks per kid. And then Michael Dell threw in another 250 for, you know, like a bunch of kids in Texas. Yeah, it's like, well, you know, no, it can't be mad at that stuff. So he's taking swings at trying to make housing more affordable and we're seeing what is and is not possible. I mean, 50 or more. It's dumb idea, 401k stuff. You know, also, it's like, you know, like, risky, but. Yeah, yeah, yeah, right, yeah, like taking
- [48:54]
Graham Stephan
a different risk profile, but risky.
- [48:57]
Andrew Yang
Yeah, it's like, yeah, I mean, that one is a chin scratch. It's like, how do I feel about this?
- [49:00]
Graham Stephan
The coin flip.
- [49:01]
Andrew Yang
Yeah, but. But so you. So I'm enjoying that aspect. Like the. The.
- [49:08]
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Mikey Chen
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- [50:09]
Andrew Yang
Actual problems have been allowed to fester over, you know, years and years where, like, when. When you adopt certain policies and then you come back 30 years later, you know, like, things have got very distorted. And so when you're trying to un. Distort them, then some of the solutions, like, you know, like, the things he's doing, like, some of them aren't awesome, but what you would actually need is a time machine. You'd actually need to go back in time and be like, hey, guys, like, maybe we shouldn't be subsidizing certain things so much, or we should be loosening housing production. And I know. I think Austin has been a real success story where they've built and then rents have gone down. So it shows that good leadership and policy could actually make a difference.
- [50:51]
Mikey Chen
What did you think about doge? Were you optimistic going into it? You said that you loved targeting those really expensive government programs that waste a lot of money. And I feel like that was kind of the idea going into. In.
- [51:01]
Andrew Yang
Yeah, I mean, I think I'm someone who is sympathetic to the goals of DOGE and then was, like, very unhappy with the actual implementation. And I think that describes a whole lot of people. You know, I think a lot of business people are like, well, this is interesting. Like, I do sense that there's A lot of bloat and excess in there. And then it's like, wait a minute. Like, you know, the way they went about it I thought was not the right way. And it made me sad because, you know, some of the goals I think Americans are on board with, including even earlier Democratic administrations who, you know, you can find clips of Bill Clinton or Obama being like, you know, we need to root out waste. I mean, who likes waste? There's a lot of waste. I mean, we all, all know that.
- [51:40]
Graham Stephan
Do you think they could ever fix waste in the government?
- [51:43]
Andrew Yang
I've looked at this in, in some detail. Yeah.
- [51:46]
Graham Stephan
It's just, it just seems like this would be the highest ROI activity. Like, we talk about canceling income tax, and when you look at how much the US Makes from income tax and the amount that's allegedly lost to fraud, you could practically cancel out a lot of income tax and be a net the same.
- [52:04]
Mikey Chen
It was like zero to $600,000, $50,000, zero taxes. If you got rid of fraud.
- [52:09]
Andrew Yang
Yeah, I mean, that's something American should
- [52:12]
Graham Stephan
get on board at this point. We should be able to at least knock out like half.
- [52:16]
Andrew Yang
I'm going to say, I'm going to say something that people are going to dislike intensely. As someone who looked at this, so check it out. Out. I've run private businesses, and so some people who run for president who have a business background, like me, might say, I'm going to run government like a business. And that sounds good to business people, but they're very different things. They have, like, different goals and different structures. And so if you were to be in charge of government and run it like a business, you know what you would do pretty quickly? You would increase the size and efficiency of the irs. Because you invest a billion in IRS agents, you probably goose receivables and by the way, reduce fraud. If I were to spend and I could have a bounty system, I could have. By the way, you could also have a tax holiday, which I totally would have done. It's like, look, if you've been playing fast and loose for a number of years, it's cool. Just come clean and then we'll like, divvy it up. We're not going to throw you in jail. We're just going to like, you know, true size it. Like, you know, like, give you like a slap on the wrist like, take 30%. Like I was going to do. I wanted to do things like that because, like, you know, I'm not. Look, we're not going to change the rules. On you retroactively. I'm not going to, like, shaft anyone, but if you were to run it like a business, that would be a phenomenal investment.
- [53:39]
Graham Stephan
That's what a lot of people say, because I've seen that point, and I, I agree with you. But at the same time, people say, well, why should I be paying taxes when all that money is going to this waste? Like, why target me, who's like, trying to work and make money when, like, these people over here are basically just stealing it and wasting it?
- [53:56]
Andrew Yang
I would a thousand percent agree with that. And I would have been the first person to be like, hey, look, and by the way, I've been on Capitol Hill. I've hung out with, you know, senators and presidents, next presidents and whatnot. As soon as I get in there, their actual desire to try and shrink government, it's like, you know, it's very minimal. Like, they, they don't care that, you know, like, that they become ensconced in this circuit of fundraising dinners and like, the, the rest of it and like, the, and the money becomes an abstraction as soon as you're in Capitol Hill, in part because the numbers are so big. But I would have taken joy and being like, look, we, here's, here's what we're going to do. We're going to ratchet up the ability for our government to catch fraudsters. And that includes people who are right now wasting government money in, like, a whole million ways. And we all know that exists. It's coming out in dramatic fashion, you know, right now in various quarters. And I would have said, like, that's my responsibility. Go dollar for dollar. It's like anything I ask you to do, I'm going to ask us to do. And then I'd like to beat it because I have like a, you know, a huge bloated budget to work with. And anyone who's realistically taking a shot at this, and this is one reason why we're so lost, anyone who's really taking a look at this would also include the military in this. And I have a high school buddy who was an Air Force Academy graduate, and he said, like, his worst day of the year was when he flew over the ocean, just dumping oil and gas into the ocean because. And I asked, like, any normal person would be like, why the do you do that? And he was like, well, because if we spent less on fuel in any given year, then our budget would shrink the next year. So we're gonna use the amount of wheel that's budgeted.
- [55:46]
Graham Stephan
We've heard so many stories of basically exactly that, of waste within the military, of just purposely going and spending money on things you don't need just to be able to get that budget it and more the next year. And if they didn't hit that, they just get a lower amount and they may as well just waste the money and get a higher amount.
- [56:03]
Andrew Yang
Yes. So you had the biggest efficiency czars in D.C. but then it'd be like, oh, can't touch the military.
- [56:09]
Graham Stephan
But why does it, why does it work like that? Because in any other business it wouldn't be like, you know, hey, if I don't spend all of my money this year, I'm not getting more. Why does it work like that for the government?
- [56:18]
Andrew Yang
So the big thing, the big Yangian word I want to leave everyone with, with from this conversation is incentives that, like that, that's what is driving us crazy, that's what's making government not work, is that you have very, very powerful incentives for, let's say each member of Congress, the military, shockingly, has a base or some kind of like economically generative thing in every congressional district in the country. Now why is that? Does it just make Sense to have 435 different factories or bases? They do it so that every single member of Congress benefits from military expenditures in terms of jobs they can point to. So if you have an incentive structure, let's say I, President Yang, would be like, look, guys, I love this country. We ought to be able to defend it. We ought to be able to do awesome stuff. But there is a ton of bloat in the military. And let's take a look at it. Let's try and like, get some expenses out. Like, these things don't make us safer. For example, maybe I can find, by the way, any reasonable person could find a whole host of things that we're doing that have nothing to do with our actual readiness or effectiveness, et cetera, et cetera. But then the incentives are like, I'm going to reduce the spend in someone's district. And then that person then is like, why am I, I have to fight this? Because, you know, like, you're going to reduce jobs at my base, you're going to reduce jobs at that munitions factory, you're going to reduce jobs at X and Y. So as soon as you end up running afoul of someone's political interests, then they'll fight you tooth and nail. And, and if I go to the American public too and say, hey, I'm going to reduce military spend, like 50 of Americans would be like, screw you. Like, that's terrible. I'm like pro military. I can be like, look, I'm pro military too. I'm, you know, I'm like not, you know, I'm like, I. Anyway, I can stop there. But people get it like that there's like that there's. If you were serious about trying to curb excess spending, like military would be included.
- [58:17]
Mikey Chen
So here's a theory that we've always joked about on the podcast and I love mentioning this to anybody in office because hopefully one day we'll actually get done. 10,000 accountants, all auditing the IRS and also the government budget, seeing where the money goes. If we had some sort of registry or forum database where you could go in, see how much money is actually going into the irs and then line item, where is it being spent? If some random agency and in some department in some state and whatever needs to buy some televisions, I want to be able to see where our money is going and which televisions we're buying and are we paying for how above msrp. Because realistically we all know that there's some extra fee, extra buffer. We've heard of like the 22 muffins or cupcakes that was served at this
- [59:01]
Graham Stephan
million dollar bathroom and then the 20
- [59:04]
Mikey Chen
per ounce Starbucks coffee that is being provided at some random government agency party. And so if we actually had some sort of database where you could see line by line what is being spent, then you have a million YouTube journalists that are all going to look through it and find a bunch of stuff and expose a bunch of fraud, a bunch of waste. And I think that that would be perfect. Once you have that, then you could have someone who runs for office campaigns on the idea of I'm going to just go in and just cut out all of these things that we all agree is wasteful. Like if you just actually we give our money to the government, their job is transparency to us, they're supposed to serve us. But if they just spend our money
- [59:41]
Andrew Yang
willy nilly, then it's like I would enjoy that too. I would, I mean that there's a lot of ridiculousness going on and we all know it and it's not in anyone's interest really to go against it, to uncover it because one person's cost is another person's job. You know what I mean? Like, like I could find all sorts of like crazy expenses and then like there are like a thousand people. There's no transparency or barnacles on that. Now let me say I'M also, you know, like a conscientious human where it's like, is it your fault that your job relies upon this inefficiency? You know, like, I would argue no. I mean, just like, it's not some.
- [60:21]
Mikey Chen
But there's a negative economic multiplier on their job. What is the purpose? At the end of the day, it's like, just give them welfare instead of having them, like, continue to an inefficient system.
- [60:30]
Andrew Yang
That. That would be my.
- [60:31]
Mikey Chen
At the very least, that.
- [60:33]
Andrew Yang
That would be my argument. It would be. Look, in a way. And this was one of the ideas I think Doge was working with. It's like, look, if I buy you out, we still win. You know what I mean? I don't want to be a total jackass, because if someone got hired in some capacity, I mean, they were just like a random schmo who ended up working at this thing, and they're doing their thing. And I say this in part, so my parents were immigrants to this country. My mom worked at a state university in New York. And so, like, I. I worked summers there. And so, like, you get a sense of, like, you know, various departments and employees. My aunt then worked for the state of New Jersey as a. As a researcher. And so, like, I kind of visualize people in these random offices. And, you know, it's like. Like, I. If what they're doing doesn't actually create any value, and it's all like a giant bureaucratic mess and waste, and it's like, we should find something else for you to do. But, like, you know, I don't want to be, like, cruel where it's like, if they're, you know, like, office parks full of these people, you know, you don't want to be a dick and be like, hey, like, everyone get lost yesterday.
- [61:46]
Mikey Chen
Give them a year of their income and tell them to figure it out.
- [61:49]
Andrew Yang
Some kind of. By the way, everything I'm describing might not just apply to these government workers. I mean, at this point, going back to the earlier part of our conversation, is like, AI is going to do that to, like, people who work in call centers right now. AI is going to do that pretty soon to people who work in warehouses right now. So, like, my passion in life, in many ways, is to enable humane, effective, realistic transitions for millions of people that are going to be displaced. And you can see now the system is kind of tremoring or whipsawing, like the ground is shaking beneath our feet. You know, people who never thought. Thought they'd have an issue all Of a sudden it's like, oh my God. Like, you know, and some of that I get. And it's appropriate because there are millions of manufacturing workers who got kicked to the curb in this last generation, and our political system treated them like and ignored them. And that was totally wrong. Slash, you know, I mean, the word that popped into my mind is actually evil. It's like you, you decimated communities, people went home and like, you know, often drank themselves to death. Like, very, very bad things happen in these, in these towns. And now we're. That's playing out in more and more sectors. And AI does not discriminate between the hard working, conscientious truck driver or the, you know, the drunk one or whatever. Like, it's going to get you either way. And so the question is, what is the path for those people and why
- [63:21]
Graham Stephan
did you decide to run for president?
- [63:24]
Mikey Chen
This episode is in partnership with Airbnb. So Graham and I just got back from a trip to Austin and Puerto Rico, and in both places we book stays on Airbnb. And literally every single time we travel these days, we stay at homes on Airbnb.
- [63:36]
Graham Stephan
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Mikey Chen
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- [64:09]
Graham Stephan
Now, if you've ever thought about hosting but weren't sure how to handle it if you're away, Airbnb now has the co host network. With this, you could partner with a vetted local co host with hosting experience who could take care of the important details for you.
- [64:21]
Mikey Chen
So you see, a co host can help manage reservations, get guest communication, and even provide on site support so everything goes smoothly while you're away.
- [64:28]
Graham Stephan
This makes hosting a lot more manageable when you travel.
- [64:30]
Mikey Chen
It's also just a great way to earn some extra cash for future trips or just home projects.
- [64:34]
Graham Stephan
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- [64:40]
Mikey Chen
Running a successful business will always get to a point where money's coming in, things are good, things are growing, but it's hard to know what's set aside for taxes, who's been paid, or where your expenses are going. It can get stressful very fast.
- [64:51]
Graham Stephan
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- [65:06]
Mikey Chen
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Graham Stephan
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Mikey Chen
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- [65:50]
Graham Stephan
For a lot of business owners, getting this sorted means you finally stop putting out fires and actually have room to grow. Grow. So if you want a system that supports your business, scan the QR code on the screen or click the link down below in the description to learn more about Relay. Thanks so much. And now let's get back to the episode. And why did you decide to run for President?
- [66:09]
Andrew Yang
Isn't it obvious? No, I'm kidding. So I ran for President because I wanted to educate the American public about AI and the fourth Industrial revolution and what was going to happen and accelerate the end of poverty. Right now, as we're having this conversation, GDP per person is around 83,000 ahead and that's going to shoot up because of AI. So at what level do you get to where you look around and be like, you know what, that's actually enough so we can alleviate gross poverty in this society. And if we don't make a move like that, in my opinion, we end up disintegrating and turning on each other and all sorts of terrible stuff happens. So I thought to myself, if I run for President, I estimate that I have a 15% chance of accelerating the addressing of poverty in this society. And that seemed like a fine way to spend three years of my life. It's like if I told you you had a 15% chance of speeding up the end of poverty and you. I might like to think more people would take that mission on. If I said that to each of you. I don't know if my estimation of my probability of, of accelerating was correct. Yeah, but that's what I thought.
- [67:23]
Graham Stephan
What was the most surprising thing about politics?
- [67:26]
Andrew Yang
No, I, I was surprised at how fake was, I suppose, you know, I'd say, like, if you wanna.
- [67:35]
Graham Stephan
In what way? Like what exactly? Because I hear all the time that politics, like, dirty, like they try to like, find some dirt on you or someone's like, hey, tell it us everything about like, your life in case something comes out, we know how to handle it. How true is that?
- [67:49]
Andrew Yang
There's some reality to all of that for sure. Now, I led a fairly boring civilian life prior to running for president, and I the closer you get to being a threat, the nastier it gets. And so I was the likable, upstart presidential candidate for most of the campaign. And the folks above me, you could tell, had very strict instructions. Do not waste any time tangling with Yang. Like, it's all downside, no upside. So what happens is every candidate in that environment has instructions from our teams, like who to try and attack. And nine times out of 10, that person's above you. And so if you remember the race, like, I, I, we joked, my team, that I was like the grim reaper of presidential candidates, where as soon as I passed you, you dropped out. It's like the joke was, it's all fun and games until Andrew Yang catches you in the polls and then like, you're out. And did I catch up to Kamala Harris and have her drop out? Yeah, like, I mean, yes, that did happen. If you rewind the tape for the presidential primary in 2020. But Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, like all those folks, like, anytime we had an interaction, they just like, cut it off immediately because they were like, I do not. Like, my team has told me, like, waste no time on Yang. And so because of that, I had in some ways a fairly benign experience because, you know, candidates didn't want to like and, like, engage. But the press was bizarre. Where one thing that came out as an example is an MSNBC producer named Arianna Picari. After she left, she said, I was given a list of candidates never to have on air. And Andrew Yang was one of those Candidates. So like there, there's stuff like that going around where the media. That was like something that I wouldn't have necessarily believed.
- [69:48]
Mikey Chen
How did you single handedly prevent Kamala Harris from winning the primaries in 2020?
- [69:53]
Andrew Yang
No, I, I did not. It was just that I did better than her. And then she dropped out. The two major arbiters of, of viability in that environment were donors and the press. And so if either or both of those groups turned on you, then you ended your campaign.
- [70:13]
Graham Stephan
Do you think though that maybe the press was a thing five, six years ago and now it's all social media and algorithms?
- [70:19]
Andrew Yang
Yeah, that's a big deal. You know, so by the way, it is asymmetrical where if you look at confidence in national media as an example, it's maybe twice as high among Democratic primary voters as it is among Republican primary voters. So there's the holy trinity of Democratic media institutions that let Democratic primary voters know who is good to vote for. And that trinity is the New York Times, MSNBC and cnn. So now the average person listening to this, maybe you don't care about what those media organizations are saying, but, you know, who cares are Democratic primary voters in New Hampshire, South Carolina, Michigan, Nevada. Then you have to look at four states.
- [71:04]
Graham Stephan
Who owns and controls those outlets? Like, who's at the top making the decision? How do you. Is it just like these people cozying up to those people?
- [71:13]
Andrew Yang
Yeah. So if you rewind the tape again, when Joe Biden launched his campaign, the people that had the, his first fundraiser event for him were the owners of Comcast, which also own MSNBC at the time. And so there was a fairly hostile coverage environment for Joe Biden's primary rivals out of msnbc. And is that stuff real? And again, as someone who coming in was like, yeah, professionals, they do their jobs. I experienced some things that, that made me understand why some people just think it's fake news. Like, think they're full of shit. I got it. I was like, oh my God, like, some of that stuff is definitely happening.
- [71:57]
Mikey Chen
What did you experience?
- [71:59]
Andrew Yang
Well, again, like some producers being like, hey, not allowed to have you on. Like, the, the biggest thing was MSNBC was actively hostile towards me at different times. And then at some point I was like, I'm boycotting MSNBC until they like acknowledge that they've covered me.
- [72:17]
Mikey Chen
What do you mean actively hostile? Like, what did that look like? What did they say about you?
- [72:20]
Andrew Yang
They like, there would be a fundraising graphic being like, hey, these are the candidates that raise the most. I would just be omitted from that graphic. Like, let's say I was supposed to be, like, fourth in that graphic. It would just skip me.
- [72:30]
Graham Stephan
So we go from, like, third and fifth.
- [72:33]
Mikey Chen
And would you tweet about them?
- [72:34]
Andrew Yang
Like, would you be like, hey, guys, like, FYI, like, I should have been fourth in that graph.
- [72:37]
Mikey Chen
And what would they. Would they respond to you?
- [72:39]
Andrew Yang
No.
- [72:40]
Mikey Chen
So they truly acted like you just did not exist.
- [72:43]
Andrew Yang
Yes. And so then I. I came out crazy. I came out and was like, hey, guys, like, what the hell? And then it got even worse. Instead of being like, oh, yeah, like, by the way, some of the. The things that. The New York Times actually shrunk me visually by several inches in a photo.
- [73:00]
Mikey Chen
How do you know they did that?
- [73:01]
Andrew Yang
Well, because I saw the photo, and it's like, I'm not the same height as Amy Klobuchar or whatever the hell. And then they actually had to print a retraction, being like, oh, yeah, sorry, we. We, like, shrank. Yeah. Editor.
- [73:13]
Mikey Chen
Was it just like a random person, by the way?
- [73:15]
Andrew Yang
So my team got livid about this stuff. I, like, I would just be like, I just blew off. Most of them is like, who knows? But, like, some of the things you were like. Well, there was one time CNBC actually put a different Asian guy that was not me. Like, for CNBC, it was. I'm 90 sure it was CNBC, like, had a picture of a guy named Jeff Yang and said, like, Andrew Yang, like, presidential candidates, you know. And so by the way, the subtitle of my book that you have up there, hey, Yang, where's my thousand bucks? The alternate title was, hey, am I racist, or are you Andrew Yang? Which I. Which I have been asked. That's great. So msnbc. Eventually I was like, look, guys, I don't know why you guys are being such jackasses, but if you just acknowledge that you've covered us, like, in a way that, you know, is not great. By the way, they'd already apologized for a couple things, so I was like, just acknowledge that you. You've covered us unfairly, and then we can move on. And their response to that was instead just to completely black me out for the entirety of the rest of the campaign. Even when I made the seventh presidential debate, as in the primary, and people making the debate stage was like, you know, a news item where everybody. Press outlet would be like, hey, like, you know, Yang just made the debate. MSNBC wouldn't even cover that. Wouldn't even cover the fact that I made.
- [74:35]
Mikey Chen
Why wouldn't you just sue them? I feel like that's the, like the fact that they intentionally went in and shortened you. That sounds like you could easily sue them.
- [74:44]
Andrew Yang
Oh, you know, I mean, that was the times. Like there was, there was no upside, by the way, for a Democratic candidate, which I was at that time. I'm now an independent. I co founded a new political party, the Forward Party Party. We're the third biggest party in the country by resources. Congratulations to us. By the time I was a Democratic primary candidate and there was tons of downside and no upside to getting into a food fight with the holy trinity of Democratic voting opinion makers. And if you Fast forward to 2028, this upcoming primary, these three opinion makers are diminished from where they were, but they're still powerful, particularly the New York Times and MSNBC among this Democratic primary electorate that I'm going to suggest to you all. By the way, the average age of a Democratic primary voter might be something like 55 and the average age of an MSNBC viewer 57. Something along those lines. So you might think, who the hell's watching these things? Why does anyone care? And people care less than they did, but they still can put their finger on it. For a Democratic primary, did anyone go
- [75:53]
Graham Stephan
and try to like ruin your reputation or anything else beyond just getting excluded from media?
- [76:00]
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Andrew Yang
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Graham Stephan
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- [76:58]
Andrew Yang
You know, there was some very, very negative stuff that. But it was, you know, I mean anyone looking at it was like what? Like Yang made his employees sing karaoke at like a company event. I mean there was just some stuff for it. Like it, it like Yeah, I mean, because. Because karaoke is fun and awesome, but.
- [77:15]
Mikey Chen
So that was actually something they said you did?
- [77:17]
Andrew Yang
Yes. Yeah.
- [77:18]
Mikey Chen
And what was the bad part about that?
- [77:19]
Andrew Yang
Oh, I mean, that's what I said, but it.
- [77:21]
Graham Stephan
It was that they had to listen to his singing.
- [77:26]
Andrew Yang
Ears were bleeding, and that's really what they should have called out. I will say that wasn't for lack of trying, in that I had family members, friends, neighbors, who all received this sort of interrogation if they would sit for it. Oh, yeah, like that. There. There was all sorts of effort to try to unearth skeletons.
- [77:55]
Graham Stephan
And what do they do? Do they offer money? Do they say, like, hey, here's a $50,000 reward if you give us some. Some dirt?
- [78:01]
Andrew Yang
That there was. You know, there was a lot of cajoling or there were a lot of efforts and elbow grease put in. And one thing I will say to you guys is that. That some people just find talking to the press really appealing because you end up maybe quoted in the New York Times, whatever, but you also end up with a relationship with a reporter, which is currency in certain circles, certainly in political circles. I mean, there's a layer of professionals who actually interface with these porters and, like, feed them stuff. And then they. They get that you can hire them for access. So. So what were they at?
- [78:38]
Mikey Chen
So explain to me, like, boots on the ground, what was happening? They were showing up, and they were, like, knocking on doors, like, hey, you know, Andrew Yang, just.
- [78:45]
Andrew Yang
Yes.
- [78:45]
Mikey Chen
Acting as what? What were they acting as? A journalist.
- [78:48]
Andrew Yang
Be like, hey, yeah, this is, you know, journalist X from. From the New York Times. Let's use them as an example. Be like, you know, have you had any contact with Andrea? You worked with him X years ago. You are his neighbor. You, you know, are like, this stuff would happen dozens and dozens of times. And then if someone were to say to them, it's like, yeah, yeah, you know, been his neighbor, like, nice guy, like, fine, whatever. And then they would, like, ask him, like, five negative questions and being like, has he ever stirred? Has there been arguments from it? Like, and after the person was like, no, none of the above. Then they were just like, okay, nothing. Click.
- [79:25]
Mikey Chen
But then if the person was like, well, there was this one time, but I don't even know if it was, you know, and then they're like, might have been. You know what I mean?
- [79:32]
Andrew Yang
Mean, yes. And. And so they would call all of the people that I'd worked with over the last 20 years of my life to try and find that's where they got the Karaoke story. But like, they, they would call. I mean, did we have a karaoke event at my old company? Yes, we did. Like, you know, did I give someone a microphone that maybe it was like,
- [79:52]
Graham Stephan
so they felt pressured to do karaoke and perform.
- [79:54]
Mikey Chen
I don't even know if we could post this anymore. You know, we might get too much hate.
- [79:57]
Graham Stephan
Well, I'm just trying to think if you, if you handed an employee a microphone and they felt pressured that they couldn't hand it back because their job was on the line and they're like, oh, I have to sing and I don't sing and I feel self conscious. And so.
- [80:08]
Mikey Chen
So that means that you should not be able to run for president, correct?
- [80:11]
Andrew Yang
Okay, well, no. So, but that is the level of detail. You know, you imagine what it would take to get that particular anecdote. It's like, call everyone that has worked and there are, you know, I've worked with a lot of people over my career. So you like call hundreds of people and then if 80 of them are like, Yang's. Yang is good. Yang's fine. Enjoyed working with him. They're like nothing here. But then you find like a few people who might have like some Axigrain or ambiguous or like blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, then they'll be like, ooh. And then there was one disgruntled person that I like go or whatever that they had like stories for days out of, you know, and, and so that. That stuff is like infuriating.
- [80:48]
Mikey Chen
That was like everything. But yeah, yeah, here's what I feel.
- [80:52]
Graham Stephan
You have it easy in the sense that you growing up didn't have social media and things that you posted to, you know, MySpace back in like 2006 that people I'm sure could unearth and people who are our age who posted everything to Facebook when they're like 13 to 16 years old. I'm sure there is stuff out there that you just would look back and cringe at. That a president, 40 years from now, they're going to have their entire life.
- [81:22]
Mikey Chen
I think every, every single buddy is going to have that though. That's the thing.
- [81:25]
Andrew Yang
But you're right, because I'm a Gen Xer. Yeah. And so social media did not exist when I was a teenager. And so my record is barely clean, you know, like social media or otherwise. Because again, I'm a pretty boring individual. And it's going to be very, very hard for lots of people of a certain generation to take on any public facing role because I can find some really rancid Things you said when you were 14 years old. And by the way, I don't think you should be judged for that because, you know, our brains aren't even complete at 14. And if I trash talk, you know, I mean, one thing that really distresses me is when people unearth various texts. I mean, who hasn't texted? Like, frankly, you know, like off color stuff to your. And so, yeah, so social media post, I don't even think most of that should be held against you until you're a fully fledged adult, your brain is complete the age of 25 and you have a position of authority. Because if, even if you're like a civilian spouting off, it's like, I don't freaking care.
- [82:26]
Graham Stephan
That's Uncle Joe. He's drunk again.
- [82:28]
Mikey Chen
Everybody said something 100. And that's another thing. It's like, obviously, you know, not to harp on it, but like the, the locker room talk that everyone was freaking out of. Obviously what he said was not acceptable. But also every guy. Sorry. And most girls, I know, most girls say stuff, stuff that's just crazy for
- [82:48]
Graham Stephan
the sake of saying something that's probably just as rant as probably worse. Yeah, 100%.
- [82:55]
Mikey Chen
I've never said anything.
- [82:57]
Andrew Yang
The, the take I want to share. And one reason why I think you guys are very, very important is that you guys have created your own audience and institution and you try to help people. It's positive. Like, I find you to be very balanced. The, the way that, that our politics have gotten divvied up is that you essentially have the folks who believe in institutions like some of these press organizations are talking about. And then you have the folks who don't, many of whom have built up their own independent followings and voices. And these two worlds have been sort of naturally oppositional because if, for example, you're independent media, one of your natural things is like, oh, like legacy media. Dumb, slow, like, you know, kind of full of it. Maybe be politically compromised. All of the above. Now, you look at this independent universe, and I think that there are good actors and not so good actors. And then if you're a good actor within this universe, fantastic. You know, you're like doing people a lot of good. And young people are going to actually be seeing your stuff more, much more than they're going to see some clip on cable TV or whatnot. So I think I'm probably like someone jokingly called me. You know, it's like I'm somewhere in this zone and I'm someone who understands, look, these institutions are Disintegrating and faltering and somewhat compromised and corrupt. And my goal is to try and get them to modernize and be better and do better and help solve some of the problems that are on the ground which I, I do think you're going to need government to do at scale.
- [84:35]
Mikey Chen
What's been your experience with lobbying? So like on the receiving end, have people came to you with a bunch of money saying hey, if you could pass this one bill that makes it so gambling is one, you know, gambling loss is 100% write off that bring
- [84:48]
Graham Stephan
the gambling age down to 50 gambling age.
- [84:52]
Andrew Yang
So first, you know, I'm not presently in control of government so if anyone wants to send me money to lobby, do you want to let your address set up on over. That said, I've actually had breakfast with it with like, you know, for as an example a US Senator who was there to get lobbied. And so each person at the breakfast myself excepted had donated between 5 and $10,000 to have breakfast with the senator. And each person went around the table is like hey, you know like we're trying to get like what the, the export tax lower. It's like hey, we're trying to get a subsidy for this. And the senator was bored out of his mind. He was like oh my God, this breakfast sucks. And then I, and then I was there lo for you know like anti poverty measures and he perked up. He was like oh, I actually don't mind talking about this but there, there's this lobbying industrial complex in D.C. and lobbying pays off huge. I think someone did a study and found that the return on lobbying investment is something like 1,700%. In other words, if I put you know, 20 million into lobbying, I'm going to get 17x. I'm going to suggest that everyone here would make that investment in five ways from Sunday. Wow, that's crazy. So, so smart companies are lobbying and our political system right now is highly subject to it. Highly subject to it.
- [86:14]
Mikey Chen
Any other experience though? Because like this is the type of stuff that everyone, you know, if they think about the conspiracy theories and how there's some rooms that they don't have access to and it's what all the powerful people are doing and there's massive, you know, seven digigit numbers being wired from one person to another or you just see people in where they just
- [86:32]
Graham Stephan
say hey this was their salary. And then all of a sudden they buy like a nine million dollar house and like how did this person go from zero to like nine million dollar House and these bills passed.
- [86:42]
Andrew Yang
Yeah, I mean there's, there's a lot of stuff going on. And am I, you know, like have I been in rooms where I'm like, you know, like I have a feeling. And I, I, I also will say too, you have these members of Congress and senators who everyone they hang out with is loaded. That's one of the things I will say too. And then they're the center of attention and so then the people that are around them that are loaded, it's like, hey, but get you in on this deal. Hey, like I've got this tip for you. And then the members like ooh, like, you know, like I have all these fancy friends who want to help elevate my way of life. Some of them have private planes, be like, hey, you want to take this trip to like blah, blah, blah. And so that is pervasive. It's all the time. And the American people have picked up on that.
- [87:34]
Mikey Chen
But then how does the money end up in the government officials pocket? Because there's a difference. Donating to a campaign where the money has to be spent on campaigning.
- [87:43]
Andrew Yang
Yep.
- [87:43]
Mikey Chen
But then how come everyone goes into office, they come out a few years later and they're worth $50 million.
- [87:49]
Andrew Yang
So the member all the time is getting pitched various deals and it's like, look, this is like a special insider deal and I just want you to reverse position. Let's say I was like a big shot shot real estate investor. I had some sweet, sweet real estate investment where I'm like, ooh, this thing's going to yield 500, 1000%. I'm pretty confident in it. And you knew a member of Congress, would you be like look, just put a bit of money into this deal and you're going to get 5 to 10x. You probably would because you know that member of Congress is going to love you and take your calls forever and thank you. And so that's what's happening is that the member is getting access to all sorts of sweethearts part deals because on the other end someone wants access and influence.
- [88:29]
Mikey Chen
But then why is that not made public? Like that seems like if, if you pulled all Americans, let's say we have 400 million Americans, I would say maybe less than 10% would disagree with making all that information public.
- [88:43]
Andrew Yang
Yeah, totally. I mean so 80, you know, 75 of Americans are for something called term limits as an example, you know, because we think people should maybe do their job and come home and not just make a, you know, perma career out of it. 83% of Americans are for trying to get some money out of politics because we can sense that everyone's getting bought and sold the problem. And I've actually given a TED talk on this topic. I don't know if it was part of your research that popular will is now getting refracted in a way that we're not actually getting any of those things. I can give you a bunch of things that 75 to 85% of Americans are foreign and we're not getting them. But what you're saying is totally correct. I mean everyone would love transparency and everyone would love to go through both members investment deals and government expenditures with a fine tooth comb. We'd find all sorts of crazy stuff.
- [89:39]
Graham Stephan
How common is insider trading? I love these accounts that break down like Polymarket and call she and they say like hey, this trader has 100% success rate. Just put like $50,000 on this obscure thing to happen.
- [89:54]
Andrew Yang
Yeah, again, they're, they're getting. So I'm, you know, I'm not going to pretend I have all the access that, you know, a senator has or whatnot, but even I sometimes catch wind of various things that are going to happen before they happen. Like my joke is I don't know if you guys play basketball but like one of the things people say is like just be around the hoop. You know, the hoop that sometimes the ball comes to you. Yeah. Like, you know, get, get a cheap two. So I would describe myself as being sort of hoop adjacent, but there are various officials who are just like standing underneath the hoop and they catch wind of everything. I mean if you're on certain committees, you see all these deals that are happening before they happen, before they get announced all the time. And then the very natural thing is to be like, hey, I hear this deal's happening. And then it could be your wife, it could be, you know, a family member. Just the elbow. I mean that stuff.
- [90:49]
Mikey Chen
I'm sure you could just let us know, you know, we will not take advantage of it. If you tell us, you know, you got information about something's going to happen, we're not, we're not going to take advantage of it. You know, I'm sure you would never
- [91:00]
Andrew Yang
do such a thing and you would never then share it with your listeners
- [91:04]
Mikey Chen
behind the pay wall, of course. So you got to pay.
- [91:07]
Andrew Yang
That's the definition of premium content.
- [91:09]
Graham Stephan
We do have a membership.
- [91:10]
Andrew Yang
Membership.
- [91:11]
Graham Stephan
Membership. Which is great. It really helps us out a.
- [91:13]
Andrew Yang
And supports her editor.
- [91:14]
Graham Stephan
Mikey.
- [91:15]
Mikey Chen
So did you ever get one crazy lobbying offer where they were like hey, we'll take you on a private jet, you know, first class vacation, I guess that's Hawaii. We're going to take you over here. Private jet, first class. They wanted to offer you a bunch of money in order to slip something through the bill.
- [91:32]
Andrew Yang
I have been asked, I've been offered like all expense paid luxury trips and things of that nature for people that wanted to get me on board with, you know, their interests or cause like that sort of thing has happened but no one's ever gone so blatant and just been like here's a check for like X size for, for you to do our bidding. It hasn't gotten to that point. It's possible if I'd said yes to the luxury trip, that check would have been waiting for me. You know on the flip side too, it's like I am married, I have two kids. Like I, I say no to a lot of things, particularly international travel because you know, it's like it needs to drive one of my goals. And I, since I ran for president, thank you to everyone who supported me. If you didn't miss your chance, maybe, you know, maybe we'll get another one. I've been trying to alleviate poverty which I see as the most addressable major problem that we have because again 83,000 per capita GDP and a big up arrow attached to it. AI's separating now the fiction between like hey, if you're a good person you're on the good side of the curve and if you're like a lazy dumb person you're on the bad side of the curve. It's like yeah, the curve doesn't matter, it doesn't care. It doesn't care how moral you are. So my efforts in that direction have been political through humanity Forward which super proud that we increased the child tax credit by 80 billion per year and that's going to go to poor American families with kids. So to the extent I have one crowning achievement, 80 billion a year, I mean that's like, you know, it's a pretty good career accomplishment, you know say and you like if you want, you can dig into. I wrote something about it called fewer poor kids on my blog a number of months ago. And then I co founded this political party, the Forward Party which now has 79 elected officials. And I'm convinced that the two party system is not going to address any of the things that we talked about because both of them are, I don't know, I mean they're doing their thing and one of the things I, they point Out. What do you guys think the approval rating for U.S. congress is as we're having this conversation?
- [94:00]
Mikey Chen
45%.
- [94:02]
Andrew Yang
I'm gonna say 50, 15, 17%. Like if you look at Gallup, historic low. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it might have been that high, like, you know, X years ago when you were in high school or whatever, but now it's 30 years ago. Now let's call it 15%. What is the re election rate for incumbent members of Congress?
- [94:25]
Mikey Chen
It's like probably like 80%.
- [94:27]
Andrew Yang
No.
- [94:27]
Graham Stephan
Yeah, I'm gonna say 90.
- [94:29]
Andrew Yang
94%.
- [94:30]
Graham Stephan
Wow.
- [94:31]
Andrew Yang
So you have the biggest gulf any of us can imagine. And one of my jokes is like, hey, what if 85% of your customers were unhappy, but you changed absolutely nothing year after year? I mean, that's how American politics feels to. To the vast majority of Americans. That's one reason why most of the people who are watching this try to avoid politics, which I get. And so I've been trying to cure the political system through the forward party. And then the third thing I'm doing because I'm a cool entrepreneur like you guys, maybe not as cool, whatever, is I looked at the average American's cost structure and said, how can I get more money money into your hands without waiting for D.C. to do it? So do you guys know Mark Cuban?
- [95:18]
Mikey Chen
Oh, no, not personally.
- [95:19]
Graham Stephan
I've talked to him on Instagram.
- [95:21]
Andrew Yang
See, there you go. So Mark and I are friends and he started a company called Cost Plus Drugs I know, a few years ago, which I think is awesome. And so we've been talking about a lot of broken marketplaces and public policy problems. So Mark, being a baller, was like, hey, what if I just buy. Buy generic drugs in bulk and then make them available to the American consumer at a 15% markup, which is enough for me to like build a business, but not like gouge everyone. And so I saw that and was like, oh, my God, Mark Cuban is saving hundreds, maybe thousands of lives every quarter because some people are able to get drugs that they wouldn't have gotten otherwise. So I looked at Mark and then I said, is there anything else we can Cost plus in American life. So the average American household's cost structure goes. Housing, healthcare, education, food, fuel, transportation. Fuels. Heating too. Transportation, media. It's where you guys come in.
- [96:22]
Mikey Chen
Yeah.
- [96:22]
Andrew Yang
And then wireless data and connectivity. So I'm now going to ask you a question that I'm deeply interested in. But, you know, maybe no one cares. Who is your wireless carrier? AT&T Boost, the average American is spending $83 a month on their wireless connection. So everyone listening to this can like, you know, calibrate against that. Guess how much the average European is spending?
- [96:45]
Mikey Chen
25 bucks?
- [96:46]
Graham Stephan
Yeah, I'm gonna guess 20 something.
- [96:47]
Andrew Yang
It's 35. So it's a little bit higher. But that $48 a month difference times 12 months is like, let's call it. Yeah, it's closer to 600 times. The. The hundreds of millions of Americans with a wireless plan comes to $100 billion a year that Americans are spending on their wireless in excess of what Europeans are spending. And if you look at where the money is going. So you have this extra 100 billion in wireless spend. Verizon is paying its shareholders 11 billion a year in dividends. It has a 6. I think it's like a 6.4% dividend, which if you give people investment advice, you're like 6.4% dividend is freaking dope.
- [97:30]
Graham Stephan
You know, stock price just keeps going down, though.
- [97:33]
Andrew Yang
Yes. But at and t 4.7% dividend, both of these companies, the primary appeal to shareholders now is the cash. These two businesses are now taking money from consumers who are spending on average, let's say, like it's probably higher than 83. It's actually more like 90. And then giving it to their shareholders the tune of 18 billion a year that you can identify just in dividends. Then you have marketing, spending, a bunch of other stuff. So I looked at this and said, wait a minute. If I can get you to 35amonth or close to it, I could save the average American 600 bucks a month directly times all the years you're going to be a wireless subscriber, which is like, let's say 40 years. The minimum 40 times 600 is 24,000. And then you put any interest rate on it and compound it, like, what is that?
- [98:17]
Mikey Chen
It'll make you a millionaire, probably, or something.
- [98:19]
Andrew Yang
Maybe make a lot of money.
- [98:20]
Mikey Chen
A few hundred grand.
- [98:21]
Andrew Yang
With Noble Mobile, we, the average Noble Mobile user is paying 42amonth. Month. When you go abroad, we charge you $5 a day and then cap it at 10 days. So the most you could pay is 50 plus we'll discount you on domestic data where we'll rebate you up to $20 a month based on data you don't use. So when I went to Europe, like, I didn't get charged for domestic data because I didn't use any. So what we've done is we've cost plussed the data that Americans are using in order to try and get More money back into your hands and then reward you if you use less data. The point though is that we're going to cut the average American's wireless bill in half and then any money that you save on this data rebate, which we call the data dividend, we pay a five and a half percent interest rate. So it becomes a set it and forget it savings plan. That's cool. That also has the upside of getting you to doom scroll a little bit less. The average Noble mobile user spends 17% less screen time in subsequent months because the less screen time you use, the more money we give you at the end of the month. So our hook is like get paid to use your phone less. Now that only applies to data you use when you're outside of like WI fi in the house and office. So this is like when you're out to dinner with your friends. But it's, you know, so that's my, my big commercial effort to try and get billions of dollars back into American consumers hands.
- [99:42]
Graham Stephan
Why can't you just offer free phones, free service, but just sporadically you have to watch an ad to like open your phone or like you're in the middle of texting and just a 5 second ad comes up and you say hey, in the day you're gonna get X number of ads but everything is free.
- [100:01]
Andrew Yang
There are ad supported models out there. We looked at it. I didn't hate it like I was trying to get things as value priced as possible. Where we landed was that most people wanted enough data where it would have been tough to do with just pure ad support. Just by the math like we probably could have gotten your bill down somewhat but we don't think we could have zeroed it out if it was purely ad supported.
- [100:30]
Graham Stephan
I bet you could do crazy ads if you allow them to share their data and what they're browsing online and let's say they're looking for a mortgage that is worth so much money.
- [100:40]
Andrew Yang
Yeah. So there's probably a business to be built around what you're describing. We actually went the other direction where we pledged never to share your data. Like we're. So when I ran for president I was like look, your data should be yours and like, you know, we should pay you for it and stuff like that. So with Noble we said look, we don't even have data of yours that we can share. And so that would diminish the upside for an ad supported model because you'd need to know a lot about a consumer in order to, to monetize effectively but there's probably a business there in
- [101:12]
Graham Stephan
terms of running for president. I'm curious, does it matter and to what degree if you run as a Democrat or a Republican, like, how much strategy goes into choosing a side?
- [101:21]
Andrew Yang
It'd be a lot, depending upon what's going on in a particular cycle. So I'm just going to call out, RFK ran for president as a Democrat in 24, and then the Democrats said, we're not going to have a primary. And then he switched independent and he wound up endorsing Trump down the stretch. So I ran in the democratic primary in 2020, and the party with an incumbent for the last couple cycles has essentially shut down their primary entirely. You guys might not remember this, just no one does, but in 2020, Donald Trump was the incumbent, and there were a couple of Republicans who tried to run against him in the Republican primary. And the Republican Party was like, yeah, we're not going to have a primary. And then the Democrats did the same thing in 24. So the first thing you have to make a determination of is, like, which party actually have a contest if you were to decide to run for president as a Republican. And let's say, I mean, Trump theoretically will not be back on the ballot. 28. But, but, you know, like, they, they wouldn't actually count votes and, like, hold debates and any of that stuff, whereas the Democrats 100 will in 27. 28. Like, I think on the 28 side, Republicans, it's going to be J.D. vance. And I do not think there's going to be, like, a robust, genuine primary.
- [102:44]
Graham Stephan
Who do you think is going to run against J.D. vance?
- [102:46]
Andrew Yang
Well, this is, this is the point, is that the parties have become less and less interested in having a genuine contest. And so if J.D. vance becomes, let's say even he becomes act like, you know, as president before 2028, he would truly be running as the incumbent. And so I'm not sure the Republican Party will have a genuine primary against him. I think it might be.
- [103:11]
Graham Stephan
What about the other side?
- [103:12]
Andrew Yang
On the other side, it's going to be everybody. It's going to be dozens of candidates, and I know a bunch of those folks. But every.
- [103:19]
Graham Stephan
If you were to make a prediction, though, and say, hey, I think it's going to be this, who would you say?
- [103:24]
Andrew Yang
You mean, like, you want me to list dozens of names, or do you want me to list the front runners?
- [103:28]
Graham Stephan
I want you to list the front runner who you think has a good chance to go up against JD Then?
- [103:32]
Andrew Yang
Well, right now, if you were to look at Polymarket or Kalsh, any of those things. I think that they'd have Gavin Newsom as the front runner.
- [103:37]
Graham Stephan
That's what I think.
- [103:38]
Andrew Yang
And he is taking advantage of the current media environment to. To stake a claim. I will say I've met the vast majority of these human beings and Gavin commands a room and then is a better political athlete than the vast majority of other Democrats that are going to be running. He's just really, really good in a room. He's tall, he's good looking, he's got good hair. Like, you know, I mean, the dude. I. It's been a fascinating experience because I've been in these rooms now. The guy does have like that kind of TV president, it factor almost. Yeah, no, I mean, you tell him when he's in the room there are various candidates that don't have that.
- [104:20]
Graham Stephan
Is that important to have? Do you think you need to have that it factor?
- [104:25]
Andrew Yang
And that presence, that it factor makes a big difference, particularly now in this media environment. It helps on the ground in these states, it helps with social media. It helps with all that stuff.
- [104:38]
Mikey Chen
What do you think about Zoran Mamdani? Because he clearly had the it factor. He got so many people just completely obsessed with the idea of him winning the mayoral election of New York.
- [104:49]
Graham Stephan
I haven't seen someone capture a mayor election like Mondana.
- [104:52]
Mikey Chen
His engagement just alone on Instagram is insane. It's millions of likes.
- [104:55]
Graham Stephan
Even. Even people in LA like, I wish mom Donnie would come here. I've never seen someone captivate a young audience like him.
- [105:04]
Mikey Chen
What do you think of his rent control policy? Slash, fiscally, very liberal policy or fiscally progressive policy, I should say so.
- [105:13]
Andrew Yang
Zar Zoron and I are friendly. We've known each other for a while and he's young himself. It's one reason why his stuff clicks online, because he's actually native to it. So Andrew Cuomo might have been 60 years old and Zoron might have been 35. So when you talk about who's going to be using Instagram and TikTok, and right now that stuff is a huge advantage in terms of your ability to movement build with these tools. Now, Zoron's policies, some of them I don't like at all. Some of them I, you know, like, am very, very amenable to. Like, do I like the idea of subsidizing childcare for. For working families in New York? Yeah, I do. It's like childcare is really expensive and if you can, like make it, you know, less of A burden. Great. You know, that probably means like, the parents will be able to get to work more and like, you don't have someone who has to stay at home. Like, that's a win. I thought the government grocery stores was a terrible idea. And so, like, you know, like, I, I think he's backed away from that one because enough people have gone to him been like, yo, man, like, like, that's dumb. And I think I wrote something up to this effect trying to differentiate between some of these policies. I think free buses is a really bad idea because there are folks who are going to be really poor or homeless adjacent who are just going to use them as moving shelters. And then the working class New Yorkers trying to get to work will be like, yo, this bus is much worse than it was when I was paying a couple bucks for it. So some of these things, things, you know, we're gonna, we're gonna see. Like, I, I will say, as someone who spent time with Zuron, he's a smart dude, he's adaptable. And so if something isn't working, like, he'll be like, hey, this is, this. Turns out it's not working the way
- [106:59]
Graham Stephan
sometimes what I feel is that you get a person who has that it factor, who is just charismatic, good with people, understands how to read, someone knows kind of what to say and has just, I think, complete confidence. You take that person and then you apply certain policies to a voting base that let's just say is like 52%. And let's just say in New York City it's renters. As long as you could just appeal to that 52%, you're going to get voted in not because the ideas are better, but just because you, you have appeased the 52%.
- [107:34]
Mikey Chen
Graham is a very strong proponent of having some sort of like IQ test for people to vote. Like, Graham says we should disqualify some of like the uneducated because sometimes you
- [107:44]
Graham Stephan
just throw out ideas. And I'm not saying, but I'm just saying, like, it's fine. People throw out ideas that just sound great on paper but would never work, that don't actually apply, but they sound good. And people who don't know the difference just say, yeah, I want that, like rent control. Yeah, get upset, freeze the rent, make grocery stores free. You may as well just say, hey, everyone gets a Lamborghini. A Lamborghini should never cost more than $15,000. Everyone should have a Lambo. Everyone should have a parking spot. And then people say, wow, that sounds aw, awesome. But they don't think, okay, well who's going to pay for that? How's that actually going to work? But then they get elected because they have every other characteristic.
- [108:26]
Andrew Yang
More of what you're describing is definitely going to happen now because we're in an age of social media fueled charismatic leaders and candidates and hundreds, maybe thousands of people saw what Zoran did and were like, oh my gosh, I have to try and do that. And now most people are not as talented as him. And there's not going to be as much oxygen in a lot of other races that are not the New York City mayoral, which is sort of a sexy high visibility race. But there are going to be a lot of people cripping from this playbook that are going to try and make similar appeals. Yeah.
- [108:58]
Graham Stephan
So I'm going to make a prediction. Here's what I think is going to happen. I think we've swung so far into the realm of capitalism that it's alienated 90% of people that weren't able to get on that roller coaster ride and participate. And because of that, we're going to swing so far to the other side that I think we're going to stay see similar person, if not mom, Donnie, running for president who is going to significantly raise taxes, stifle innovation, limit business, implement wealth taxes. I think it's going so far in the opposite direction because again, the 90% of people that weren't able to participate in capitalism are now left behind and the only thing they could do is let's go for these 10% that have gotten ahead and we deserve some of them that and let's, let's tax out the wazoo. And since we're not going to cut Social Security, we're not going to cut government spending, we're not going to cut the national debt, the only way out of it is to either print more which impacts the 90% or it's to tax the people at the top. That's what I think.
- [109:59]
Andrew Yang
That is what I was trying to avoid when I ran for president in 2020. And I would say to very wealthy friends of mine in Silicon Valley, guys, this is enlightened self interest because if you don't make the system work for the bottom 80% or whatever the number is, the pendulum is going to swing in a way that is really, really bad for innovation. And so a number of years ago, around that timeframe actually I was approached about doing a TV show called the Future of with Andrew Yang. Future of transportation, future of healthcare. And they market tested and said, hey, Andrew, bad news. Americans don't like the future. And so I was like. They were like, hey, you tested well. But, like, future people are scared of it. And so my argument to my friends who are entrepreneurs and whatnot is like, guys, we have to make America as optimistic about the future. And I feel like they're included in it or they're going to turn on the system and all the people that have been successful within it and castigate everyone. And, like, that's what you have to avoid. So I'm not disagreeing with your characterization of where the. The winds are going to blow and why the pendulum is going to swing because there's a lot of frustration. Yeah.
- [111:08]
Graham Stephan
I've spoken with a few really wealthy people, too, who have said that they want to start taking their money out of the United States and setting up accounts elsewhere or putting it in gold, silver, certain other assets that could easily be moved. Bitcoin, because they feel like at some point there is going to be a substantial wealth tax or a penalty for being successful saving money.
- [111:30]
Andrew Yang
By the way, when I ran and even I think like last month or whatever, I think wealth taxes are a disaster because wealth is portable. Yeah.
- [111:39]
Graham Stephan
You saw what happened in California is wild. All the people that left.
- [111:42]
Andrew Yang
And so I joke with people. It's like, guys, you cannot think that rich people are rancid assholes but that they'll stick around if you decide to, like, tax. It's like those two things don't exist in conjunction. But it's.
- [111:56]
Graham Stephan
But again, but that goes back to my point that it's popular that people, the 90% that didn't participate. It's easy to have a scapegoat of like, this is the problem and it's a person or it's this entity, it's this corporation. They're the reason. And it's so easy to explain people GRA gra. Their mind around, like, oh, it's. Oh, it's that. It's that person. It's Jack.
- [112:17]
Andrew Yang
You know, it. It's one reason why I loved what Michael Dell and Ray Dalio and his wife did with like, the Trump accounts where it's like, super wealthy people, if you take the government out as a middleman, will they give billions of dollars to poor kids? Apparently, yeah. They're more interested in that than giving it to the government who they think is going to end up wasting a certain percent of it. Exactly. It's like, if I can just give it straight to the kids and I know it's getting to the Kids, I am down. And that should be the vision is you go around to people and be like, look, I get it. You don't trust the government to do it right? To administer it. They're going to hire a bunch of people, bloat, all sorts of weirdness. Let's just get it straight to the poor kids, you know, like then, then, and then you could go to Americans and be like, see, like, look, like there's like a real effort.
- [113:07]
Mikey Chen
This is kind of a broad question, but on the topic of progressive tax policy, how much tax is too much?
- [113:15]
Andrew Yang
I mean, I'm, I'm a numbers guy where it's like, you want to,
- [113:21]
Mikey Chen
you
- [113:21]
Andrew Yang
don't want to discourage things that you want more of. So one of the things, by the way, I, I'm actually pro people working. And so having income taxes on people's jobs is like, in some ways, like, not very smart. Like if you can find other ways to get the money you need. When people ask me, it's like, hey, Yang, how do you want to fund a lot of things you want to fund? It's like, look, do I think there should be like an AI Robots Compute tax? Like I do. And some people will be like, oh, you can't do that because then we're going to lose to China. It's like, I do not. The CEO of Anthropic Dario Amadei said, look, we're going to gut the entry level white collar workforce. And when asked what he should do, he said, you should tax us. And I agree with him. It's like, like the, the AI competition with China, in my mind, is going to be determined by a number of things, but it's not going to be determined by like the last 10 cents on the dollar. You know what I mean? Like, if, and, and again, you want to avoid an environment where everyone's turning on each other. And, and so I, I think, Dario, making the right case, like, I'm more interested in taxing that than I am taxing labor, because I like labor. Like, I like people going to work. I like all that stuff, you know, like my joke was, you know, when I was running for president, it's like, I don't care what the town dentist is paying. Like, I care what, you know, what AI is paying.
- [114:46]
Graham Stephan
Are you going to run again for president?
- [114:48]
Andrew Yang
I know I say to folks like, I'm almost too young not to where, you know, like, love this country dearly. Like, we'll probably run again. Sure. I mean it.
- [115:00]
Mikey Chen
I think you're too young to do It. I think you need to get like 40 more years on YouTube. Years of experience.
- [115:06]
Graham Stephan
Yeah, when you're 80.
- [115:09]
Andrew Yang
I'll be right there. You know, I will say I get asked all the time, and it's very encouraging, you know, so thank you to those of you who supported me. If you didn't support me, you know, again, you'll probably have another channel chance at it.
- [115:20]
Mikey Chen
And if you do run for president, it would be amazing if then we could have you back on the show.
- [115:25]
Andrew Yang
But also, also, I'll come on the story before and after, I truly believe.
- [115:30]
Mikey Chen
Because we just had Rick Caruso on the podcast and he's really like, Rick.
- [115:33]
Graham Stephan
Yeah, same.
- [115:35]
Mikey Chen
And we were telling him that everyone runs their campaigns so poorly. And obviously during this last election, getting on podcasts and utilizing social media in an effective way way kind of determined the election in a lot of people's eyes. So we're happy if you do run for president, reach out to us and we will 100% bounce any ideas back and forth with you because we know, like, the social media landscape very well.
- [115:59]
Andrew Yang
Well, guys, I would love that you will be among the first people I call. Thank you for that. That means a lot.
- [116:04]
Graham Stephan
I would be so into this. We were talking too, before we even did a podcast with Rick. And I'm like, oh, my gosh. If Rick just does, like XYZ and goes on this podcast and does this thing and makes these tik tok post this, like, I'm like, it's so easy.
- [116:21]
Andrew Yang
Yeah. I am sorely disappointed that he did not decide to run for, I thought governor, mayor.
- [116:26]
Mikey Chen
I thought for sure.
- [116:27]
Graham Stephan
I was. I was thinking he would make a bid for governor. I was so hoping that. I don't know if I saw that post. It was disappointing. I mean, I would love for him to run because it's just like, if he could run California like he does the Grove and his malls, he would be running the whole city state like Disneyland. You would show up in California and it would be like you thought it was in the movies in the 90s with palm trees everywhere and girls in bikinis running around and everyone is a tan.
- [116:56]
Andrew Yang
When I sat with him, it really seemed like he was going to run. So I'm genuinely wondering what changed. I mean, you guys probably got the same vibe when you sat with us.
- [117:03]
Graham Stephan
100%. Yeah. That message came out of the blue.
- [117:05]
Andrew Yang
Yeah. Well, Rick, not too late. You could always change your mind on my side. For your listeners, we're offering three free months, our best offer for frankly, people who follow me, but it's noblemobile.com Yang, for three months off your wireless bill, which would save the average American household 250 bucks or so. You guys do awesome work trying to educate people as to how they can, you know, strengthen their own futures. And I'm thrilled that we've had this long overdue conversation. I feel like we should have done this a long time ago.
- [117:39]
Graham Stephan
I would have loved to. Last question I have for you. You in 2019, you made a series of predictions. I want to say pretty much all of those came true. What is your prediction for 2026 and beyond? Wow.
- [117:53]
Andrew Yang
So I, I did write a column, 10 predictions for 2026. And so I'm like thinking which one your people want to hear about most.
- [118:00]
Graham Stephan
It's probably stocks, housing, AI.
- [118:03]
Andrew Yang
Yeah, yeah, it was those. I think that the AI investment environment has gotten ahead of itself and is overblown. So I think we're going to see a downdraft over there. And two things can be true at the same time. You could have a bit of a bubble in terms of valuations and also have the underlying reality be real. So I'm old enough to remember something called the dot com bubble. I don't know where you guys were at that point.
- [118:33]
Graham Stephan
I was 11 years old.
- [118:35]
Andrew Yang
And so this reminds me me of that where pets.com and like all the dot coms were like, we're going to take over the world and they got ahead of themselves. But then the Internet did change everything. Yeah, it just took a little bit longer and some of the initial investors lost their shirts. I feel the same way about AI right now where it's like AI is going to change everything. But some of these valuations are out of whack.
- [118:57]
Graham Stephan
Does that mean to short the market or does that mean that we could
- [119:01]
Mikey Chen
be going short at and T because there's a new, new name in town.
- [119:06]
Andrew Yang
Yeah, yeah. I mean, don't do it for the dividend. They might have to cut that thing. So the problem in all of these stories is the timing is that you just don't know how long it's going to go on for. So I, as you can tell, am pessimistic. But like, you know, like you can't figure out when to retrench. But I will say that right now I'm fairly negative on some of the like, most famous companies in, in the space.
- [119:35]
Graham Stephan
One thing I will say before we wrap up is that they were calling for a dot com bubble. 1997.
- [119:41]
Andrew Yang
Yeah, exactly.
- [119:42]
Graham Stephan
1998.
- [119:43]
Andrew Yang
Exactly.
- [119:43]
Graham Stephan
1999. Three and a half to four years before it burst, they were saying this is a bubble. And it kept going up higher. And what's funny is that you see where they called it a bubble and where it actually popped was so much higher. Like you just see these year long green candlesticks.
- [119:59]
Andrew Yang
Yeah.
- [119:59]
Graham Stephan
And it's like bubble at the very bottom and then green candlestick and then green candle and then big green candlestick.
- [120:05]
Andrew Yang
You just can't pops, you just can't know.
- [120:07]
Graham Stephan
So if you had sold out when they had first said it's a bubble, even the place that it fell was higher than the first bubble.
- [120:14]
Andrew Yang
Completely agree. Because I was there.
- [120:16]
Graham Stephan
Yeah.
- [120:17]
Andrew Yang
And yeah, like you. You didn't want to get in the way of it.
- [120:20]
Graham Stephan
No.
- [120:21]
Andrew Yang
But then when it did pop, it popped pretty hard. It was, you know, I had an anecdote where I attended a launch party for a dot com and then the closing down party within like 15 months of each other. I mean, those things did happen back then. And when I started Noble VC said, look, if you just put AI in the name and the thesis, like, I'll cut you a check right now. In a way I was like, okay, I sense a theme going on, so, you know, you can take that for what it's worth.
- [120:58]
Graham Stephan
Cool.
- [120:59]
Mikey Chen
Well, thank you so much for coming on the Ice Coffee Hour. That was an amazing conversation. Thank you guys so much for watching. Of course, at the end of the day, we would not be here if not for you. How cool is this? Okay.
- [121:09]
Graham Stephan
This is unreal.
- [121:10]
Mikey Chen
So cool.
- [121:11]
Graham Stephan
If you had told me this in 2019, I wouldn't have believed it.
- [121:13]
Andrew Yang
No. Oh, well, thanks guys, really. I'll come back anytime. And keep listening to these guys. They're very, very savvy.
- [121:18]
Mikey Chen
Thank you very much.
- [121:19]
Graham Stephan
Come to Vegas. Come see us there.
- [121:20]
Andrew Yang
Oh, crap. Yeah. We're gonna have a freaking party in Vegas. Vegas. That's happening.
- [121:24]
Mikey Chen
You guys want to go to the party? You can hang out with us there.
- [121:26]
Graham Stephan
That'd be great. We'll put some sort of link in
- [121:27]
Mikey Chen
the description till next time.
- [121:29]
Graham Stephan
See? Yeah. By the way, if you enjoy this episode, we just posted our next one early for members. So if you click the join button, you could literally begin watching our next episode right now. Really hope you enjoy it.