Andrew Yang (born 13 January 1975) was an American entrepreneur and philanthropist who ran for President of the United States in 2020 as a Democrat. He focused on technological unemployment, which he credited with leading to Donald Trump's victory in the 2016 presidential election, and on paying each adult US citizen $1,000 a month as a universal basic income.
Biography[]
Andrew Yang was born in Schenectady, New York on 13 January 1975 to Taiwanese immigrant parents, and he grew up affiliated with the Reformed Church in America. He attended the elite Phillips Exeter Academy boarding school in New Hampshire and then from Brown University and from Columbia Law School, becoming a corporate attorney in 1999. From 2006 to 2012, he was CEO of Manhattan Prep, and he founded the nonprofit fellowship program Venture for America in 2011, aiming to train college graduates in how to found startups in developing cities across America.
On 6 November 2017, he began preparations for a 2020 Democratic presidential bid, proposing the government paying all US citizens over the age of 18 $1,000 a month in order to allay the effects of technological unemployment. He also supported Medicare for all and human-centered capitalism; he supported regulating the addictive nature of media, hiring a White House psychologist, making Tax Day a national holiday, and increasing the salaries of federal regulators but limiting their private work upon leaving office. Yang became immensely popular among internet users, who called themselves the "Yang Gang", but his performance in a 27 June 2019 debate with the other Democratic candidates was said to be a defeat. He dropped out of the race on 11 February 2020 after poor results in the Iowa and New Hampshire primaries.
On 13 January 2021, he announced his candidacy for Mayor of New York City, and, while he was an early frontrunner, his lead fell after April and, by the eve of the June 2021 Democratic primaries, he had fallen behind Eric Adams, Maya Wiley, and Kathryn Garcia. After his unsuccessful mayoral bid, he founded the centrist Forward Party.