Andrew Yang on His Forward Party and the Rise of a New Political Consensus

In Episode 215 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with 2020 Presidential candidate and Founder of the Forward Party, Andrew Yang. Yang is perhaps best known for popularizing the idea of universal basic income, what he called “the freedom dividend” during his run for president in 2020. He recently launched “the Forward Party,” a political party focused on breaking what Andrew sees as a two-party duopoly that is no longer working and whose members and policies have fallen increasingly out of favor with the majority of Americans. He details many of his policy proposals in his new book “Forward,” including ranked-choice voting, open primaries, term limits, campaign reform, and of course universal basic income: one-thousand dollars for every man and woman in America.

Demetri spent most of the first half of their conversation asking Andrew Yang about his experience on the campaign trail, what it was like to run for president, and what it taught him about the American political system and how to go viral in today’s attention economy. The overtime is where Kofinas really had the opportunity to dig into Yang’s policy platform. They discussed Andrew's UBI proposal, its potential impact on inflation, and how to implement such a policy without making politics even more transactional than it is today. They also discuss how to crack the gerontocracy that currently exists in Washington, the misaligned incentives in our news media, as well as how Andrew Yang thinks blockchain and distributed ledger technology can be leveraged for the public good and why crypto is a potential path to universal basic income.

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Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas

Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou

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Episode Recorded on 10/11/2021