Venture For America is creating economic opportunity in American cities by mobilizing the next generation of entrepreneurs and equipping them with the skills and resources they need to create jobs.
That sounds super bullshitty to me. Do they have any results they can point to? I’ve taken a quick look at the tens of Fellow-Founded Companies, and they all sound pretty half-baked. I’d expect the failure rate to be right in line with startups that didn’t have the benefit of whatever snake oil Yang is selling them.
Let’s see what this amazing new crop of entrepreneurs is doing to benefit the world!
Humanlytics uses Artificial Intelligence to converts digital marketing data of businesses into easy-to-understand stories about their customers. Based on those stories, our engine works with the business to come up with minute-by-minute action plans that will help them create the perfect experience for their customers.
Stix is a Direct To Consumer brand reinventing OTC for women’s health. We’re starting by creating an accessible and empowering pregnancy test purchasing experience. We’ll then expand to other categories to improve and innovate on products that women need, but dread buying.
Clyde is technology company transforming insurance at the point of sale, starting with the underserved extended warranty industry.
Wow. So innovate. Much entrepreneurial. Very value add.
Just jumping into say I just realized my state votes after Super Tuesday. While Warren is my preferred candidate, I’ve decided that on March 10th I’m voting for whichever candidate among the remaining viable ones polls the best against Trump. I’ll see myself out now.
The point of the non profit is to entice young people from Ivy League schools to go build stuff in cities that aren’t NYC/Chicago/SF/Austin/Atlanta/etc. That’s working. Obviously some of these are going to be stupid, but the important thing is that someone is doing stuff in say Detroit instead of NYC.
Also important to note that despite VFA being something of a widely recognized success Yang figured out about half way through that it wasn’t getting what needed doing done at anything close to the right scale… which is the realization that led to him 1) writing a book called the War on Normal People which is very very good and 2) running for president after trying to get politicians to act on what he’d figured out.
And it’s important to note that Yang himself initially thought the big problem in the country was the disparity between the big 10 cities and the rest of the country. And he thought that the reason was a brain drain where all the talented people from those other places got pushed into the top 10 cities… The point of the nonprofit was to address that. His first book was titled ‘Smart People Should Build Things’ and it’s about convincing elite students to go build stuff rather than becoming investment bankers, big lawyers, private equity people, and etc. A nice idea, and based on his experiences through that time.
Since then he’s pivoted. I don’t see that as a weakness.
Two wrongs don’t make a right, but I couldn’t care less about government experience in a candidate at the moment; fine if you have it, fine if you don’t. On the other hand, I’m sorry to keep talking about things that will never happen but we’re going to have Medicare For All Pets before a single American gets a 1k check from the federal government in the form of UBI. I like that Yang is talking about it, but it’s pie in the skynet.
I don’t actually agree with this. ‘Works’ is based on tangible results on the ground based on what objectives you’ve set. I like Yang’s objectives quite a bit, and so do the rest of you.
Really? Because it already exists in Alaska and would be a huge net win for red states. It’s probably way easier to get than single payer healthcare. You have to crawl over the dead bodies of every healthcare lobbyist in the country to get single payer.
A 10% VAT tax, which we don’t have in the US yet. The reality is that every form of taxation being proposed by every other candidate is going to get gamed to shit and end up producing way less revenue than they are claiming.
It would increase purchasing power for the bottom 94% of the population with the biggest increases going to the people at the bottom.
I think this characterization is fair, but there’s a lot of benefit to having people like this participate in primaries. Some policies from long shot candidates will catch fire with the public and potentially change the ultimate message and platform of the candidate. As annoying as this process is with the yooge field of candidates, it’s better than when we and one pre-ordained candidate crowned by the party vs. one upstart that was popular.
It would be easier than you might think. Andrew proposes funding the Freedom Dividend by consolidating some welfare programs and implementing a Value Added Tax of 10 percent. Current welfare and social program beneficiaries would be given a choice between their current benefits or $1,000 cash unconditionally – most would prefer cash with no restriction.
A Value Added Tax (VAT) is a tax on the production of goods or services a business produces. It is a fair tax and it makes it much harder for large corporations, who are experts at hiding profits and income, to avoid paying their fair share. A VAT is nothing new. 160 out of 193 countries in the world already have a Value Added Tax or something similar, including all of Europe which has an average VAT of 20 percent.
The means to pay for the basic income will come from four sources:
Current spending: We currently spend between $500 and $600 billion a year on welfare programs, food stamps, disability and the like. This reduces the cost of the Freedom Dividend because people already receiving benefits would have a choice between keeping their current benefits and the $1,000, and would not receive both.
Additionally, we currently spend over 1 trillion dollars on health care, incarceration, homelessness services and the like. We would save $100 – 200+ billion as people would be able to take better care of themselves and avoid the emergency room, jail, and the street and would generally be more functional. The Freedom Dividend would pay for itself by helping people avoid our institutions, which is when our costs shoot up. Some studies have shown that $1 to a poor parent will result in as much as $7 in cost-savings and economic growth.
A VAT: Our economy is now incredibly vast at $19 trillion, up $4 trillion in the last 10 years alone. A VAT at half the European level would generate $800 billion in new revenue. A VAT will become more and more important as technology improves because you cannot collect income tax from robots or software.
New revenue: Putting money into the hands of American consumers would grow the economy. The Roosevelt Institute projected that the economy will grow by approximately $2.5 trillion and create 4.6 million new jobs. This would generate approximately $800 – 900 billion in new revenue from economic growth.
Taxes on top earners and pollution: By removing the Social Security cap, implementing a financial transactions tax, and ending the favorable tax treatment for capital gains/carried interest, we can decrease financial speculation while also funding the Freedom Dividend. We can add to that a carbon fee that will be partially dedicated to funding the Freedom Dividend, making up the remaining balance required to cover the cost of this program.
I suppose this is fine in general, but do you get UBI first and then start winding down welfare programs or do you start winding down welfare programs first? A lot of constituents like these programs, weakening them is going to be politically hard even if you buy the premise that it’s more efficient to give people money directly.
I don’t know much about VAT other than the dummy level factoid that it’s regressive. If a poor person gets 1k a month, how much of that 1k is going back into VAT if they spend it all? 10%?
Almost a trillion dollars more of new tax revenue from zomg growth seems like a line Republicans use to sell their tax cuts? What if there’s not a trillion dollar more of new growth, does UBI get cut back to 750 a month?
Doesn’t state any numbers but seems like it’s not the bulk of it so w/e
the UBI money getting poured into the economy at the bottom is way way way better for stimulating the economy than what the GOP does. They give money directly to people with marginal propensities to save of 80%+. It’s about the least stimulative thing you could do.
Giving every American an extra 1k in spending power would be hugely stimulative.
You can structure a VAT to exclude consumer staples like food, diapers, etc so that it’s not very regressive at all. VAT’s in practice generate less inflation than the VAT rate because businesses end up absorbing a lot of the cost because competition. It’s kind of like how when costs go down across the board prices don’t drop. Similarly if costs go up prices don’t rise. For proof see the recent tariffs.
Yang’s worldview is very consistent: rich people will save us. He believes it with VFA (we just need to funnel the future rich people to the right cities!) and believes it with his presidential run (I am the rich guy with the right ideas, here to save you!).
Having any combination of Bernie and Yang in your top two seems pretty strange considering Bernie’s main message is “the rich are fucking us and we need a movement to fix that.” Like, I still think Yang has good ideas, but that speaks more to the weakness of the rest of the field than Yang himself (crazy to think that he’s not even the worst Yay Rich People candidate in the field–there are multiple billionaires!)
He’s got a lower net worth than Warren or Bernie. He thinks smart people will save us not necessarily rich people. He’s for massively raising income tax rates on the wealthiest people and for doing some pretty draconian stuff to the tech companies. (Making our data our own private property)
He’s not that rich, but he does have good ideas. His whole campaign strategy is basically to run on the right answer (not the politically right answer, the policy right answer) to every question. The one that the experts in that field would pick, not the one politicians think they can sell. That’s why he’s got an opinion about the NCAA (which is happening!) and about the penny. Those are things that have right answers and he’s not shy about saying what they are. I think it’s incredibly refreshing.