Words&Dirt

Like many others, I discovered Andrew Yang by way of his excellent interview with Sam Harris last month. Yang, who is running for President in 2020, immediately struck me as honest, intelligent, well-informed, and profoundly reasonable––a heroic foil for the repugnant personalities that dominate today’s national politics. Yang’s central campaign issue is the institution of a Universal Basic Income (UBI) for all Americans, a daring and promising idea that has been on my radar for some years now. Yang’s excellent book, The War on Normal People, is the boldest and best argument for UBI to date.

If you’re considering reading this book, be warned: it is tough. Not tough to understand––on the contrary, Yang’s writing is clean and balanced, with an appropriate smattering of personal anecdotes that humanize and endear him to the reader. But the majority of the book’s content is extremely grim. It comes as no surprise that one of his early readers suggested changing the titled to “We’re Fucked” (165). However, a hopeful path to positive solutions awaits readers willing to power through the first two sections.

In Part One, “What’s Happening to Jobs,” Yang explicates the societal threat posed by automation, also referred to as technological unemployment. His case is persuasive, data-driven, and damned scary.  Yang’s perspective is anchored by his personal experience in the world of traditional Ivy League elitism, as well as a more recent endeavor as a Silicon Valley entrepreneur. He has seen firsthand how politicians and masters of industry leverage their wealth and influence to grow their careers and businesses, and assures the reader with confidence that “I am writing from inside the tech bubble to let you know that we are coming for your jobs” (xi).

Inside this bubble, the idea that a company would give up a potential efficiency gain in order to retain employees is heretical, and companies routinely hone their cutting edge by automating one step ahead of the competition. The market cares nothing for the well-being of employees, rewarding scale and consolidation at every turn. In witnessing these patterns play out, Yang found himself forced to an unwelcome conclusion:

It has been my job for the past six years to create jobs. I’m about to lose––we’re all about to lose––on an epic scale. I’m now certain that the wave––the Great Displacement––is already here and is having effects bigger and faster than most anyone believes. The most pernicious thing about this wave is that you can’t really tell who it has hit as it grinds up people and communities. I’ve switched gears. My goal now is to give everyone a sense of what’s coming and then prepare us to fight for the version of the future that we want. It will be a massive challenge. It’s up to us; the market will not help us. Indeed, it is about to turn on us. The solutions aren’t beyond us yet, but it’s getting late in the day and time is running short. I need you to see what I see. (11)

Yang pulls no punches as he describes the dire circumstances that already dominate the American labor market, with an even bleaker forecast just over the horizon. Here are some of his most distressing findings:

America is starting 100,000 fewer businesses per year than it was only 12 years ago, and is in the midst of shedding millions of jobs due primarily to technological advances…I remember the moment it finally sank in completely. I was reading a CNN article that detailed how automation had eliminated millions of manufacturing jobs between 2000 and 2015, four times more than globalization. (10)

Many Americans are in danger of losing their jobs right now due to automation. Not in 10 or 15 years. Right now. Here are the standard sectors Americans work in: Office and Administrative Support (15.69% of workforce), Sales and Retail (10.35%), Food Preparation and Serving (9.25%), Transportation and Material Moving (6.93%), Production (6.49%). Sixty-eight million Americans out of a workforce of 140 million (48.5 percent) work in one of these five sectors. Each of these labor groups is being replaced right now. (27-8)

More than 5 million manufacturing workers lost their jobs after 2000. More than 80 percent of the jobs lost––or 4 million jobs––were due to automation…What happened to these 5 million workers? A rosy economist might imagine that they found new manufacturing jobs, or were retrained and reskilled for different jobs, or maybe they moved to another state for greener pastures. In reality, many of them left the workforce. One Department of Labor survey in 2012 found that 41 percent of displaced manufacturing workers between 2009 and 2011 were either still unemployed or dropped out of the labor market within three years of losing their jobs. Another study out of Indiana University found that 44 percent of 200,000 displaced transportation equipment and primary metals manufacturing workers in Indiana between 2003 and 2014 had no payroll record at all by 2014, and only 3 percent graduated from a public college or university in Indiana during that time period. (41-2)

This is just a small sampling of the jaw-dropping figures Yang cites throughout The War on Normal People. Often, he doesn’t have to work very hard to make his case; the numbers speak for themselves. Yang frames the situation with the correct degree of urgency, using an approach I would characterize as responsible alarmism. In Chapter Eight, “The Usual Objections,” he follows in the footsteps of Martin Ford by demonstrating how the coming wave of automation is a horse of a different color when compared to the automation anxieties of previous eras.

The main thrust of his argument is that America is rapidly becoming a powder keg packed with the failures and frustrations of “normal” people, who he defines as people who occupy the middle of the bell curve on a range of objective measures (income, savings, education, assets, etc.). These are the folks whose economic value is being and will be most swiftly swept away by automation, a transition that Yang calls the Great Displacement. As the Displacement progresses, American society will become increasingly populated with “proud and desperate” former workers whose chances of finding alternative employment will be vanishingly small (47). If left unaddressed, this predicament will make American society increasingly vulnerable to social and political upheavals (Yang imagines an all-too-believable near-future scenario of how this might occur on pages 158-9).

One of Yang’s most important insights concerns the effects of mass job loss on local tax revenue and infrastructure in small and midsize communities. As a torrent of national retailers across the country close up shop, the “pillars of the regional budget” begin to crack: “This means shrunken municipal budgets, cuts to school budgets, and job reductions in local government offices” (32). Additionally, abandoned buildings transform into “negative infrastructure,” attracting crime and creating “a bleak, dystopian atmosphere, like a zombie movie set” (32-3). Even now, when the worst effects of automation are only just starting to be felt, what American isn’t familiar with the ominous feeling of driving through a community devoid of vibrancy and hope, its once-respectable storefronts boarded up and its roads crumbling from disrepair? If we don’t act fast, Yang argues, this will become the new American norm.

In Part Two, “What’s Happening to Us,” Yang takes up the social, psychological, and geographic features of the automation problem. Like many other futurists, he contrasts perspectives of abundance with those of scarcity, demonstrating the benefits of the former and the harms of the latter. Citizens with ready access to basic resources see opportunity around every corner, and partake in “light-commitment benevolence” to create the illusion of social responsibility as we horde more than our fair share (96). Obversely, those locked in cycles of scarcity are largely unable to achieve the socioeconomic stability that would allow them to better their lot (Chapter 10). In recent years, the geography of American opportunity has come to play a larger role in compounding this problem:

A mindset of abundance or scarcity is tied closely to what part of the country you live in. Different regions are now experiencing such different levels of economic dynamism that they often have utterly different notions of what the future holds. (109)

In a country already wracked with ideological division that falls largely along geographic lines, this is not encouraging news. As Americans with similar backgrounds, values, experiences and incomes coalesce to form insular communities (both digital and physical), we lose the ability to understand and empathize with our fellow citizens who have less access to opportunities and resources. Yang points out that job loss contributes significantly to this process:

There’s a truism in the startup world: When things start going very badly for a company, the strongest people generally leave first. They have the highest standards for their own opportunities and the most confidence that they can thrive in a new environment. Their skills are in demand, and they feel little need to stick around. The people who are left behind tend to be less confident and adaptable. It’s one reason why companies go into death spirals––the best people leave when they see the writing on the wall and the company’s decline accelerates. The same is often true for a community. When jobs and prosperity start deserting a town, the first people to leave are the folks who have the best opportunities elsewhere. (117-8)

This insidious dynamic has already played itself out in many towns across America, and will continue to destroy communities if current trends are not interrupted. Yang shores up his sense of urgency with perceptive chapters addressing how joblessness affects interpersonal and familial relationships; the growing reliance of the new “shadow class” on government assistance and drugs; how the addictive, escapist power of video games is hijacking the lives of many young men; and the ways in which all these factors contribute to social and political instability.

In Part Three, “Solutions and Human Capitalism,” Yang explains how we ought to combat and eventually solve the automation crisis. His first imperative is to institute a UBI of $1000 per month for all citizens. This “Freedom Dividend” is Yang’s Americanized take on an old idea, one that has been advocated for by people across the political spectrum for several centuries (166-8). These days, UBI is typically a conversation-stopper in mainstream political discussions, but as the negative trends of automation continue to progress and become more visible, it is not hard to imagine it gaining support. And in a world where Donald Trump can be elected President, I’m done listening to anyone who argues that something is politically impossible.

The Freedom Dividend will be enough to bring jobless people above the poverty line, but only just. The vast majority of citizens will still seek remunerative work in order to raise their standard of living, but will no longer have to worry about whether they can afford basic shelter or enough food to get by. Best of all, the Freedom Dividend would effectively end abject poverty for American children. Additionally, the huge number of citizens currently receiving disability insurance from the government would have the opportunity to switch over to the Freedom Dividend, which would follow them anywhere in the country and would not evaporate if they proved themselves able to work once again.

The above arguments should be enough to convince most Americans that UBI is a good idea, but there are also the added benefits of scaling back the bureaucratic bloat of the welfare state and utilizing government for something it’s actually good at: sending large numbers of checks to citizens in a regimented, timely fashion. The question is not whether we want a welfare state or not, but rather if we want a welfare state with perverse incentives or humanistic ones.

Yang estimates that the Freedom Dividend would cost $1.3 trillion annually, which he would fund with a value-added tax (VAT) on consumption. Yang puts the lie to the conventional objection that there’s simply not enough money to fully fund a Freedom Dividend:

Out of 193 countries, 160 already have a VAT or goods and services tax, including all developed countries except the United States. The average VAT in Europe is 20 percent. It is well developed and its efficacy has been established. If we adopted a VAT at half the average European level, we could pay for a universal basic income for all American adults. (171)

So, just as with universal healthcare, America’s inability to properly care for its citizens is not an issue of scarcity, but rather of political will. If we can harness that will for the good of the people (for once), the benefits will be immediate and profound:

With the Freedom Dividend, money would be put in the hands of our citizens in a time of unprecedented economic dislocation. It would grow the consumer economy. It’s a stimulus of people. The vast majority of money would go directly into the economy each month, into paying bills, feeding children, visiting loved ones, youth sports, eating at local restaurants, piano lessons, extra tutoring help, car repairs, small businesses, housing improvements, prenatal vitamins, elder care, and so on. (172)

The Freedom Dividend isn’t the end goal of Yang’s political agenda––just the tip of the iceberg, in fact. He knows that this is a time for big and bold ideas, and he’s got them in spades. In a clarion call for sensible responses to deep systemic problems, Yang challenges us to remember that the market ought to serve humans, and not the other way around. This is what he calls Human Capitalism, which has three tenets:

1. Humanity is more important than money.
2. The unit of an economy is each person, not each dollar.
3. Markets exist to serve our common goals and values. (200)

With these as his guiding principles, Yang advocates for concrete mechanisms that would create real accountability for our public servants and private companies, a universal health care system that leverages the power of AI to end the overworking of physicians, an overhaul of our education practices to focus on character-building and a diversity of employment pathways, and the creation of a technology-driven Digital Currency System (DCS) that would function outside the dollar economy to promote types of human-centric labor that are currently unrewarded by the capitalist market.

Yang knows that it will take a lot of experimentation and hard work to successfully implement any one of these ideas, let alone all of them. But he also knows that we are at a crossroads where we will either resolve to do the hard work of bringing everyone along as we stride into the automated future, or we will ignore that call to action and prepare for the dystopian scenarios that inevitably result.

While this is obviously a difficult situation in which to find ourselves, we ought to focus on the amazing future that is possible if we create an economy devoted to abundance for all. This future would allow normal, decent folks to be wealthier, healthier and happier with their lives, and would also prepare humanity for our next big challenge: climate change. I used to think that climate change was the most important battle of my generation, but Yang and others have convinced me that the battle for economic justice is even more critical. A downtrodden and desperate population will never respond to the environmental crisis effectively.

In the final pages of The War on Normal People, Yang leaves the reader with a sober but inspiring message:

I have been in the room with people who are meant to steer our society. The machinery is weak. The institutionalization is high. The things you fear to be true are generally true. I wrote this book because I want others to see what I see. We are capable of so much better…It will not be easy…Through all of the doubt, the cynicism, the ridicule, the hatred and anger, we must fight for the world that is still possible…Come fight with me. (242-4)

I will admit that I’m deeply skeptical of the political viability of this movement. Too often my mind gives safe harbor to the very doubts and cynicism that could render Yang’s mission dead on arrival. But, despite my fear and cowardice, I will strive to do my part. You can too. 

Rating: 10/10