We got a great guest for you guys now. Andrew Yang, I'm pretty sure you're familiar with him. Former presidential candidate, entrepreneur, former recipient of Champion of Change and Presidential Ambassador for Global Entrepreneurship. Now, those two I didn't know. That's kind of badass. He founded Venture for America. He founded the Forward Party. He ran for mayor in New York. And now he has launched Noble Mobile. Andrew, welcome back to The Young Turks, brother.
It has been far too long. Yes, I am back where I belong. How are you, Cenk?
Good, brother. Good. So we announced the partnership today on Noble Mobile, and I think it's the right way to go. In fact, we're going to show you our first ad/video in a second. That'll be its international debut. You guys will love it. But I'm going to ask Andrew some uncomfortable political questions in a minute as well. Okay, so got that in store for you guys. First, Andrew, what's Noble Mo?
Well, Cenk, everyone remembers me running for president on AI taking the jobs, and that we should give everyone a thousand bucks a month. I've been searching for ways to get money into people's hands ever since. And I realized that we're all paying hundreds of dollars, in my case, over $1,000 extra to Verizon, AT&T, the big mobile carriers. We pay on average $83 a month for our wireless data. In Europe, that's $35.
Verizon is giving 11 billion a year to shareholders in the form of dividends. AT&T, it's 7 billion. So, I realized, wait a minute, if I want to get money into Americans' hands, there's a way I can do it right now as an entrepreneur. And so, we've licensed hundreds of millions of dollars worth of data from T-Mobile in our case. And then we're using it in part to save Americans money, but also to try and bring the temperature down and improve our mental health by getting us off of what my friend Hasan Minhaj calls our rectangles of sadness. Noble Mobile actually pays you if you log off, look up, touch grass, use a little bit less data, and doom scroll a little bit less.
So, there's like two ways that you save money through Noble Mobile, right? One is if you don't use all your data for the month or you use less data for the month, you're going to get money back. Okay, so that's already pretty cool. Hence, put your phone down, go out, etc., right? But Andrew, to me, like the easiest part and the selling part for me was I was paying nearly a hundred bucks for my Verizon bill, right? So this is 50 bucks a month. So boom, I'm saving over 50 bucks a month to start with. So to that point, look, I'm telling people what it really is. And they're also sponsors. You get it, right? We're being 100% transparent about it. But it's real. So, what I don't understand, and this is a real question, is how come you guys can do it at $50 and they're charging so much more? It's because it's basically the same service.
Yeah. And that's where the dividends come from, Cenk. You know, what makes me laugh when someone's like going to Las Vegas and saying, you know, I'm going to win money. It's like, well, how do you think they funded the casinos? In the case of the carriers, it's like, how do you think they funded the 18 billion in dividends every year? It's because they're charging us more than they have to. The single biggest example of that is when I went to Europe this year. My companions were on Verizon, which I was on for 26 years. They were paying 10 bucks a day on a travel pass. It turns out that Verizon was spending $2 a day putting you on the foreign carriers' network and charging you 10 for no reason anyone can discern. So, Noble Global charges five bucks a day when you're abroad and then caps it at 10 days so that the most you can pay is $50. Because by the way, my friend who then got home, they owed Verizon, you know, a hundred bucks from being abroad, and then they also owed them another hundred bucks on their usual bill because Verizon doesn't give you a break when you're out of country. So the reason why we could do it on 50 is that we're just not extortionate. We're not crazy. You know, we can run a fine solid business on a max of 50 with a cashback component of another 20.
Yeah. So, look, this is happening in almost all the industries. They become either monopolies or oligopolies. And so, once they've cornered the market, they just charge you whatever they want. I mean, the drug companies went like overboard and they're like, 'You're not even allowed to negotiate our prices, right?' But here in carriers at least there's real competition. There wasn't before, you had to pay some, you know, crazy number, no matter what. Now all of a sudden there's Noble Mobile, etc. And voila, price competition. And that's how a market's supposed to work. And the fat cats get too fat, etc. So now, by the way, that's what happened in Europe, Cenk. Like prices came down because you had something called competition. And that's why I started Noble, is like, look, we have to give Americans more choice and get the prices down to what they should be. You know, and so it's a real pleasure. We're going to save Americans billions of dollars and also get people off their phones a little bit.
Yeah. So, it's if you want to do it through us, go.tyt.com/switch. What we're trying to do is gather the good guy companies here, people that are actually looking out for you and actually trying to save you money. So Andrew and I did our first little video together just a couple of days ago. This will be its international debut, so I'm sure everybody's on pins and needles here. Let's watch and have a little fun.
Hey Cenk, you ready to make the switch?
I promise it's easy, universal, basic, and you get income.
Yeah, you keep saying that. But you sure I'm going to have coverage?
Of course you will. You think I would have bad service? I'm Andrew Yang. Of course I have good service.
All right, let's try. But I'm so bad at text. So wait, should I do this thing of the hashtag business? Andrew, you're still on, right?
Oh, I see it. Oh, wait. I don't see. Oh, yeah, I do see it. Here we go.
I actually did not realize that you'd be searching in real time, but I love it.
How much do people actually normally save?
Yeah. The average American is going to save between $500 and $1,000 a year on Noble.
Yeah. No. You know what I'm going to do, Andrew? Are you ready to become a Noble member? The two buttons are do it and go back. There's no going back. We're doing it. We're doing it. Here we go. Noble Mobile.
Oh my gosh. I just called you and are you now on Noble and not Verizon? Why didn't you tell me it was going to be super easy?
I know, man. Now you just stay away from your phone and watch the money roll in.
I can do that. Here you go. Phone. Yeah. What the... Cenk? You still there, Andrew? Oh, well, at least I got Noble Mobile. It was really just one take. The whole thing is wild. It's in my shoe. It's in my shoes. Poor, poor Brett.
Wow. Just the commitment of Brett falling in the pool. That was really next level.
That was news to me, too. There's a lot of surprises for me and I was in it.
So, look, we shot that real quick, but I'll tell you, I did actually switch in the middle of us shooting that kind of ad. It was kind of breaking news. So, and it took about 5 minutes and I'm a giant texter and I was like, 'Oh, okay. QR code, got it. Okay, this got it.' And next thing you know, boom, I got it. And I'm saving tons of money. So, I feel pretty good about it.
I was on Verizon for 26 years. And when I realized how much I could have saved by changing, it was, you know, it was invigorating because it's like, oh shoot, what else can I change in my life that might, you know, lighten the load or help me save money or help me live better. But there was a lot of anger and frustration, too, because I was like, gosh, I've been getting gouged by these guys for 26 years, and I did some math, and it adds up to something like $15,000, not including opportunity costs and compound interest and all the rest of it. You know, I was talking to an executive who said that this is a way Americans can actually fund their retirement because if you start doing the math on how much extra money is heading to the carriers, it adds up in a very serious way. But yeah, man. 26-year relationship, broken up with in five minutes, and they just sent me a text message.
Yeah, that's all I got. No, but like seriously, you do the math on it. Let's say that I only save $50 a month, right? Which I think I save way more than that, but that's times 12 is $600 a year. Whether it was the last 20 years or the next 20 years, that's $12,000. So, plus interest, compounding, opportunity cost, etc., etc.
Yeah. Or you could spend it on yourself, obviously. But yeah, man. I mean, it's real money and that's the minimum because, you know, that's the 50 bucks you can see very clearly. You're going to end up saving more than that.
Yeah. And look guys, I get it. It's about Noble Mobile and we're doing this partnership together, but it's really about all the industries. Like all these industries need much more competition because we're paying 500 more to this guy, 800 more to that guy, 2,000 more to that guy, and when you add all that up, oh my god, it's a robbery. So, all right, but let's talk a little bit of politics, right? So, you got the Forward Party, you're an independent just like Karine Jean-Pierre. I'm kidding. I'm kidding. Don't take offense.
Sorry. What a way to hurt a guy.
Okay. So, all right. I'll start out super broad, then we'll do a little bit of New York, a little bit of national. Okay. So, what do you make of politics these days, Andrew?
It's very, very disheartening that millions of Americans don't know when they're going to get their SNAP benefits. I mean, that stuff infuriates me. If I was a Democratic office holder or Republican office holder, I'd be like, 'Look, guys, like we've gone way too far when Americans are starving because we can't get our acts together and land where we know where we're going to land anyway.' I mean, realistically. So that stuff is infuriating and heartbreaking. That's how I feel about politics nowadays.
