Hey everybody and welcome to an intellectual wild ride with Steo. We are with an intellect to say the least. It's presidential candidate Andrew Yang, who I became very close with while filming a Fox reality TV show called The Nation's Dumbest. Suffice it to say, neither of us proved to be the nation's dumbest. And we have a lot of very insightful and helpful stuff that we talked about on this episode. The like sort of cliff notes version is that America's not in a very strong position looking forward into the future. But what are we going to do about it? We're going to figure out the plan. We're going to figure out how to set ourselves up so that we can survive what's coming. This one's important. So, let's get into it.
Ladies and gentlemen, people of the universe, I bring to you a man who you might consider unlikely to be Steo's bro, presidential candidate and not the nation's dumbest, Andrew Yang.
Yes, it's great to see you outside of the classroom.
Yeah, we both did it. We went head to head. [laughter] I knew you were going to be out of there as soon as I left. I was like, after I'm out of here, Steo's out of here.
You know, I wouldn't want to assume that everybody in the audience is aware of what The Nation's Dumbest is, but I wouldn't be surprised if most of them do because boy did Fox put a lot of money behind that.
Yeah, I had a lot of people text me and I get recognized on the street occasionally now where this teenage girl came up to me and still has no idea who the fuck I am honestly, but it's just like, hey, are you a Nation's Dumbest? Like, can I get a picture? Then ran off. I was like, she still has no idea who I am.
But for those who don't know, we competed together on a Fox reality competition series called The Nation's Dumbest. It was largely an intelligence competition based on trivia via problem solving, logic, teamwork, and a little bit of strategy. And the objective of the show was to get out of the hell as fast as you can, as quick as you can.
Yes. And for people who haven't seen it, Steo was an animal and a competitor throughout. You know, he's fired up. Great teammate. Led us to victory on at least one challenge. Um, I did rather well on the team challenges. [laughter] Knoxville watched the show.
Candidly, Knoxville hosted Fear Factor: House of Fear, which was a ratings juggernaut by the standards of today. He, you know, hosted the show. Like, I understand that he was paid a gargantuan sum of money to do that. And then I come in like a low-level contestant, [laughter] you know, unlike another one. So that really put me in my place as far as where I stand in the... [laughter] and I'm good with that. Also love Knoxville. I always, you know, I just wouldn't be where I am. Thank God for Knoxville is how I feel. And he's such a fearless captain. With that said, he was watching The Nation's Dumbest, catching up on it on streaming, you know, like...
Yeah, I got an email. He said, 'You're doing great on this show.' And I thought, 'Oh man, seems that you haven't seen all of the episodes that I was on.' [laughter] I said, 'Unfortunately, I really have a number of moments on this show where I look like an incredible douche, and sadly, it's worse to be a douche than dumb.' [laughter]
I thought you came off great. Personally, and people should know, I mean, you and I are around the same age. Like I grew up watching you and Johnny Knoxville and the Jackass guys, MTV, the whole thing. I'm glad that you know you and I spent some time together, but personally it's like the fact that you were still doing handstands on skateboards and like going up in the air after, I think I was like, 'Oh my god, Steo's a freaking animal. He's a horse.' Because you put your body through a lot, man.
Well, thank you. I have visited chiropractors, one of which took an X-ray of my spine and when he looked at the X-ray, he said, 'Dude, you're Keith Richards.'
If you haven't met Steo in person, he really does have three times the stamina energy of a normal human. And you should see for yourself on tour. I think you're still touring.
Yeah. Well, thank you. You're too kind and you and I really just hit it off on this show and we wasted no time, you know, being...
Planning the demise of other people.
We wasted no time in having, I think, what most people would consider very unlikely dialogue. Our conversations, I'm like, 'Hey, you know, like the world is just messed up. Like, oh my god, is there any hope?' I found you to be, I guess you have to be, but I found you to be shockingly optimistic about the situation that we find ourselves in in America and the world.
Well, yeah, I'm an optimistic guy. I think you have to be to be an entrepreneur, to start companies and organizations because if you're thinking about all the shit that can go wrong then you're never going to head out there. I think the same is true for a lot of people in entertainment, where you can feel despondent about the direction of things. And by the way, I know things are fucked. I have spent years trying to make them less shitty and most of the time I have been on the losing end [laughter] honestly, truly. I mean, you know, it's like I ran for president trying to give everyone a thousand bucks a month, which now has aged very well because I was like, AI is going to come, it's going to eat all the jobs, and we can get into this.
We can take that a step further that everything that you campaigned on, you said, guys, automation is coming for our jobs. You know, like we got to, like people aren't going to be able to make a living. Like we need to give people universal basic income if they're going to eat because nobody's going to be able to earn money. And now, like how prophetic does that feel?
Yeah. Imagine making that case in Iowa in 2019 at a truck stop, which I did do. [laughter] You know, it's a marvel. I'm not president today. We're not doing this from the White House. But I knew that there was a train coming down the tracks. I didn't know when the train was going to reach the person who's tied to the tracks, [laughter] you know, like if you had a timeline. I mean, when I was running for president, I said next 10 years. And it was faster than I thought. I mean, the fact that you now have these trillion-dollar enterprises ready to automate away millions of white-collar jobs. I mean, this stuff is real in a way that even I couldn't have foreseen back in 2019 and 2020. I couldn't have foreseen the speed, like the rate of change is mind-blowing.
Also, the complete 'hey, let them go wild' attitude on the part of the government shocks me. The fact that the government is like, 'Look, you guys are building AI, just go faster and faster.' You know, that pendulum, by the way, is now swinging the other direction where there's a bit of a freakout going on and I think the freakout is warranted.
Now you say that AI is taking millions of white-collar jobs, but correct me if I'm wrong, doesn't it also create a lot more jobs as well?
So I'm a data aficionado and so right now there are a lot of jobs being created by the buildout because we're spending, let's call it, 300 billion a year on the data centers, which means you need a lot of construction workers, a lot of electricians, like a lot of equipment operators and the like.
Simultaneously, you're seeing a drop-off in economic opportunities for recent college graduates. They're the canary in the coal mine where the underemployment rate for a college graduate today is approaching 50%.
It's higher than normal and the job placement rates for computer science majors have gone off a cliff. The hiring of entry-level customer service workers has gone off a cliff. And so those are like the early dominoes of what I believe is going to be the elimination of millions of white-collar jobs. And I've had multiple CEOs of public companies tell me I'm going to fire 30, 40, 50% of my staff. And they also say if I didn't do it, the board would replace me with someone who would. And so if they're telling me that in confidence, like I'm sure that's going to happen for a whole slew of public companies and you're already starting to see those reports come out.
There's so much that's scary about what's going on right here. And if we were to just take the complete optimistic angle, the biggest problem that we have in America is the debt, right? Like we have this unsustainable debt. We're running a budget deficit that is growing faster than the GDP by like four times. It's insane. And the only time that America has ever been in such a stark debt-to-GDP ratio was after World War II. And what bailed America out of that situation was the growth of the industrial revolution. It was just American manufacturing, jobs, and the boom, and we dug our way out of it. So now, if we're going to be optimistic, the way out of this debt crisis is for AI and automation to really, really explode so much and be so productive that taxing robots is enough to generate a livelihood for everybody and nobody even has to work.
Yeah, I've been making this case on CNBC and other networks. We need to tax AI, tax the robots. And when you talk about the industrial revolution post-World War II, what happened is we grew our way out of it.
And if you look at our situation now, we have a chance maybe to grow our way out of it. I will say on the revenue side, we're doing some very, very stupid things. Check it out. Let's say you have Anthropic or OpenAI, trillion-dollar tech companies maybe based upon what they're going to IPO at. Let's say they successfully IPO. How much tax revenue are we going to see in the US government out of those enterprises? And the answer is zero because they're technically unprofitable. They're losing money. So there's no income tax to get them on their shareholders. You know, if you hold the stock, you pay zero. If you sell it, maybe you pay capital gains, which right now is 15%. So you're going to see trillion-dollar companies being born without meaningful tax on the other side. And by the way, the output of these companies is going to decimate a bunch of jobs and was built upon our data that has been harvested to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars of value a year over the last number of years. And we didn't see a dime. So, one, we have to try and grow our way out, but two, we have to change our tax mechanism so that we actually get some of the value in because you have the biggest winners in today's economy, Google, Meta, whomever, they pay jack shit for taxes, right?
And by the way, if I was their CEO, I'd be doing the exact same thing because like if you're the head of a business, like what am I trying to pay taxes? Of course not.
Yeah, but at this point if you're a multinational tech company, you either can show losses or move all the profits through Ireland, which is a very popular tax haven. And by the way, why are all these companies now opening offices in Ireland? Because Ireland has said, 'Don't worry guys, no taxes. You can have revenue here [laughter] and not pay a dime.' So you have the big winners in today's economy not paying anything into the system. And then you have more and more people looking around being like, 'How the hell did you get a $40 trillion deficit that you've ramped up?' So AI, and I'm someone who's pro-growth, pro-innovation, pro-AI because we need to pay for things, but then you actually have to get the value in. And there are some totally obvious things you could do that would get the value in. The CEO of Anthropic raised his hand and said, 'You should tax us.' And it's like in what universe does a CEO say, 'Hey, tax me please.' And then we don't like it. We're that dumb on this stuff where the US government's like, 'What? You want us to tax you?' No, no, no. We could never do that. And you could say he said 'tax us' as a PR stunt because he knew that they wouldn't actually take him up on it. [laughter] But we should take him up on it. We should take the whole industry up on it.
Well, absolutely.
Yeah, it's obvious. By the way, it's obvious because if I hire a human being and you employ some people, if you hire a person, you pay their salary, yes, but then you pay for their health care, you pay their social security, you pay FICA, you pay unemployment. If you look at all of the layers of stuff you pay on top of that person's salary, it essentially doubles that person's salary. And then if I say, you know what, I'm not going to hire this producer, I'm going to use AI to do the video footage instead. Zero taxes, right? You know what we're doing is we're making it so that people are twice as expensive and then subsidizing the machines. It's so fucking stupid. And then you look around and be like, 'Hey, where are the jobs going to go?' Like the jobs are going to go up into the cloud because that's what we've set up, right?
And there's the argument that when you increase productivity to like this crazy power of whatever, great, you've made it cheaper to create a bunch of products that nobody can afford.
Yeah, and that's the natural direction where you're going to have this AI-driven... I mean, if you use content as an example, you can have like tons of AI slop and it costs almost nothing to produce and then we're all going to be watching it and then who's going to advertise against it? How much are they going to get? Support Steo, support [laughter] content, you know, I mean, and we know that making quality content takes a lot of blood, sweat, and tears, a lot of energy, and a lot of actual money. And then having AI do it, it's going to be, you know, nickels on the dollar. I mean, you know, who's felt this, and this was not an AI story entirely, but it's going to become an AI story very quickly, is Hollywood. I don't know if you guys have seen what's going on.
Yeah, you probably have seen it. I mean, you're looking at 50,000 or so permanent jobs lost in Hollywood because they moved all the productions elsewhere. And by the way, I mean, if I were in charge, this would have been something you stepped in front of from the get-go. It's like these are middle-class jobs. We're talking about caterers and camera grips and all the rest of it.
Like other countries have been throwing tax subsidies at Hollywood saying come here to Croatia, Canada, where we shot it is the dumbest. You know, it's like why was it in Toronto by the way? I don't know if I'm like giving away a secret, whatever. Like 12 years ago that shit would have been in California. [laughter]
I mean, arguably years ago...
Arguably it might have been in Louisiana, it might have been in Georgia.
Maybe Atlanta, I would have taken, you know. So, and so there have been two levels of tax games that have gone on. The states have subsidized it and Georgia was one of the first big states to be like, 'Look, if you shoot stuff here, we're going to subsidize it.' But then other countries got in on the act, the UK, and then Hollywood was late in the game. And so now the genie's out of the bottle and they're like, 'Hey, get back in the bottle, Genie.' Like bring stuff back to LA when it's, you know, it's already moved.
And it's particularly bad for California. And is California like sort of the canary in the coal mine, a smaller-scale example of America in that you see the companies, like the super high-net-worth individuals, leave and go to Texas because the state income tax is so out of control in California.
Yeah, California. You spent some time there?
Holy shit. Then you know... Well, I mean, and you know, and you left. So, California had a bunch of natural advantages.
But what they've done is they haven't quite killed the golden goose, but they're in the process of killing the golden goose by making things really expensive, really onerous. What they thought is they're like, 'Look, there's so much value in this state. Like, we can tax and regulate you up the wazoo and you're going to take it, right?' I mean, California, just based on the GDP of California alone, would make it like the fourth biggest country in the world. I mean, California has Silicon Valley, it has Hollywood, it has agriculture, it has tourism, it has real estate, it has all of these incredible features, but it's become increasingly unaffordable to the point where there's been a mass exodus of tens of thousands of Californians who've gone to Nevada, gone to Arizona, gone...
Texas, yeah. Various Sun Belt states. By the way, companies too. Tesla went to Texas. That was a big deal. It was a huge deal. I mean, that's a massive decision. By the way, the same thing is happening in New York state where like California and New York are the two biggest net losers of population. People are just leaving and then the big winners are Texas, Florida, the Sun Belt, Arizona...
Tennessee has been a benefit.
Las Vegas, even though Las Vegas is so reliant on tourism that they're kind of like just...
Nevada's been a winner. Yeah. Californians have moved there because the lower tax rate, lower cost of living.
They're doing well on people moving there, but they're losing their ass on tourists not going there.
Yeah. In part because Trump has made it so Canadians won't visit us. I mean, that's the most effed up thing in the world in my opinion. It's like the Canadians, come on. I mean, you know, it's like...
Like I mean, they visited Vegas a ton. They visited all the border states a ton.
Yeah. And like, you know, it's like all these mom-and-pop businesses now. Anyway, don't get me started. It's one reason I ran.
Well, right. And here's what I want to know is that given the state of everything, especially this fucking war in Iran and now as we sit here today, barrel of oil is crude at $96 by the time we put this out in a few weeks. What's a barrel of oil going to be at that point?
I mean, probably around the same. You know, I mean maybe the war will fake end again between now and then [laughter] and then restart. So look, I know that things are shitty for the average American family and getting harsher and tougher. Kids going to come back from college and not have a job. They'll be in the basement. They'll still have school loans. You'll be looking up being like, why did we pay 80, 90, $100,000 for this degree?
I mean, it's deeply fucked. Now I'm optimistic in my own life because I think you have no choice but to be, you know, and I'm a dad. I've got two kids who are 13 and 11. So, you got to be a good role model to teenage boys every day. I'm the founder of a telco company that we're hanging out in, Noble Mobile. So, you know, it's like you want to make good things happen. And this is one of the things I try and explain to people. It's like you can think things are fucked in the macro and think things are going great for yourself.
You know, and that's, you know, I don't know if that sounds selfish from a guy who ran for president, but that's kind of the way you have to operate, you know, and one of the things I'm doing, and I can go into it at length if you want to, though you don't have to. Excuse me for a sec. But I've been trying to make things better for the entire country in ways, and people will be like, 'Oh, how the hell have you been doing that?' And I can go into it. But there are huge opportunities in part because everyone is out on the current political system, out on the two parties. They don't think that the two parties have their shit together, care, are going to do anything about it, etc., etc.
But how can you believe in a third-party system when the track record for the Green Party, the Libertarians, like whoever else, it's just been so bad.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Check it out. Check it out. I'm a numbers guy.
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So right now about half of Americans say they're independents. And I'm going to suggest a majority of the people listening to this right now are nodding their heads being like, 'Oh yeah, like I'm an independent.' Because among your crew, it's probably closer to like 60 to 70%.
Most of your crew is not like, 'Ooh, like I'm loving the Democratic party, Republican party.' The approval rating for the Democratic party is around 29%. Disapproved 50%.
Wow. Even worse than Trump.
Yeah. Even worse than Trump. Trump's at like 36. Democratic party's...
Jon Stewart said 32 last night.
Yeah. So, roughly a third of Americans like what they're getting from Trump. Maybe 29, 30% think the Democratic party's got their acts together. And then the Republican party is in the low to mid-20s. So, and then the disapprove of each of these is 50% or higher. And so, most of your listeners again nodding their heads being like, 'Oh, yeah, that describes me.' You know, it's like I'm not loving what I'm seeing and hearing from either side, but I don't have a choice, so I just hold my nose and vote for whichever one I find less noxious. And, you know, every four years is the way most of us interact with it.
Now, I'm the co-founder of the third biggest political party in the country right now by resources, which is saying very little because it just means I'm better at my shit than the Greens or the Libertarians. [laughter] But we're backing a couple of guys who are running for Senate right now in Idaho and South Dakota who are running as independents. But get this, the Democrat dropped out of the race in each state because the Democrats are such a non-factor waste of time in those states that they said, 'Look, I'm just going to, you know, mess this up, so I'm just exiting.' So in these states, the second party is the independent party, more or less, represented by a guy. You're not going to believe this. His name is Todd Achilles. It's his real name. Army tank commander veteran running for Senate against an 83-year-old Republican incumbent who, you know, hasn't, like no one's even seen him in 18 years. It's like [laughter] like I mean he's, and he hasn't had a competitive race his entire career because it's Idaho and the Democrats don't compete in Idaho.
The dirty secret of the current system is that in 80% of the country, it's either a blue zone or red zone and the minority party might as well not be there. So what the Forward Party is doing, not left or right, but forward, is we back independents who are then creating competition in places where there isn't that competition. And our vision is that we get one or two senators across the finish line this November. And then you could have a fulcrum in the US Senate as early as January of next year of sensible independents who are military veterans and think that, you know, like imagining that Trump is like, you know, all-knowing, all-seeing and all that stuff, you know, is not a thing for them. They also don't think that all white men are evil [laughter] or whatever the hell is coming out of the Democratic party at any given moment. And most of the country is right there in that zone. We think we can have a senator or two or even three by 2027.
And then you run a presidential primary that everyone can vote in on their smartphone. The way you manage your life gets verified via personalized QR code that gets sent to your mailing address. It's very hard to defraud. And then you could actually throw it back to the American people via the people's primary as opposed to having the two parties be like, 'Here's this piece of shit that you can't stand, but you're going to vote for him or her because you can't stand the other side even less. You can't stand us.' I mean, that's what's been going on.
So I'm a serial entrepreneur who's been trying to build this alternative movement for the last number of years, and it's growing all the time.
Let me ask you, at which point did you leave the Democratic party and start this new party?
So check it out. It's 2020. I ran for president as a Democrat, made seven debate stages, outlasted Kamala Harris is one prominent example. And it's one reason why, you know, I had this terrible feeling when she decided to run because I was literally standing next to her on the debate stage when she was running in 2020 and she dropped out before anyone voted because she was doing so poorly. So, I was like, wait a minute, like that's who you're going to anoint without a competitive primary. I mean, like...
They were kind of up the creek and that they had to because she was vice president.
Did they though? I mean, so check it out. I'll actually rewind even to that. So, in 2024, they're running Joe Biden, which I think is super stupid. And so, I back a guy named Dean Phillips who ran against Joe Biden. And Dean Phillips was a third-term member of Congress from Minnesota, very reasonable, ran a business. He ran Tanti Gelato, you know, the transparent containers. And Dean's entire message was hold a fucking primary. Like, don't just run the 81-year-old with a 38% approval rating. This is stupid. Now, the Democratic party did not listen to Dean. Instead, they excommunicated him. Joe Biden proceeds to shit the bed at the debate. And then there's a freakout where everyone's like, 'Oh my god, what are we going to do?' And then Joe's like, 'You know, I'm staying. I'm going. I'm staying. I'm going.'
Nobody freaked out until George Clooney did. [laughter]
No. And then George Clooney was like, 'Yo, I just saw this guy last month and he didn't know who I was.' [laughter]
I mean, I'm kidding, of course. But...
No, that happened. You hang out in Hollywood. So, you know, it happened. So then everyone's freaking out and then a bunch of the party bosses, Nancy Pelosi, Barack Obama are like, 'Yo, Joe, you got to go.' [laughter] And what several of them wanted was for there to be a hurry-up mini primary with let's say the top five or six candidates as quickly as possible so that you can decide on who takes over for Joe.
Which they could have done, but the problem would have been that they wouldn't have been able to, any other candidate wouldn't have been able to deploy all of these funds that had been raised on behalf of Joe Biden.
And this is the shit that I want to... So you are 100% correct that that was a major factor because there was a set of operatives and consultants who were part of the Biden team and Kamala Harris as the vice president, her name was there so that they could just transfer it over to her. She carried all of them, same money, same... Or let's say hypothetically they'd had the mini primary, you had JB Pritzker who's a billionaire who by the way had an organization ready to run, just in Gavin Newsom, Wes Moore, Josh Shapiro, Gretchen Whitmer, all these governors who would have been vastly better candidates than Kamala Harris because when Americans were like, 'What the fuck happened at the border?' instead of Kamala being like, 'Don't know,' like any of the governors could have been like, 'I was nowhere near that shit. I was solving problems in Lansing or Harrisburg or wherever. So when I'm president, we're going to fix that.' And then a lot of Americans have been like, 'Okay, yeah, you weren't the border czar, like you weren't in the administration. I can't really get too mad at you.'
Yeah. And the unconditional support of Israel was a real problem, too.
Yes. But check it out. Let's say that candidate wins this mini primary. Number one, they raise hundreds of millions of dollars like that because they're like, 'Hey, I'm the new nominee.' And then every anti-Trump Democrat would have been like, 'Blank check. Here you go.' And the existing Biden campaign, whatever resources they had, they could have transferred it to another candidate, they were allowed to do that. But you know what they wouldn't have transferred to the other candidate? All of the jobs, like the campaign manager wouldn't transfer over and become JB Pritzker's. So the money was fungible, the money could have gone, but the folks who were in that network were like, 'Yo, I like my job, so let's try and carry this over.' The people who failed, there's enough failure to go around. But Kamala Harris did something that was, you know, smart at the time. She called every DNC member and was like, 'Back me, back me, primary too divisive, back me.' And then she got a majority of the DNC delegates to be like, 'Yep, I sign off.'
And so check it out. At that time, I was running a PAC called the Pass the Torch PAC. No, I wasn't running it. I was like around. I was like, you know, one of the fundraisers for it and helpful. The Pass the Torch PAC trying to get Joe Biden to pass the torch. When he that morning said, 'I'm out,' there was like a huge inferno of energy among my crew being like, 'Who's going to say I'm now running to replace him?' And every governor who could have said, 'I'm running to replace him,' got the call from Kamala's team being like, 'We already got a majority of the delegates. So if you run, you're going to lose. You're going to look like shit. You're going to seem like you're anti-black.' And so each of those governors during that day made a social media announcement being like, 'I am back in Kamala. I am back in Kamala.' And the last person who, like my crew just threw in the towel, was after JB Pritzker said like, 'I'm back in Kamala.' We're like, 'Oh fuck.' Like if, because Pritzker had his stuff ready to go and was waiting to see whether he had an opportunity.
But it was not a foregone conclusion. It was not like there were other people that were at that moment weighing, am I going to raise my hand and announce?
What I want to get clear on, as I understood it again, all of the hundreds of millions of dollars that the Biden campaign had raised, I understood could not be transferred over to any other candidate except Kamala because she was already on that ticket that raised those funds. So now you said I was 100% correct about that, but then you said that in fact they could have transferred all of those funds to another campaign.
I thought you were 100% correct on the fact that there were some people motivated to keep it in the Kamala camp so that they could keep the same org. But my understanding is that they could have given the money to the DNC which then could have spent it on behalf of the other candidate. They could have.
I think that's a pretty important distinction because I think the way that I interpreted the whole thing, it was a bet that while a totally different candidate might do better, that money is so important in elections, like the better candidate with less money would be less effective than the, you know, more money for Kamala.
Yeah. Like someone should dig in. My understanding was that they could have made it happen and that there was a message being put out there that they can't make it happen in order to prop up Kamala.
That message definitely got through loud and clear.
But like I thought it was all total bullshit. Like number one, the new candidate would have had all the money in the world. Like let's say, you know, I mean, if you rewind the tape as to how much money Joe Biden had at that time, I would estimate he had somewhere in like the low hundreds of millions, right? And so if you had one of these other candidates, let's call him JB Pritzker, the dude's a fucking billionaire himself. Like you know that delta is hundreds of millions of dollars. You think if that dude's the nominee and he's worth several billion, he's not going to just pump a few hundred million in, like, you know? So that alone is like, what the fuck are you guys talking about? And then in my opinion, if you had like a superior candidate, that's probably worth a few hundred million dollars. You know, so like they're there like, you know, the other thing is that the entire like, 'I'm not allowed to do it.' I mean, come on. Like come the fuck on. You know what I mean? It's like, oh, we now have a couple hundred million in this defunct Joe Biden campaign. It's just going to sit there in a savings account. Are you fucking kidding me? [laughter]
Like...
People would have been like, 'Hey, you know, like they would have, they could have done like a million of fucking stupid.' You know what they could have done as one obvious thing? We're going to return all the money to the fucking donors and then...
And then they can re-register it.
Yes. [laughter] Like every fucking campaign can return the money to the donors. They do it all the time for like fucking reasons. It's like, 'Oh, you know, you farted wrong, like we got to send your money back' or whatever the fuck, right? So that like, but like this rationale never made any sense.
I mean, wow, it was just...
But they put it out there be like, oh, can't do it, can't do it.
It was articulated as such a black-and-white fact that I just thought, oh, we're stuck with Kamala because you need money to run and that's where all the money is.
Yeah. You know, I mean, by the way, one reason why Joe Biden got out was because no one was donating to that campaign for weeks after that debate. He was looking around being like, 'Hey guys, like you know, I'm still here,' and they were like... I mean, it was so bad that people were like, 'Not only am I not going to donate to you, Joe Biden, I'm not going to donate to a Senate candidate, to a congressional candidate because I think if you're on the ticket we're all fucked and I'm not going to give a red cent to anyone.' And that's when Nancy Pelosi and the rest were like, 'You got to get the fuck out.' Yeah, but like, you know, I do call bullshit on the entire 'it had to be Kamala.' It did not have to be Kamala. It was such a fucking fail. The Democratic party failed by not having a primary for Joe Biden in the first fucking place. And I was in New Hampshire when Dean Phillips got 19% of the vote against Joe Biden. It would have been a lot higher if the independents hadn't all piled in to vote for Nikki Haley against Donald Trump that night because they had to choose one race or the other. But 19% is nothing to sneeze at against like, you know, the incumbent. They should have had a primary and then after Joe shat the bed they should have had a primary. It was like obvious. Instead they were like, oh, it's got to be Kamala. It's like, no, it does not have to be Kamala. And this was like a, you know, and so it was just like a plunge towards disaster.
And then everyone's like... So by the way, this what I'm describing right now is one of the reasons why the Democratic party has lost the trust of the American people and why there is so much energy around the independent political movement now. Because even if someone historically was down with Democrats, they lost to Trump not once but twice. The first time because they fucked Bernie, who should have been the nominee in 2016. And if he'd been the nominee, he beats Trump, like, and then life is better.
But then they were like, 'No, it's got to be Hillary.' And people are like, 'Oh, fuck.' And then Hillary loses to Trump. So then you could write that off as like, 'Okay, that was like a colossal fuck-up, but we wouldn't be that dumb again.' And then they do it again. Like, you know, [laughter] like, you know, it's like in '24, eight years later, they were like, 'Hey, we're going to give you Joe. No, we're going to give you Kamala. Oh, we fucking lost again to this asshole.' So at this point, the average American even, and by the way, I know this because I know a bunch of people in politics and even people who are super Dem now are like, 'These guys are fucking terrible.' And then if I'm like, 'Hey, you know who you should look at? Todd Achilles in Idaho.' They're like, 'Cool. Independent. Cool. I'm into it.'
I'm so glad that you said Bernie would have won because...
Obviously he would have won.
It wasn't that Trump won in 2016. It was that the establishment lost. They just wanted somebody who wasn't an establishment fucking candidate. And that was Bernie.
Yeah, it was back then they were just like, 'Oh, you know, we're the establishment, we know best.' And Trump won as a big middle finger to like the powers that be. And the second time though, I mean, you know, everyone kind of knew what Trump's jam was, but then they just were out on the Democrats and out on Kamala and out on... I mean, there were two major issues. One, the like, you know, the open-border approach like piss...
everyone off, and two, inflation was a problem at that time, and everyone and and so everyone was looking around being like, ah, I trust Trump on the economy. I trust Trump on the border. To him again. And then here we are now. Most of those people, statistically, a lot of them are pissed off and disappointed.
Well, right. My my take on how Trump won the second time was that in the four years after, so the four years of Biden, you know, uh during those four years, people's quality of life slipped. So they they they they went into this 2024 election thinking, man, when Trump was president back then.
Yeah. When Trump was president, life was good, man. When when Trump was president, like my dollars went further. When Trump was president, like, you know, like I had and and and and [__] man. Like then then then Biden comes in and over the last four years my like my just everything slipped. Now my money doesn't go so far. Now my life isn't as good. And so they wanted to blame Biden for that. And and they thought that if they voted for Trump, their life would go back to being the way that it had been more than four years prior. And it just wasn't the case because it was fundamentally like not the the the problems were fundamental in any president like
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So check it out. The American way of life has been disintegrating for 40 years or so, give or take. Uh, and um, so things got shittier during the Biden years for a lot of people and they were like, "Oh, give me back, you know, Trump one era." But then things have gotten shittier still for them in Trump 2. And now they're and now they're super pissed.
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Infinitely worse. Like I mean, you've got like you you could argue that Trump mishandled the the COVID pandemic. I mean the big time the the COVID pandemic it was bad enough how how inflated the the money supply got on the heels of the 2008 crisis but then along comes COVID and you have just printed so much [__] money. Of course you're going to have inflation. So then like coming out of the COVID pandemic, you had to increase interest rates and that that meant of course you're going to slow down the economy, you know, and still inflation so stubborn. Like it was like a perfect storm of people's lives. We're going to feel like they got worse.
So my my joke is that if America has a motto today, it's we're going to extract as much revenue from you as possible. Like that. That's why Americans feel so ticked off and beleaguered because like you make a certain amount of money and then uh you just get nickel and dimed everywhere and what one thing no one American has ever heard from their health insurance company. Great news, your premiums are lower this year. Like every year now the growth model is, hey, we have to figure out a way to increase our revenue by double digits and our profitability by double digits cuz we're a public company and you're not making more people, so I guess we're just charging you more. And then everyone just looks up and is like, "Okay, I guess my health insurance is more." And and then at some point people like, "Wait a minute, like how how does this work?" Cuz like my my salary went up 5% and my costs are going up 12%. And now I'm like super pissed off. Uh I mean the three biggest headline costs for an American household are uh housing, healthcare, and education. And if you look at the inflation rate for each of those, they're much much higher than salary increases. So that's why everyone's super mad. Oh, by the way, now you can throw groceries in that mix, too, cuz like grocery inflation is now higher. Uh one, I started Noble Mobile to try and save Americans um you know, like 500 to a thousand a year. Here and we can talk about it. Um, but I looked at I I know this stuff cuz I looked at the cost structure of the average American household and it's [__] you know, like like people are people are angry for a good reason.
How do criminally underpaid occupations like um teacher, firefighter, police officer, how do they make ends meet?
Yeah. They they often can't live in the community they're supposed to teach in or protect.
Uh yeah, it people regularly now have a second job in addition to a teaching job as an example. There was even an Uber program saying like Uber for teachers uh because they figured out that teachers make good Uber drivers.
It's not that's not what you want.
I know that's super sad. I mean you have teachers in your family, right?
And um let me ask you this. Uh true or false, the social security system is by definition a Ponzi scheme.
Well, it's a Ponzi scheme in the sense that it's due to go bankrupt at a certain point. The demographics are very much tilted against it because you're going to have many more recipients than payers into it.
Is that Oh, no. So, does that mean make it a pyramid scheme, not a Ponzi scheme? [laughter]
right? Like um you're you're it's a pyramid scheme then.
Yeah, that's going to be a fascinating one because I can't imagine that uh politicians are going to let that dry up because if you had social security stop making payments, freaking old people revolution like that. I mean, they all live on fixed income. They count on that stuff. In their minds, they paid into it. If it goes bankrupt,
well, in their minds, they paid. Come on, Andrew. They they actually [__] paid into it. It's not in their minds. [laughter]
Okay. Also in their bodies missing their bank account [laughter] in their case it's like it's like a guaranteed payment. So there there is no they they gave the money the money but they have your account that account I can see
the government took the money. The government took the money, but then the government spent the money. Like, so
so it in my opinion, there is zero chance that our politicians are going to let Social Security go bankrupt for this reason because like it would be bloody murder.
I mean, how many different ways do we do we have to debase the value of the dollar? I mean, like
So, here here's my argument to people. Check it out. Check it out. I mean, you're actually old enough to remember this stuff, too. Um there was a time in the in the 90s when we actually had what's called a surplus
short [laughter] for for just during Clinton.
during the Clinton administration and for like what one year was it like 1996?
Maybe two maybe two years. Um so uh it is possible. Uh our economy has grown by leaps and bounds since then where now we're up to let's call it like you know $31 trillion GDP. Uh our uh
Yeah. Yeah. Our debt is around 40 trillion. So it's not great. Um but you can get yourself to somewhere closer to equilibrium if you just get serious on the revenue problem. I I mentioned before that all these multinational tech companies don't pay meaningful taxes.
Correct. It it's true for non-tech companies too.
Also true for individuals, high net worth individuals.
It's true for individuals.
So check it out. We are the only major industrialized economy in the entire world that does not have something called a value added tax. And the reason why everyone has a value added tax except for us is it's impossible to game your way out of if you're either a wealthy company or a wealthy individual. Uh you know I you know basic examples like a yacht. It's like if you if you buy a yacht in another country, you end up paying into a value added tax and it's inescapable. In America, we don't have that. You know, the only reason I can discern that we only have an income tax is it's so easy to game your way out of if you're like a wealthy company, you can avoid if you had even a minimum corporate tax in the United States of America at a level that people are going to be like, "What? That's totally reasonable." 15% one five people are like, "Oh, that's that's like pretty low." It would raise you hundreds of billions of dollars like that because the corporate loopholes are so enormous that every major company has a tax department that ensures they pay as close to nothing in taxes as possible every year.
Like corporate minimum tax, like you end up closing a really, really significant chunk of the deficit overnight. And most Americans would look up at that and be like, "Sounds reasonable." [screaming] Because most Americans are paying way higher than 15%. 15% does not sound extortionate to anybody, right?
But it does sound extortionate to these companies cuz they're literally paying 2%. Amazon paid 0% in taxes year after year while becoming a trillion dollar company.
What if taxation was based on valuation? Is there a way to do that?
So, this one gets sticky because a lot of the times a company can get ginned up in value um on paper but still be cash poor and the founders are cash poor
a lot of the Yeah. A lot a lot of the time.
A lot of the time. So, if you were to go to them and be like, "Hey, guess what? You owe taxes on the fact that on paper you're you're worth a lot of money." Like, I can I I can even use Noble Mobile as an example. Like we raised maybe 12 million thus far which means the company is worth a certain amount. Um and if someone were to be like hey pay taxes on an amount like would be like you know based on based on valuation it it might not match up to what's going on with like cash in the business.
If we give examples of this uh Uber forever was not profitable. Netflix was not profitable while valued at insane amounts of money, right? Like
Oh, by the but if you had either a corporate minimum tax or a value added tax then you get it like again there are maybe you know the top 80 economies in the world we're the only one that doesn't have a VAT and like and it's because every other government looked at it and was like you know what it's really easy to get out of paying taxes if you don't have this kind of system. So, and by the way, I ran for president 2020. Major economists came out and said Yang's plan is actually the most sensible plan uh on the on the table. The other [__] that I thought was dumb, wealth tax. Thought that was like super stupid. [laughter] Like there there are other taxes that people are proposing. It's like that's totally impracticable. Like, you know, why not just use the tax that every other country has been using for decades? And by the way, every other multinational company could implement a value added tax in America like this because they're already doing it for their operations in Europe, in Japan, in all these other places. They already the accounting firms already do this [__] for the same company when they operate on foreign soil. And then in America, they're like, "No need."
Wow. And and then on top of that, America gives them tax credit for everything that they paid internationally. So that further reduces the revenue for the US government.
Yes. By the way, someone did a study on how what the return is on lobbying. In other words, if I spend a million dollars trying to lobby the government, like what do I get back? The return that they found was 1,700%. If I if I spend a dollar on lobbying, I will get back $17 in goodies.
That sounds like a pretty subjective calculation, though. Uh, you know, I mean, all you have to do is look and say, "Hey, how much are companies spending on lobbying?" And it's always above zero because they figured out that there's a positive return on.
And by the way, having hung out in DC, it's crystal clear to me how lobbying works. Like, it's very, very effective. These legislators half the time don't know what they're signing off on. [laughter]
Like if if you're a a legislative staffer and you're looking at how to regulate the banking industry, you know who you ask?
The banking industry as a lobbyist being like here here's some good stuff that you can uh suggest and recommend. And that's what they like that's where they're getting most of their policy ideas from right now. So [laughter] So like like uh I mean what I put out there in 2020 like a bunch of major economists were like yeah that that's sensible. But no corporate lobbyist has ever put that out because they know it would end up changing the game for for their their companies. I mean, right?
And not even in a really bad way. All it would mean is that there'd be more money circulating throughout. So the US has some massive advantages. We are the richest most advanced society in the history of the world. And we're the largest consumer market. Like no company can threaten to be like, "Oh, [__] it." Like we're not going to like market to you guys, you know? Like they have to market to us. You set up a toll. The the big danger right now in American life is that we're eviscerating the middle class so much that people aren't going to have money to spend.
Well, it's because we we we've farmed out all of the the manufacturing, right? And that h that happened under Bill Clinton.
Yes. Totally. And uh the Democrats have not been forgiven for that in Michigan. Oh, well, Michiganish, but like in Missouri, in Ohio, by the way, Missouri and Ohio used to be purple and then they just went red because uh you know, the Dems blasted their manufacturing towns away.
Well, right. And just so so people maybe they don't know, it was uh it was trade with China that the Clinton administration just opened it up like, you know, fair trade. So then everything just became cheaper to have it made in China. And there went the the whole manufacturing base. 4 million manufacturing workers lost their jobs over that period. And those towns never recovered, right?
Super real.
Um so the person who by the way raised his hand and said, "Hey, this trade agreement is a disaster" was a guy named Ross Perot. Do you guys remember this? Sure. The giant sucking sound.
He ran as an independent. He got 19% of the vote in 1992.
He was a Texas oil baron worth a billion dollars in the '90s.
Oh, he also started a company called EDS, which was like a tech company at that time. So, he was like more of a techie than an oil baron. Um, but but he was from Texas.
And he got 19% of the vote in a time when at, you know, maybe 25% of Americans said they're independents. Today, it's 49 to 50% say they're independents. So the theoretical ceiling for a Mark Cuban candidacy or a Matthew McConaughey candidacy or whoever is like the Ross Perot of 2028 is probably 35 to 38%. Uh just based on the numbers.
Why why did you just say Matthew McConaughey?
Because America [laughter] wants to be all right. All right. All right. He'd have a great slogan. A lot [laughter] of Americans would be like sign me up. Okay.
Okay. All right. Well, now the [laughter] the name of your party is the Forward Party.
Okay. When when you say the hypothetical candidate, you know, the a Mark Cuban, you know, God, Matthew McConaughey, like are you saying that you that you did not actually start the Forward Party so that you yourself could run?
I started the Forward Party because I ran the numbers and I saw that each party was going to get more and more pulled to the extreme because of the way the primary system is set up where about 11% of Americans vote in the primaries and they tend to be kind of frankly like uh marginal. [laughter] It's not like 11% of the most mainstream reasonable people. It's 11% of the crazies. Uh and so I mean I'll I'll throw some fun numbers out there. What do you think the approval rate is right now for Congress?
Um, I got to believe that far less than uh 11% of the population would even have an opinion.
12% right now. So nine out of 10 Americans unhappy with Congress. And you can kind of see why. It's like your problem's getting worse. I mean and then if we can just clarify that it's not necessarily who's in Congress at the moment. It's just the fact that the dynamic the whole mechanism of Congress is congressive their approval rating of their individual member of Congress is significantly higher than 12% but uh of Congress as a whole 12%. What do you think the reelection rate is for a current member of Congress over the last 40 years?
I I'm gonna just go ahead and be busted as ignorant on this one.
94%. You're looking at a political system where nine out of 10 Americans are going to be unhappy with what's going on out of the the entire body and your reelection rate is a better win rate than the Jordan Bulls or [laughter] or the Kevin Durant era Golden State Warriors. Like if you are an incumbent member of Congress, you are essentially untouchable. Uh unless the party that you're a part of decides to primary you because our country has been split into blue zones and red zones so dramatically that the other party is a non-threat to you in 90% of districts. You know, people listening to this know whether they're going to be represented by a Republican or a Democrat. And if you are the incumbent and your party does not throw a challenger against you, you're golden. [clears throat] So what you've built is a system that's going to disproportionately amplify the point of view of the 11% on either extreme and the middle 60% is going to be increasingly left looking up and saying like okay like you know um like I I don't recognize this. So, I started forward just based on the math. And if you look, I gave the number seven TED talk of 2024 just saying like, "Look guys, I've done the math and I'm going to explain to you why the political system is going to get more and more [__] up. And then I'm also going to explain to you how to fix it structurally." And uh I said, "If we spent $200 million trying to fix this system, we could make a real dent." And then the folks that I'm associated with in this movement spent over $100 million trying to make it happen in six states in 2024, which is essentially to turn off the party primaries. And unfortunately, that was a very bad cycle. And those ballot initiatives ended up um falling short. But you can see very predictably that the parties are going to get less reasonable, more irrational over time. And so when I figured this out in 2020, I said, "Okay, I'm going to start forward as like the curative, the antidote." Now, I Andrew Yang want to be uh part of that cure. But if it's not me, if it's Mark Cuban, if it's someone else, I'm thrilled. Like I'm I'm not an egotist. I'm just like, you know, I'm the son of immigrants. I feel very grateful to have been born here. This country's been great to me and I just want the country to do better than than it's doing. And if I'm, you know, like leader of the free world, fan-fucktastic, but if I'm not and it's someone else I like and trust, maybe even better, [laughter] you know, like like I don't I like I'm not motivated by that.
Let me ask you the scary question. Is is there any real veracity to the claims that Trump might have multiple paths to uh shutting down an election in 2028 for president?
100%. It's one reason I was so pissed off at the Democrats having him waltz back in there in 2024. It's like, guys, if you get this guy back in and you think they're just going to play it straight, like, I don't think so.
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Like, I I think they could be like, "Hey, security concern. Shut down this place." Like, you know, fake votes here. Uh like I dispute the vote count there, the speaker of the house doesn't seat the person who shows up and says I won. Like that all of that stuff is on the table in my opinion.
I I think that that sounds like the the least less, you know, real threats. I think that the main one is guys were at war. Wartime.
Yeah. Guys were at war. Wartime. Then the perhaps even more scary than that one is darn it guys, AI broke out of the lab and uh you know like now like the the whole voting mechanism is compromised by AI. It's sorry we just can't have a vote.
I think that everything is possible now. And I don't mean that as a good thing necessarily.
That's right. [laughter] Like like the the the people who and it it pisses me off so much is that a lot of the Democrats in particular are these institutionalists and they've wised up over the last number of years, but it used to not be able to say a lot of things and they'd be like, "Oh, no, no." It's like they just assume that shit's going to like, you know, like keep on going and work and the rest of it. And I have always thought that we should be holding on tightly to a lot of these um institutions because they could be gone like that. It's a you know it's like it's a little bit like I'm a parent. It's really easy to wreck [__] You know what I mean? Like your kid can have a tantrum and like wreck something that took them days to build, [laughter] right? You know what I mean? Like like that like the negative is much much faster. Uh, and Trump, I have no problem with like family members of mine voted for Trump. Like, you know, I have no problem with Trump voters, but I thought that Donald Trump, the the human being, was going to be an accelerant to the deterioration of our institutional integrity.
Well, you know, like that's always that was always my jam. I was like, this guy's just going to make [__] worse. And one of the things I can't stand about the guy is like I'm the CEO of a company. Good CEOs are constantly trying to like elevate people and put them in a position to succeed and create opportunities. Like everyone who's kind of gotten into Trump's orbit ends up getting thrown under the bus at [laughter] a certain point. You know what I mean? Like that that's if you become a loyalist then you know it's like oh [__] [laughter] like you know like
that was more the case on his first term in his first term because he had like a lot of establishment you know people in the cabinet and so like without fail like 100% of them like were excommunicated and it became the waring and the scariest thing about his second term is that he didn't have that anymore so it was just like there's there was no checks and balances there's no the second term, a lot of it's been uh profiteering, you know, like a lot of it.
Yeah. [laughter] Yeah. He's just like he's like, "Hey guys, like we're we're in control now. So like let me just charge for like access to my social media post. They're going to move the market and then I move the market and now you know you you can speculate on all sorts of stuff legally. So like the the fam will will just end up benefiting to the tune of you know I mean so like this stuff it it's in it's infuriating to me in part because certainly okay look 2016 you know [__] Bernie maybe you couldn't have known that all this was going to go down but in 2024 all of this [__] was totally predictable [laughter] like it drove me crazy and you can rewind the tape you can look like you know I'm in New Hampshire January 2024 uh you know with my guy Dean Phillips being like guys you know like you're heading towards disaster have a [__] primary and so this stuff makes me mad and there was like an extended period of time by the way now I mean you know so we are where we are the question is how do we get out of it and uh I've crunched the numbers and like I did not think that either major party was going to get its act together and self moderate become more reasonable and solution like I just don't see it like and by the way the numbers don't see it either so then process of elimination the only thing that's left then is to activate the 50% of pissed-off independents and then create like an alternative party infrastructure so if you were to look forwardparty.com we have ballot access in eight states we have committees in like you know 30 states like we're like a multi-million dollar organization like I'm I'm like a real dude [laughter] I mean, I don't know if people realize that, but you and by the way, I just wanted to tell this story cuz I don't know if it's fun for like I have a lot of people in my circle that were trying to keep me from doing Nation's Dumbest.
I bet [laughter] they were like I would have been I would have been with them.
I when when you got there I told you I said I said that you being on nation's dumbest like it's zero upside nothing but downside because if if you win by meaning that you graduate first if you do like prove that you're smart it's like no [__] of course he's smart [laughter] you know like there's no there's no win there because it's like okay like you gave it's expected and if you don't go home first then it's like ooh Wow. Shock. Like, you know, I said that you being on Nation's Dumbest was the equivalent of me being a contestant on Fear Factor, [laughter] you know, like if I if I'm able to like stick a mouse, you know, cockroach. If I if I was able to like put my head in a bunch of cockroaches, like, no shitty can do that, of course. But if I [__] out, [laughter] he should have you on. [clears throat] I know better than that. I know better. I had [laughter] I had multiple opportunities. I had knew better. What happened to you? [laughter]
If your team was was pushing against it, what was your reasoning to to go ahead and do it?
Well, well, thank you for asking. [laughter] Uh, you know, was All right. All right. Uh, I'll give you the official logic. Official logic. I don't think that it did you any harm. I thought that you were they humanized you. I thought you were incredibly likable. I'm profoundly grateful that you and I got to, you know, become friends.
I don't think that it was an L on any level. I think you proved that you are indeed smart and it gave you exposure. So, so there's that, too.
Yes. So, check it out. Um, uh, my thinking on saying yes was number one, it was going to be like a possibly once in a-lifetime experience because like who gets to be in that environment? I was going to make some new friends. So, uh, that happened and I was going to get in front of a segment of the population that otherwise I would never get in front of. And then the negatives were things like you could look dumb like uh, you know, they can edit it anywhere they want. They could make you look like [__] And they did attribute answers we gave to different questions than the ones act. There was some deceitful editing.
