Andrew Yang Launches Universal Basic Income Push

He started as a tech lawyer who hated being a tech lawyer. Andrew Yang would quit corporate life to launch Venture for America, training young entrepreneurs to rebuild struggling American cities. But it was his 2020 presidential run, powered by meme-friendly "MATH" hats and a universal basic income proposal, that transformed him from obscure nonprofit founder to unexpected political phenomenon. Yang didn't just run a campaign. He sparked a conversation about automation's impact on working-class jobs that no other candidate was willing to touch. Born on January 13, 1975, in Schenectady, New York, to Taiwanese immigrants, Yang graduated from Brown University and Columbia Law School before working briefly at a corporate law firm and then a healthcare startup. In 2011, he founded Venture for America, a fellowship program that placed recent college graduates in startups in cities like Detroit, Cleveland, and Baltimore, aiming to create jobs in economically depressed areas. The program earned him a Presidential Ambassador for Global Entrepreneurship designation from the Obama White House. His 2020 presidential campaign, initially dismissed as a novelty, built a devoted online following around the "Freedom Dividend," a proposal to give every American adult $1,000 per month funded by a value-added tax on tech companies. The campaign raised over $40 million, qualified for multiple debate stages, and outlasted several sitting senators and governors. After dropping out, Yang ran for mayor of New York City in 2021 and finished fourth. He then left the Democratic Party and founded the Forward Party, a centrist political organization advocating ranked-choice voting and open primaries.