Yang’s Pet Issue Could Outlive His Campaign

When Andrew Yang started thinking about a long-shot bid for the U.S. presidency, he asked Andy Stern, the former president of the Service Employees International Union, out for lunch in Greenwich Village.

Back in 2017, Stern was perhaps the most prominent advocate for the idea of giving every American $1,000 each month. The year before, he had written a book called “Raising the Floor: How a Universal Basic Income Can Renew Our Economy and Rebuild the American Dream.” It hadn’t made any bestseller lists, but it did help popularize the idea, known as universal basic income, or UBI, amongst a certain kind of politically-minded technologist. Yang, who was then running a nonprofit called Venture for America, fit right into that profile.