Summary

LU 3 ANDREW YANG EXETER NH TOWN HALL FOX POOL 123019 2020 [19:27:24] Well, hello to him, sir. [19:27:30] Oh, it is great to be back. I went to high school here, I stayed in this in just a few months ago. [19:27:35] How many you actually saw me speak at P.A.? A few of you. I thought, wow, are you student? So fun. I graduated from Phillips Exeter in nineteen ninety two. I'm going to be new that. Yes. [19:27:50] Well, and I get 100 percent affirm that I would never be running for president if I had not attended Exeter because I grew up the son of immigrants. And the conversations around the young household were not going to run for president someday. [19:28:03] And in Exeter, those are also not the conversations. But after X-ray, I went to a brown university. Anyone here do that? Really awesome. And then I went to New York City and went to law school and became a lawyer. I was an unhappy lawyer for five whole months and then left to start an ill fated dot.com. How many of you started a business organization? All right. So if you had your hand up, you know, two things. Number one, it's much, much harder than anyone ever lets on. And number two, when someone asks you how it's going, what do you say? [19:28:41] Great. Only one answer that question. [19:28:45] So my business went great until it failed. My parents told people I was still a lawyer and is doing great. And I've been bitten by the bug and I said I need to try and get better at this. Building something. So I worked at another startup and then another. And then I became the head of an education company that grew to become number one in the U.S. Then it was bought by a bigger company in 2009. 2009 was a very tough time in much of the country. [19:29:14] Can you believe the financial crisis was 10 years ago now and this community was better insulated than many others, but it was a devastating time for much of the country. And I thought I had some insight as to why the financial crisis had unfolded is because so many of the, frankly, very smart kids I've gone to Exeter and Brown and Columbia with had headed to Wall Street and come up with mortgage backed securities and derivatives and exotic financial instruments. And that had crashed the economy. [19:29:46] And I thought, what a train wreck. That does not seem like what you would want your talent and energy dedicated to. So then I thought, well, what would you want to dedicate your talent and energy to? And the idea I had was that our young people should head to Detroit, Cleveland, Birmingham, St. Lewis, Pittsburgh and help create businesses. But that thought that thought seemed out of reach because I tried to start a business myself in my 20s and it failed. [19:30:17] So it would be impossible to ask people to take on that same mission in cities that were new to them. But I thought, well, what would be realistic is for them to learn the same way I learned because I apprenticed to more experienced entrepreneurs and leaders for a number of years to develop. So I thought, well, you could have enterprising young people go work at existing growth companies in Detroit, Cleveland, St. Lewis, Baltimore, and then help those businesses grow. [19:30:42] So that was the vision. I started a nonprofit called Venture for America to make that vision real. How did you all work at non-profits? You volunteer at nonprofits. You should all have your hand up or these pretend on that one. [19:30:57] I feel like I'm a good person. Look around you. Anyone's fact checking you on that. [19:31:04] So the way I started a nonprofit is I put some money in and I started calling rich friends with this question, Do you love America? Many smart among them said, What does it mean if I say yes to this question? And then I said, at least ten thousand dollars and a number of them, including friends from Exeter, said, I love America for 10000. So we raised a couple hundred thousand. I grew to the millions, helped create several thousand jobs in 15 cities around the country. I was honored by the Obama administration multiple times. I got to bring my wife to meet the president. So my in-laws were very excited about me that week. [19:31:40] I look at this picture of our daughter with the president. [19:31:46] How many of you? Grew up here in New Hampshire. Many of you northeast like me, I grew up in upstate New York. Midwest couple s. West Coast or Pistons or Mountain West? Anyone? So I grew up in upstate New York and then came here for high school and then Rhode Island for college. I had never been to Ohio, Michigan, Alabama, Louisiana, all these places that measure for America operated. [19:32:17] And I was staggered by the Gulf between regions where if you fly between Michigan and Manhattan or St. Lewis and San Francisco, you feel like you're spanning dimensions or decades or ways of life and not just going a few timezones. How many of you had the same sort of experience you travel to other parts of the country? So I was trying to absorb what that felt like, where I was getting clapped on the back and brought to the White House, and I was I had this sinking feeling where the work I was doing was like pouring water into a bathtub that had a giant hole ripped in the bottom, that things were getting better, not worse in many, many communities in Ohio and Michigan and Missouri. [19:32:54] And then Donald Trump won the election of 2016. How did you all react when that happened? Tears, shock. Well, I've never heard regurgitation. But there are many people who I'm sure had that that impulse. I thought his victory was a massive red flag where tens of millions of our fellow Americans decided that taking a bet on the narcissist reality TV star was the way to go. And though you might have reacted with shock or dismay or disbelief, we all have family members or friends or neighbors who celebrated. [19:33:36] That's particularly true right here in New Hampshire. Now, if you were to turn on cable news and try and figure out why Donald Trump's our president today, what answers would you get if you just turn on one of the big networks, Russia? Well, this is at that time. So you could say economy, immigrants, Russia, Facebook, racism. Hillary Clinton, Wiener, and heard that one, but maybe Electoral College. Yeah. That's that. That might have been a big explanation. Many people didn't vote. Lack of turnout. Hillary Clinton emails. [19:34:16] . So I'm a numbers guy and I looked at the numbers for a clearer explanation as to why he won. And I found it. We automated away 4 million manufacturing jobs that were primarily based in Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Missouri, Iowa, all the swing states and that he needed to win if that list sounds familiar. This happened in New Hampshire, too, but it happened earlier in the northern part of the state. I've been to that part of the state. This state lost 12000 manufacturing jobs over a number of years. [19:34:51] And if you go to one of those towns, those towns have never come back. Where the plant closed, the shopping center closed. They lost population. When I was up in the northern part. Of New Hampshire, the town supervisor said, we measure our progress by how many people leave. Like if the rate of departure slows down, that's actually progress for us. That's what happens in many manufacturing communities that are hard hit. Again, four million manufacturing jobs lost in the swing states primarily. [19:35:21] And if you doubt this explanation, there's a straight line up between the adoption of industrial automation in a boating area and the movement towards Trump in that area. The strongest correlation you can find. And unfortunately, what we did to those jobs, we are now going to do two retail jobs. Call center jobs, fast food jobs, eventually truck driving jobs and on and on through the economy. How many of you noticed stores closing in? Your area of New Hampshire. And why are those stores closing? [19:35:52] One word answer Amazon or Amazon soaking up 20 billion dollars in value every single year. Closing 30 percent of our stores in malls. Most common job in the United States. Retail clerk, average retail clerks, a 39 year old woman making between nine and ten dollars an hour. What is her next move going to be when the store closes? How much did Amazon pay in federal taxes last year? Zero. That's the math. New Hampshire. Twenty billion out. Thirty percent of stores in malls closed. Zero back. Most common job starts to disappear. When you all call the customer service line of a big company and you get the software robot, you do the same thing I do. [19:36:28] Why did you pound 0 0 0 as a human human representative and to get some of that having to be. I'll do that. Oh, yeah, we all do that. That's always miserable. As soon as you hear the voice, you're like, oh, no, it's not funny. [19:36:42] But in two or three short years, the software is going to sound like this. Hey, Andrew, how can I help you? It'll be seamless ambition. Delightful. You might not even realize that software unless you know. What does that going to mean for the two and a half million Americans who work at call centers right now making 14 bucks an hour? How many have you seen self-service kiosks in a fast food restaurant like McDonald's? Every location in the country in the next two years, they say itself, sir, kiosk. [19:37:08] And now they're looking at the back of the house like the robot burger flippers and fry cookers. The rubber is really going to hit the road with truck driving or freight. How many of, you know, a truck driver here in New Hampshire? There are three and a half million truckers in the United States. Most common job in 29 states. My friends in California and I want you to imagine Asian guy goes to Exeter, goes to fancy schools. I literally have friends who are working on the self-driving trucks in Silicon Valley. They tell me they're 98 percent of the way there. A self-driving truck just took 20 tons of butter from California to Pennsylvania two weeks ago. Why butter? I've no idea. [19:37:54] But if you Google robot butter truck. [19:37:59] You'll see it comes up. And the reason why my friends in Silicon Valley are working on the robot trucks is because the cost savings are estimated to be one hundred sixty eight billion dollars a year. If they automate truck time and think about that number as the price I can. That's such a staggering sum that if you're an investor and someone comes to you and says, I've got software equipment that can help automate truck driving, I just need 500 million to develop it and hire hundreds of engineers. [19:38:28] You write that check because you see the hundred sixty eight billion dollar a year pot of gold. And if this team can make any meaningful progress, you're gonna get your money back. Multiplied many, many times over. My friends tell me that self-driving trucks are five to ten years away from hitting our highways in earnest. What will that mean for the three and a half million Americans who drive a truck for a living? [19:38:52] Or the 7 million plus Americans who work at truck stops, motels and diners that rely upon the truckers getting out and having a meal every day? Something like 10 percent of the jobs in the state of Nebraska support trucking. What will those towns look like when the truck doesn't need to stop? This is the greatest economic transformation in our country's history, what experts are calling the fourth industrial revolution. When is the last time you heard a politician say the words fourth industrial revolution? Two seconds ago. [19:39:25] And I'm barely a politician. [19:39:28] My wife would have run the other direction if she ever thought I was going to run for office again. Now the conversation around the AG now. So she jokes even now. It's like you make the worst politician ever because I'm really bad at lying. Got a terrible poker face. Even when I proposed to her, I was like so nervous. I think this ring of like burning a hole in my pocket, I was like, Oh my God, she knows. She knows. [19:39:56] Anyway, what did happen? [19:40:01] So I proposed and I eventually got a yes and the same general after noon period. [19:40:13] I know. I'm not sure I've ever told people this. [19:40:15] Sorry. I mean, I hope it doesn't. She's not embarrassed by this. But I think her exact reaction to me was, why are you doing this? Which is not exactly what you want to hear when you're on one knee. It's not exactly the desired response, but we got the. Yes, two kids later and happily married anyway. So my first reaction was not to run for president, even after I went through all these numbers that, oh, my gosh, we're scapegoating immigrants for problems immigrants have nothing to do with. [19:40:50] We're going through this historic transformation. How are we going to help our people transition? My first move was to head to Washington, D.C., to sit down with our leaders and say, what are we going to do to help our people through this time? And what do you think the folks in D.C. said to me when I said, what are we going to do? Who are you? Nothing. The three major responses I got were these. Number one, we cannot talk about this, Andrew. Like, we cannot communicate this, the American people. [19:41:23] Number two, we should study this further. Andrew. Number three, we must educate and retrain all Americans for the jobs of the future. Which sounds pretty good. How have you ever heard a politician say something effectively like that? No. But then I said, look, I looked at the studies. Do you all want to guess how effective the government funded retraining programs were for the manufacturing workers who lost their jobs? [19:41:49] I'm anchoring you low because it's very low. Zero to 15 percent success rates. They're a total dud of the former manufacturing workers. Half left the workforce and never worked again. And of that group have filed for disability. You then saw surges in suicides and drug overdoses in those communities to the point where now America's life expectancy has declined for the last three years because suicides and drug overdoses have each overtaken vehicle deaths. That's cause of death in United States America. [19:42:17] You know, the last time America's life expectancy declined for three years in a row. The Spanish flu of 1918, global pandemic that killed millions. You have to go back that far. It is highly unusual for life expectancy to ever to decline in a developed country. It only just goes in one direction, right? It is getting richer, stronger, healthier, just keeps creeping up. Highly unusual for it to go down once and then a second time. A third time. Almost unprecedented. You have to go back 100 years. So when I said this to the folks in D.C., one of them actually said to me, well, I guess we'll get better at it. [19:42:53] And one person in D.C. said something that brought me here to you all tonight here in New Hampshire, he said, Andrew, you're the wrong town. No one here is going to do anything about this because fundamentally this is a town of followers, not leaders. And the only way we will do something about it is if you were to create a wave in other parts of the country and bring that wave crashing down in our heads. And I said challenge accepted. I'll be back in two and a half years. And that was two years ago, New Hampshire. [19:43:20] And I stand before you tonight. [19:43:28] I stand before you tonight, I'm fifth in the polls to become the Democratic nominee. We raised 10 million dollars last quarter in increments of only 30 dollars each. So my fans are almost as cheap as Bernie's. [19:43:46] And we are growing because we are laser focused on the real problems, like I got Donald Trump elected and where advancing real solutions, we need to rewrite the rules of the 21st century economy to work for us and our people. Now, if you're here tonight and I really appreciate you braving the elements and coming here, I have to say I'm a briefing document anytime I do one of these events. [19:44:07] And it said expected audience, 80 people. And I look around, I'm like, ha, this seems more like, what's the fire code in this room? So what I get again, anyone any trouble? But one of the reasons why I love campaigning here in New Hampshire so much is that you all have the future of the country in your hands. And I'll give you one data point. How many like raise your hands and show me how many presidential candidates you've seen in the cycle so far. So this is before this would be eight. Go ahead. And was ready to hands. So 7 1. I appreciate that. [19:44:41] 5 7. More than five. So the reason why we all come here and stump for your vote is because you will have outsized power and influence in our democracy. I did the math. Do you know how many Californians each of you is worth? [19:45:01] A thousand Californians each. [19:45:10] So you look around this room there, about 160 of you here. That's like four football stadiums full of California. That is the power of this room. The power to change the course of history does like God. One reason it's such a joy to campaign here, because other Americans look up and they see the pipes as clogged full of money. And they think there's nothing they can do about it. They're generally right. [19:45:34] There is very little they can do about it. But you all can you can flush the pipes clean just like that. You can take a vision of the rest of the country and have it sweep the nation like wildfire. And what are we talking about? Seven weeks, six and a half weeks. Something along those lines. That's the power in this room. So it's a joy to be here. This is the real thing. Unlike all of the other window dressing and certainly a lot of the chatter from the cable news networks is completely irrelevant. [19:46:01] Property of what is going to happen here in seven weeks. So the question is, how do you use that power? What do you do with it? If you were here tonight, you know that my flagship proposal is that every American gets a thousand dollars a month starting at age 18. How well do you know about the freedom dividend? If you're here, probably everyone. And the first time you heard it, I know what you thought. You thought. That's a gimmick. That's too good to be true. That will never happen. [19:46:29] But this is not my idea. It's not a new idea. Thomas Paine was forward at the founding of the country. Call it the citizen's dividend. Martin Luther King fought for it in the 1960s. It is what he was fighting for when he was assassinated in 1968. It's called the Guaranteed Minimum Income. In his 1967 book Cancer Community, he said this is what we need to bring the country together. I had the privilege of sitting with Martin Luther King's son in Atlanta. And he told me that this is what dad was fighting for when he was killed. And my first reaction was, I can't believe you was called Martin Luther King dad. [19:47:04] But then you realize he is your dad. He's your Martin Luther King, the third. That was like, wow. It's incredible. [19:47:13] A thousand economists endorsed in the 60s. It passed the U.S. House of Representatives twice in 1971 under Richard Nixon. Family assistance plan came this close to being law. And then eleven years later, one state passed a dividend, or now everyone in that state gets between one and two thousand dollars a year. No questions asked. [19:47:30] And what state is that and how do they pay for it? [19:47:35] And what is the oil of the 21st century technology? A software, self-driving cars and trucks. A study just came out that said that our data is now worth more than oil. How many of you saw that study? How many of you have access to a Netflix password? There's a documentary called The Great Hack and it includes that study. How many of you got your data check in the mail last month? We laugh, but where did the data checks go? There's so much value being generated. Facebook, Amazon, Google, the mega tech companies that are paying zero or near-zero in taxes. [19:48:12] Do you see how it's happening in Exeter? This is your job to change it, to make sure that the Amazons of the world pay their fair share. Trillion dollar tech company paid zero in taxes. How is that possible? How do they pay less in taxes than everyone here tonight? So what we have to do is we have to get our fair share of every Amazon sale, every Google search, every Facebook ad, every robot truck mile, and then put it into your hands in the form of this dividend of a thousand dollars a month. We generate this value. [19:48:42] Your data is generating tens of billions of dollars with a value. You're not seeing a dime. What are you mean I'm making is that our data is still ours, even if we loan it to the tech companies. Am I right? So if anyone's profiting from it, should we not participate in this? Especially because after this thousand dollars a month comes into your hands, where would the money go? In real life? How much of it would be spent right here in New Hampshire? Most of it, not all of it. You might get your own Netflix password,. [19:49:19] But most of it would go to car repairs you've been putting off and daycare expenses and little league sign ups and local nonprofits and cultural and religious organizations. This is the trickle up economy from our people, our families and our communities up. This is how we make it so that everyone is included in the 21st century gains that are being generated at almost unimaginable levels underneath our feet. And I see it. I've been there. [19:49:47] I've been to the Googles and Amazons. I'm friends with some of the leading technologists in the world. And they tell me that they see what is coming out of the labs in artificial intelligence and they are deeply concerned about the impact it's going to have on the rest of the country. Well, they say, you know how the sentence never goes. It's like I see what's coming out of the lab and it's gonna be fine. But at the end of that thought, I spoke to a group of 70 CEOs in New York City, and I asked how many of you are looking at replacing back office clerical workers with A.I. and software? [19:50:21] Guess how many hands? What about a 70? All 70. The fact is, you could fire any CEO who didn't have their hand up because we know that all of their incentives are around maximizing the bottom line and their workers aren't part of that bottom line. That is the system that we have built and it is up to you all to change it. There is no one else. If you don't change it, it doesn't change. That's the power of New Hampshire, but that's also the responsibility you all have. And one of the reasons I love being here is that you take that responsibility and own it, take it very, very seriously. [19:50:55] So this thousand dollars a month goes from being dramatic to necessary and inevitable as soon as you recognize the enormity of the situation we're in. And here in New Hampshire, I've been all over the state. There are many, many rural areas that feel like they're being sucked dry truly. And you see the negative spiral that ensues when the main street starts closing. People start leaving property taxes. What happens to them? They go nothing. They're going up because then you have to support the school and they're looking around being like, well, not as many people around. [19:51:24] So then you get trapped in this tough cycle because your property taxes are creeping up and your housing. Is that your housing stock? It's actually harder to sell. So so this is the negative spiral that many communities here in New Hampshire are experiencing and their kids feel like they have to leave the community or even state in order to access the opportunities that they want. That is what we have to change. We have to make it so that the economy works for us and then we're not we're not all inputs into the machine. [19:51:54] And I know this on a personal level, in part because my wife is at home with our two boys every day, one of whom is autistic. What does her work get included at in our economic measurements every day? Zero. I get zero. Staying home with our autistic son gets a zero caregiving, nurturing, volunteering all zeros. Arts very often zero. Journalism increasingly zero or near zero. We're zeroing out many of the most important things in our lives. And this disproportionately impacts women and underrepresented minorities that the marketplace will systematically undervalue or exclude. [19:52:34] Right now in this country, I talked to my wife about this and we talked about universal basic income, which is the historic name for the Freedom Dividend, which is just everyone gets a share of the value that society is generating. And Evelyn asked me. She's like, how did it go from being mainstream? A thousand economists endorse endorsing Milton Friedman to now it takes the futurist presidential candidate does not have drag it into the mainstream like what happened in the last 50 years. [19:53:01] And what I said to her is that we got brainwashed over the last 50 years to think that economic value and human value are the same things that what the market says we are worth is what we are worth. That's how you wind up with otherwise reasonable people suggesting that we should turn a town of coal miners into coders when the mine closes. Because if the person or the town doesn't have any economic value anymore, then we stretch ourselves to ridiculous lengths to try and find some new economic purpose for them. [19:53:31] And that's going to be a losing battle over time for us all. It's a losing battle for my autistic son. It's a losing battle for the truckers who, no matter how hard they work, cannot outcompete the robot truck that's going to hit the highway. It's even a losing battle for the accountants and lawyers who are going to be competing against software that can do that job more cheaply and efficiently and more accurately than even the hardest working human professional. This is the truth of the era we're in. [19:54:06] Right now, we're measuring our economic success through three big measurements and what are they if you turn on cable news? Like what does it say about like, hey. Things are going great. Stock markets won. GDP to headline. Unemployment's the third. So stock market prices, the bottom 80 percent of Americans own 8 percent of stock market wealth, the bottom 50 percent own essentially zero. If you trumpet the stock market, you do it. You're tracking the fortunes of essentially the top 20 percent of Americans if you're generous. It's actually more accurately like the top 5 percent of Americans. [19:54:41] GDP is at record highs, while we're also setting record highs and stress, financial insecurity, overdose is student loan debt and rising again. Our life expectancy is going down while our GDP is going up. So which do you listen to? I would suggest life expectancy because if you're dying sooner, I guess not a sign of health. Yesterday, I was the me and the headline unemployment rate obscures the fact that millions are dropping out of the workforce, that people are working two or three jobs to get by. [19:55:19] That the majority of new jobs that are created are temp gig or contract jobs that don't have benefits. The fact that if you are a young person who's fortunate enough to graduate from college, you have tens of thousands of dollars in debt and there's a 40 to 44 percent chance that you do a job that does not require a degree. So if you're a parent of a college age person, they're coming out and you feel that uncertainty, you're not alone. [19:55:43] If you are a young person, we have set you up with massive indebtedness and a very insecure economy. In terms of your ability to climb the corporate ladder, that may or may not exist if you're a young person, I apologize to you because we have left you a mess. We need your help to clean it up. The first thing to do is to acknowledge the crisis state we're in. So if GDP, corporate profits in the headline unemployment rate aren't the right measurements. What would actually get you excited if I said it got better here in Exeter? [19:56:16] Health, right? Healthy life expectancy. That's pretty core. It's like I might say, hey, you got healthier, you're living longer. Clean air and clean water. I said we've got more sustainable, our emissions went down. You would be happy about that. Mental health and freedom from substance abuse. Say, I got happier in New Hampshire, unfortunately, is one of the epicenters of the opiate epidemic. [19:56:38] Eight Americans are dying of drugs every hour, which is unconscionable. And that was a disease of capitalism run amok. We let some of the drug companies profit to the tune of tens of billions of dollars and kill tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands of Americans. So these are the measurements that would tell us how we're actually doing. How about childhood success rates? How about proportion of elderly Americans who can retire in quality circumstances, income and affordability? [19:57:05] So these are the things that actually will tell us how we're doing. And as your president, I will update GDP to these measurements. And that sounds like magic, but it's really not. We made up GDP almost 100 years ago and even the adventure of GDP, so this is a terrible measurement of national well-being and we should never use it as that. And that was a hundred years ago. Think about that. So now we're following the century, the old measurement off a cliff and being like, hey, guys, things are going great. [19:57:33] Look at GDP while our people are struggling and suffering. Self-driving trucks will be great for GDP. They're going to be terrible for many American communities. So you have to line up the measurements to tell us how we are doing. Donald Trump in twenty sixteen said he was going to make America great again. And then what did Hillary Clinton say in response? America's already great. Remember that? [19:58:00] I know it's been a long three years like there. Oh, it's about to end, though. We're gonna end it, am I right? Applause So Hillary's response did not resonate with many Americans when she said America's already great. The problems are real. The suffering is real. We have to acknowledge the depth and severity of the problems, but then we need solutions that will actually help us all move forward. What we're Donald Trump's solutions. [19:58:34] He said we're gonna build a wall. We're gonna turn the clock back. We're gonna bring the old jobs back here. Hold those things to eggs that are you know, we have to do the opposite of these things. We have to turn the clock forward. We have to accelerate our economy and society as quickly as possible to rise to the real challenges of this era. We have to evolve in the way we think about ourselves and our work and our value. And I am the ideal candidate for that job, because the opposite of Donald Trump is an Asian man who likes math. [19:59:11] Now, most of you may not know this math is an acronym. What does it stand for? [19:59:17] Make America think harder. That's right. We have to identify the real problems and adopt real solutions. I feel like this is the right place for that. I feel like Exxon is a very smart town. Maybe in part because most the time I was here has had my nose in a book. [19:59:33] Is just trying to smarten up myself. [19:59:39] The problems are real, and unfortunately, the Democratic Party has been acting as if Donald Trump is the source of all of our problems. He is actually a symptom. He's a manifestation of a deeper set of problems that we have to cure as a country. The Democratic Party, in my mind, should have had a real period of soul searching when Donald Trump won. It's like, how the heck did we lose to this guy? How the heck did tens of millions of Americans decide to head this direction? [20:00:07] And a lot of it is that the feedback mechanism between the people in DC has broken down. Many people throughout the country don't feel like government is working for them. For us. And that's not a crazy feeling. Some of you might have that feeling, too. The feedback mechanism is breaking down. The fact is that Washington, D.C. today is the richest city in our country. What do they produce? Gridlock. Unclear. [20:00:34] Produce a lot of wealth, though, somehow. Our politicians in D.C. succeed whether we succeed or fail. And that is the the feeling that is driving many people towards Donald Trump. We have to restore that feedback mechanism by saying, look, the government is going to activate resources and put them in our hands when to trust our people. We're gonna build the trickle up economy. [20:00:59] I'm a parent. Like many of you, raise your hand if you're a parent. [20:01:04] So if you're a parent like me, you had this sense of unease. Maybe you've even been afraid to express it. If you were born in the United States of America in the 1940s, would something you might have been. You look great. [20:01:15] I mean, I wrote this for you about the 40s. Do the math. 30S. Oh, you look fantastic, sir. [20:01:26] 1938. [20:01:28] If you were born in the 1940s, the United States of America, there's a ninety three percent chance that you were gonna do better than your parents. That's the American dream. That's pretty strong. That's the dream that brought my parents here as immigrants. If you were born in the 1990s, which is some of you, I'm guessing. You're down to a 50/50 shot and it's heading heading downward very, very quickly. That is what we have to address New Hampshire. If you don't address that, it's going to be very, very hard to bring this country together. [20:02:01] I am running for president not because I fantasized about being president. I'm running for president because like many of you in this room, I'm a parent and a patriot. I have seen the future that lies ahead for our kids. And it is not something I'm willing to accept. And you should not accept it either. We have to do better for them. If we do come together in this way, we can be able to look our kids in the eyes and say to them, your country loves you, your country values you and you will be all right. And that is the message I want us to send to the rest of the country. In February of this year. Thank you all very much. So we're going to make it together. [20:02:49] We're going to rewrite the movie economy away for you because the rules are not working for you. They are not working. Am I right? I love it. I love being here so much. [20:03:02] What's the number one criteria for Democrats in terms of the nominee be Donald Trump? That's right. That's actually number one. How many for you that doesn't know. One good deal is right that it was a poll right here in New Hampshire that said that 10 percent of Trump voters would choose me over Donald Trump. Which is all we need to win. [20:03:27] You get all the Dems and progressives together and then you peel off independents and libertarians and 10 percent of Trump voters, we win this thing in a landslide. [20:03:35] Now, most Democrats have not realized yet that I am the candidate to take on and beat Donald Trump in 2020. But more people are realizing it every single day. It's a beautiful feeling. One survey came out that said that 18 percent of college Republicans would choose me over Trump. Think about that. It's us plus tend to 18 percent of Trump voters. And we're going to knock him out so bad. It's gonna be a landslide. And it has to start right here in New Hampshire and the next number of weeks. I love you guys. We'd love to take some questions. Thank you all so much. So so this handsome gentleman here is Zach Grossman is my campaign manager and he has passed me a note said that we just had our one millionth donation to the campaign. [20:04:24] As I said. What was it, someone in this room where you on the phone while I saw you? [20:04:37] Yeah. So I would love to take a in, sir. You had. Yeah. Yeah. Let's get this man on my career, I'll do it. [20:04:46] I'm coming your way, sir. I got this. [20:04:50] Thank you. [20:04:52] I'm attorney David Mirsky from Exeter. And my question is, I know that you have. The brilliant ideas for the future, but. Um, I just want to know, how are you going to defeat the evil that Donald Trump really is? [20:05:13] Thank you, David. [20:05:18] In many ways on the ideal foil for Donald Trump. And if you look at the candidates, he has messed with every single candidate in the field except for me, because I'm better at the Internet than he is. [20:05:34] And a lot of his strongest attacks don't work on me at all, because what does he do? [20:05:38] He caricatures his opponents as D.C. insiders and creatures. [20:05:42] I'm another outsider, but unlike him, I want to solve the problems of the American people and improve our way of life so I can draw in again 10 percent plus of Donald Trump voters who don't like D.C. very much. And as the Democratic nominee, all the Democrats are going to be obviously super excited. A survey just came out that said I am among the least disappointing nominees for the Democratic field. [20:06:08] Oh, really? [20:06:08] But this is an incredibly important stat because they survey thousands of dams and lakes, line all the Dems up and said, who would you be disappointed in and the least disappointed in? [20:06:19] And I was among the least disappointing. [20:06:22] Which means that the turnout is going to be high because people will get behind me and then I'll get again the 10 to 18 percent of Trump voters. And can you imagine me debating him? One of the things I can do more effectively than the other candidates is I can make him seem completely ridiculous. [20:06:47] Let's go, man, woman. [20:06:50] Thank you, Lacey. [20:06:59] How would the freedom dividend affect those on Social Security? [20:07:04] It's tax on top of Social Security. So I would increase the income of every Social Security recipient right now by a thousand dollars a month. And that seems again, too good to be true. But I've talked to hundreds, thousands of Americans who are receiving Social Security, and a couple of things became very clear. Number one, it's impossible to retire on Social Security alone. Number two, Social Security benefits are different depending upon whether you have to take time off from work often to parent to child. [20:07:30] So in many families, the mom is getting less and Social Security benefits. Number three, millions of Americans are facing essentially never retiring because they have to work until the day they die because they can't afford to stop. And if you look at the demographics, you see that we have to reformat our economy around caring for our aging relatives, but we don't have the economic resources in place to do so. So that's what this thousand dollars a month can do for our society. [20:08:00] It can enable Americans to retire with dignity because you a thousand dollars plus Social Security, then you're talking and then we can put actual resources and work to take care of people as they age gracefully instead of right now. I have no desire to go into a convenience store and see a senior citizen working until the day they die. That should be a teenager working for beer money, am I right? Yeah, I'm proposing the greatest expansion in Social Security benefits in history, and what I'm talking about now was mainstream wisdom in the 60s when we passed over security. It's just we've got a very, very extreme distant sense that. [20:08:42] Your. You have a lot of good ideas about campaign finance reform, and it's one of the most important things to me. We have a broken system. Thank you. So what would you do to fix our broken campaign finance reform and what hurdles do you think you will face when you try to do that? [20:09:03] I love this question so much because this is one reason why Americans have lost complete faith in government. Again, millions of dollars of lobbyist cash is clogging the pipes and you feel like your vote doesn't matter. There was a joke headline that said Americans should hire our own lobbyist because that's the only way we would actually get anything done. It's like I represent the American people. So most every Democrat will say we need to overturn Citizens United, which is correct. [20:09:30] We do need to do that. But the fact is corporate money had overtaken our government before Citizens United. Citizens United has made it more extreme. So what we have to do is we have to unify the people and the money. And I said this on the debate stage in L.A., fewer than 5 percent of Americans donate to political candidates or campaigns right now. So my proposal is to give every American one hundred democracy dollars used or lose it that you can give to any candidate or campaign that you want that would get the donate rate from 5 percent to what? What do you think? [20:10:04] 60 or 70 Americans are pretty lazy. So we've got a hundred free dollars, the lobby will be like, ah, I can't be bothered, but you could get it up to 60 percent. And if you had it to 60 percent, you would wash out the lobbyist cash by a factor of four or five to one. And then if a person was running for office and got ten thousand people behind them, that's a million dollars in financing. And then the lobbyist comes along and says, I've got twenty five thousand dollars for you could be like pass because I'm getting a million dollars and the people I'm going to represent them. So that is something that is bipartisan because many Republicans don't love. [20:10:40] While I stretch, I mean a lot of Republicans are in the pocket of these companies. I mean, a lot of Dems do, of course. I mean, I have a friend I went to Exeter with who worked in Capitol Hill for years for the right reasons, and he hated lobbyists when he showed up on Capitol Hill. What does he today, 15 years later, lobbyist? Yeah. You know, the you know the drill. So. Democracy dollars would free up legislators from having to pass the hat all the time. I'm for term limits of 12 years. We should send people to D.C. to do work and then come home. [20:11:17] Problem is that they're trying to make like a multi decade long career out of being in D.C. and that should not be the orientation. So the first big move is to pass some sort of public financing democracy dollars. But I'm going to suggest to you all that one of the ideal ways to get money out of politics is to send someone into the White House that doesn't owe anyone a dime in terms of corporate PAC money. And that's me. [20:11:43] Tens of millions of dollars raised in increments of only 30 dollars each. Purely people powered, purely grassroots funded. And I joke sometimes that, of course, the companies would never have sent me because I'm like the anonymous Asian man. Like, that's the dumbest. You know, you're like the corporate being like, oh, this is gonna work. Let's send that guy. [20:12:02] No. [20:12:02] Like, I'm just another citizen who represents our own interests and we need to break the stranglehold on the money. So I agree with Tom Stier. I agree with a lot of other, you know, times I went to Exeter as well. And, you know, we need to break the stranglehold of corporate money and flood the system with people powered money. I want to overturn Citizens United. But the fact is the corporate money is going to find a way to creep back in unless we flush it out. [20:12:27] I would also try and shut the revolving door between government and lobbyists in various ways, and I would have a ban on ever lobbying. But if you're gonna do the ban on ever lobbying or ten years, which is an eternity in DC because everyone ages out and then your relationships don't matter anymore. [20:12:44] Then you will need to ramp up compensation at the government level, say, look, no going to industry, but we'll pay you more. And that is a very, very fair trade. So, my friend. Well, I guess I went to there with like maybe he would not have been a lobbyist if there been a ban on being a lobbyist and he'd young paid a little bit more on Capitol Hill. He was a good guy. I mean, I'm still president. [20:13:08] Hi. When I was you. So I'm a student at Bill's Exeter. And my question for you is, what would you do to stop gerrymandering and give more people access to the ballot? [20:13:19] It's an excellent question. There's a lot of voter suppression going on around the country. Gerrymandering is a huge problem. It should be that voters choose our leaders, not leaders, choosing their voters. So that the leaders in terms of reform and activism on this are Eric Holder and President Obama who have this anti-terrorism pandering initiative that I endorse wholeheartedly. There are a lot of things I think we should do to try and elevate the ability to vote. [20:13:42] I would have automatic voter registration. Anytime you get like your driver's license or something like that. We should be registering you automatically. We should be giving people the day off on Election Day so that more people are able to vote. So there are a lot of things we can do to try and encourage voting participation rates. We almost deliberately make it hard to vote in this country. And that includes, unfortunately, the way we're drawing up the voting areas because that's being drawn up to favor one party or another. [20:14:10] And in terms of democracy, reform, and this is related to this, I'm for ranked choice voting because you need to be able to have people express their preference. You need a more dynamic party system in this country. Right now you have this duopoly and I'm a Democrat. But right now, independents outnumber Democrats and Republicans in terms of self identification. And if you're an independent, you look up and say, I'm not sure either of these parties are getting it. All right. [20:14:36] And your voice is getting drowned out because we have this winner takes all voting system. If you had ranked choice voting. You could express your true preferences. It would make our democracy much more vibrant and dynamic. So the Electoral College has problems, but I think that advocating for its abolition is frankly a stupid waste of time because you would require a super majority of states to get on board with it and literally like many of them would be like giving up their own power and shooting themselves in the foot. [20:15:16] The other thing is, if you were Democrats and you lose by rules that are literally engraved in the Constitution, and then you say, hey, we should change the rules. What does that say? You're saying like, I can't win by the rules, so I'm going to try and change them. If you're going to advocate for changes in the Electoral College, you have to win an election by the rules you have first and then go and say, hey, let's change these rules. If I'm for anything, I'm for proportional allocation of electors. Because and you will benefit from this and it's cool. I love you for it. But there are only a handful of states that people campaigning because their swing states. If you had proportional allocation of electors. [20:15:54] , then you would have candidates going to any state just to try and rack up some support and votes. And it would even it out in a much more truly Democratic way. Another side effect of abolishing the Electoral College that most people don't reflect on, it would privilege people in major cities in urban areas because every candidate would just go where they could get a lot of bang for their buck in terms of media exposure because the vote's a vote. So would I ever go to a rural area to campaign? [20:16:25] I probably wouldn't. I would just go to every major media market because anytime I show up New York or Los Angeles TV, I reach many more people. So there are problems with trying to abolish the Electoral College, starting with the fact that it's completely impractical unless you had dozens of states that are willing to vote against their own interests, which we all know is not going to happen. [20:16:49] I'll let you choose because I see so many hands and they all seem so smart. [20:16:58] I was interested in what you would do in your first year to address climate change if you were elected. [20:17:03] How many of you all are concerned about climate change? Yes, me too. It is bearing down on us. I was in Portsmouth and there were buildings that are literally flooding more regularly now than they were years ago. There is a multi-million dollar shrimping business that went to zero because the water got too warm and the shrimp died. If you saw me several debates ago, I outlined the new third position in American politics on climate change. Remember this position? Number one, we need to fight climate change. [20:17:28] Position number two. Climate change is a hoax. And then my position number three is it's worse than you think and it's already here. You all remember this. And then people were like, oh, Andrew is being negative. And then all of a sudden they adopted my position like the next debate. He's right. We need to invest hundreds of billions of dollars in protecting ourselves right now. You can't have towns in New Hampshire that are flooding and then having to fend for themselves on it. [20:17:55] So no one put a price on carbon. Day one, if you're polluting, you have to have that cause built into your bottom line, the business. And that would give us tons of resources to try and move towards wind and solar. And it would make the companies that are polluting have to become much more efficient or pay big bucks into the system. Climate change action and financial insecurity in my mind are tied together because right now 70 percent of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck. [20:18:27] Almost half can afford an unexpected five dollar bill. So if you go to them and say we need to fight climate change, what is their reaction? Can't afford it. I'm worried about next month. You know, like a year from now, it has to wait. And then what's the next natural reaction? It's probably not going to be so bad anyway. Or like maybe they're just hyping it up. We have to get the boot off people's throats so that they actually can focus on the bigger problems instead of just putting one foot in front of the other. [20:18:56] If you put a resource in the people's pockets, then instead of hearing we have to fight climate change in thinking, oh, my costs are going to go up, it's gonna be more inconvenient. We're going to lose jobs, which is what many Americans here they'll think. Yeah, you're right. We have to fight climate change because we're going to be here while my future secure. My kids future is secure. [20:19:15] The big move I would make is to build environmental sustainability into our actual economic measurements, because right now that tug of war is something that we're losing on with many Americans where you say we need to fight climate change and lead us here higher costs. The argument I'd make is what is the going to be the cost of climate change if we do nothing? Trillions of dollars easily. What we have to do is internalize that cost into our current measurements and say, look, when you pollute, that has a cost. [20:19:42] If we inaction has a massive cost, we have to act, invest hundreds of billions of dollars and make our infrastructure more resilient before the fact. And if this seems dramatic, we've already moved a town in Louisiana because the water levels rose. Do we think that's the only town that likely will have to be relocated? Of course not. There are gonna be dozens, maybe hundreds of towns around the country. [20:20:07] So we have to start making bigger moves now. And that's what I would champion as president from day one. I'm also the only candidate who's proposing a constitutional amendment to address climate change in our generationally because we can't let this be something that flip flops from one administration to the next. [20:20:27] All right. I'm going to be the bad guy. Thank you guys for your patience. We're going to take one more question and then this is very important, the selfie line. If you decided to plant yourself here earlier this evening, you won the lottery because there were going to have the line go this way will be very smooth and efficient. Get the pictures, get the selfies and appreciate how long you've waited here tonight. So one more question. You going to do this? All right. [20:20:58] Shout out. I need give me an even number between one and three of you. [20:21:07] That's how we roll, baby. Thank you. [20:21:15] Hi, Mr. Yang. My name is John and I'm with the Partnership to Protect Our Retirement Future. And my question is about the what the financial transaction tax. We'd like to call it the retirement tax, because it would really hurt a lot of it. Well, it sounds good on paper. It would hurt a lot of the middle class people. It would really it would hit all for one case, for three B's. It wouldn't hit anybody with a 529. And it really hit pensions. Any pension funds. So I was just wondering, do you have a position on it? [20:21:48] That's. [20:21:55] I want to strengthen the middle class and put everyone in a position to be able to eventually retire with dignity. I want to rewrite the rules of the economy to work for us and our people across the board. I do think a financial transactions tax is a good idea. And the fact is, if you're a retiree who has your accounts and like for one K, many of those investors are through ETF exchange traded funds and they're not like turning over their assets all the time. [20:22:22] And if you had a financial transactions tax, you could easily, if you were a firm, say, hey, maybe we're not going to incur more financial transactions and have our transaction costs go up. If you have before when K or 529, you're probably allergic to any kind of transaction fees or taxes, you'd want the money to be there and then grow steadily. So I'm for a financial transactions tax. [20:22:43] The bigger picture, I'm for putting money into the hands of every American and making this economy work for us instead of trying to see ourselves as inputs into the giant capital efficiency machine. Because right now we're in a race that frankly more and more of us are not going to be able to win. We have to evolve from thinking of this as like some kind of rugged individualism, meritocracy, where everyone's worth is determined by a combination of their like hard work and virtue and character and start evolving to say we all have intrinsic value. [20:23:15] Whether your able bodied, disabled software engineer or a stay at home mom, we have to make this economy work for everyone and let the rest of the country know it's not left. It's not right. It's forward. And that is where you all are gonna take us in 2020. Thank you all so much for a handshake. Thank you.