Lev Radin/Sipa USA via AP Images
Mayoral candidate Andrew Yang visits Muslim-owned businesses on the first day of Ramadan, April 13, 2021, in the Jackson Heights neighborhood of Queens, New York.
New York City mayoral front-runner Andrew Yang is the archetype of a new political phenomenon known as the “techno-populist.” The “techno” does not refer to technology (though Yang is a big proponent), but “technocracy,” the belief that elite expertise and a kind of Henry Ford-ian faith in scientific progress can solve all ills of society, unmoored from conventional politics, coalition-building, or movements. More than anything, techno-populists like Yang like to boast about a universal, objective truth beyond the right-left ideological divide. His appeal to those outside the “conventional” Democratic Party electorate should be understood through this lens.
But this faith in a truth beyond politics can turn decidedly anti-intellectual if it fails to update for shifting evidence and the hard realities of balancing multivarious interests. In other words, politics cannot be written out of politics. As Cambridge professor Chris Bickerton explains, “At the heart of politics is the need to make decisions based not only on facts but also on a set of beliefs that provide a framework for action. Stripped of an ideological outlook that contains within it some vision of future society, decision-making dissolves into problem-solving.”
Giving people money seems populist until one realizes it’s being done to maintain a supposedly inevitable and dystopian status quo.
Take, for example, the way Yang talked about workplace automation during the 2020 campaign. Yang described workplace automation as “inevitable” across all of American life and thus felt that all related policy must be considered around the problem. There was nothing to be done about the central problem, only the eventual consequences of it. Thus, we were left with proposals like universal basic income (UBI), which theoretically would provide a small (even inadequate) monthly income to displaced workers, but do nothing beyond that to embolden or empower them.
UBI has been popular in Silicon Valley for years, because it lets the big tech companies off the hook from having to manage automation, artificial intelligence, and mass layoffs.
Yang’s UBI and automation views presume that nothing can really be changed, that workers will just have to deal with disempowerment and unemployment. Giving people money seems populist until one realizes it’s being done to maintain a supposedly inevitable and dystopian status quo. Alternative paths—like taxing robots or nationalizing them, so the benefits of increased productivity are broadly shared—are not discussed.
Yang’s UBI proposal for New York City is more modest than the one in his presidential run. The NYC program would provide 500,000 needy New Yorkers with a basic income of $2,000 a year, with the potential for growth should the city and private organizations provide more funding. Neither immigration status nor arrest record would inhibit any New Yorker from receiving the money. The Yang administration would invest $1 billion a year in the program.
But Bryce Covert, writing in The New York Times, notes that this funding would come “from ‘inefficiencies’ in the social safety net and a reduction in outlays—for homeless services, for example—that he sees as redundant if people are receiving regular checks.” This might be all well and good if you are fortunate enough to not have to rely on government assistance, but it would be disastrous for many who do.
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The small yearly allowance provided by Yang’s NYC plan “pales in comparison to the value of a housing voucher or a child care subsidy,” writes Covert. “It won’t cover health care or retirement. A basic income that takes these away, then, really just frays our social safety net until it’s too threadbare to support anyone. It’s a Trojan horse for dismantling public assistance altogether.”
Yang has several other Silicon Valley–flavored proposals: creating a consolidated mobile phone app for all NYC citizens that would “crowdsource donations” for struggling small businesses, implementing a point system “that allows users to earn points by shopping locally,” and providing e-payment vouchers popularized in China during the pandemic. Yang also proposes creating mobile phone apps to centralize restaurant takeout and small-business directories.
Public versions of Yelp and GoFundMe and Starbucks frequent-user cards aren’t inherently bad ideas, even if it’s unclear what problem is trying to be solved. But since tech companies would surely pick up the contracts to develop these apps, maybe it’s an end in itself. One reviewer of The War on Normal People, a book written by Yang in 2018, took note of how he bragged about all the “tech leaders, start-up gurus, entrepreneurs, and hedge fund managers [he] is in contact with. Countless pages offer anecdotes of Yang jetting to dinners with this Silicon Valley leader in San Francisco or that technical expert in the Northeast.”
It goes beyond just Silicon Valley. Yang has made clear that he does not believe “government has all the answers,” and that “the private sector is going to be key to the city’s recovery.” He has openly touted tech and “philanthropic” industries as the key drivers of post-pandemic New York City. Private donations would help fund parts of Yang’s UBI plan for post-COVID Broadway restoration, and Yang has listed “big banks, local tech firms and large landlords” as potential partners. The city would essentially become a charitable foundation.
Yang goes out of his way to propose potential sources of revenue for New York City that do not involve raising taxes on the wealthy.
What Yang will not do, of course, is raise taxes on the wealthy. In a speech that echoed President Joe Biden’s “nothing would fundamentally change” dirge from June 2019, Yang addressed a collection of New York City–based executives and made clear that he would not raise their taxes. While this thrilled the rich denizens of the city, it necessarily constrains the ability to create a more equitable society.
Yang goes out of his way to propose potential sources of revenue for New York City that do not involve raising taxes on the wealthy. One such proposal came in January, when he floated opening up Governors Island to casino gambling. Governors Island is a popular public park space, particularly during spring and summer months, close to both downtown Manhattan and downtown Brooklyn. It is quiet, pretty, and historical, and hosts many arts and cultural events.
Opening up a casino on the island, Yang suggested, would be an “engine” of post-COVID recovery and a way to deal with the city’s ongoing budget deficit. However, faced with strong pushback in the local press and on social media, the campaign quickly backed off, claiming that the candidate was just putting the idea out there, and that “this idea, like many others, would not advance unless stakeholders believed in the process, which is far from even beginning.” Maybe, but one should ponder whether or not someone who so easily throws out such ideas on a whim is worthy of being mayor of New York City.
Then there’s Yang’s frightening plan to “reform” the NYPD. His plan calls for increased police presence in the streets and in subways, particularly in marginalized communities. Yang has not committed to any policing budget cuts and in some instances has proposed budget increases. Yang’s website states that he is a fan of having police “out in neighborhoods” rather than “in their cars” or “behind a desk.”
There is no evidence that increased police presence and budgeting would make New York City safer; in fact, there is good reason to believe it would further imperil individuals and communities of color. This is a terrifying prospect given the NYPD’s history of brutality, murder, and undemocratic activity.
Yang also recently proposed a police crackdown of unlicensed street vendors, despite a January 2021 study indicating that unlicensed street vendors were already excessively policed. Gothamist noted that “New York City has as many as 20,000 street vendors, who have been credited with contributing hundreds of millions of dollars to the economy.” For many New Yorkers, street vending, whether licensed or not (and vending licenses in the city are difficult to come by), is a primary source of income. The pandemic has hurt these businesses enough without an unnecessary police crackdown.
As with the Governors Island casino proposal, Yang and his campaign quickly backed off the proposed street vendor crackdown.
So what does Yang’s “techno-populism” really amount to? What we seem to find here is a draconian, Silicon Valley–fueled vision of New York City in the post-pandemic era. It is far from progressive, and a lot of it would be right at home in the national Republican Party.
There is also an impulsivity to Yang that is troubling. One wonders if such policy retreats as we have seen with the Governors Island casino and street vendor crackdown will come as quickly, or at all, if Yang is in office and not having to worry as directly about voter opinion and public perception.
Ultimately, Yang believes he has a lot of solutions for what ails New York City and the world at large, and is quite confident in them. Some of these ideas are deeply baked into Yang’s political persona, while others seem to be made up on a whim. Either way, such confidence can only come from a naïveté about policy, governance, and, frankly, the way the world works.
