The War on Normal People: The Truth About America's Disappearing Jobs and Why Universal Basic Income Is Our Future

by Andrew Yang

Overview

The New York Times bestseller from CNN Political Commentator and 2020 former Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang, this thought-provoking and prescient call-to-action outlines the urgent steps America must take, including Universal Basic Income (UBI), to stabilize our economy amid rapid technological change and automation.

The shift toward automation is about to create a tsunami of unemployment. Not in the distant future—now. One recent estimate predicts 45 million American workers will lose their jobs within the next twelve years—jobs that won't be replaced. In a future marked by restlessness and chronic unemployment, what will happen to American society?

In The War on Normal People, Andrew Yang paints a dire portrait of the American economy. Rapidly advancing technologies like artificial intelligence, robotics and automation software are making millions of Americans' livelihoods irrelevant. The consequences of these trends are already being felt across our communities in the form of political unrest, drug use, and other social ills. The future looks dire-but is it unavoidable?

In The War on Normal People, Yang imagines a different future—one in which having a job is distinct from the capacity to prosper and seek fulfillment. At this vision's core is Universal Basic Income, the concept of providing all citizens with a guaranteed income-and one that is rapidly gaining popularity among forward-thinking politicians and economists. Yang proposes that UBI is an essential step toward a new, more durable kind of economy, one he calls "human capitalism."

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780316414210
Publisher:	Hachette Books
Publication date:	04/02/2019
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	304
Sales rank:	206,647
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.20(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Andrew Yang is the founder of Venture for America, a major non-profit that places top college graduates in start-ups for two years in emerging U.S. cities to generate job growth and train the next generation of entrepreneurs. Yang has been the CEO, co-founder or executive at a number of technology and education companies. Yang was named a Presidential Ambassador of Global Entrepreneurship and a Champion of Change by the White House and one of Fast Company's "100 Most Creative People in Business." He was also named to the National Advisory Council for Innovation and Entrepreneurship of the Department of Commerce.

A major documentary with an Oscar-winning director, Generation Startup, featuring Yang and Venture for America, was released in Fall 2016 and is available on Netflix and other streaming platforms. He is a graduate of Columbia Law, where he was an Editor of the Law Review, James Kent Scholar and winner of the Class of 1912 Prize, and Brown University where he graduated with degrees in Economics and Political Science.

Table of Contents

Introduction: The Great Displacement xi

Part 1 What's Happening to Jobs

1 My Journey 3

2 How We Got Here 12

3 Who Is Normal in America 18

4 What We Do for a Living 26

5 Factory Workers and Truck Drivers 41

8 White-Collar Jobs Will Disappear, Too 49

7 On Humanity and Work 62

8 The Usual Objections 69

Part 2 What's Happening to Us

9 Life in the Bubble 85

10 Mindsets of Scarcity and Abundance 101

11 Geography Is Destiny 110

12 Men, Women, and Children 125

13 The Permanent Shadow Class: What Displacement Looks Like 133

14 Video Games and the (Male) Meaning of Life 143

15 The Shape We're in/Disintegration 150

Part 3 Solutions and Human Capitalism

16 The Freedom Dividend 165

17 Universal Basic income in the Real World 175

18 Time as the New Money 186

19 Human Capitalism 197

20 The Strong State and the New Citizenship 205

21 Health Care in a World without Jobs 213

22 Building People 225

Conclusion: Masters or Servants 241

Acknowledgments 245

Notes 247

Index 277

What People are Saying About This

Martin Ford

“Andrew Yang writes with passion and conviction, offering astute analysis—as well as a hopeful solution—for the looming challenge that may well define the coming decades: How can we ensure broad-based prosperity in a future where labor-displacing technology becomes vastly more powerful?”―

Editorial Reviews

02/19/2018
This eye-opening if depressing analysis from Yang, founder of the nonprofit Venture for America, proves far more effective at outlining an impending employment crisis in America than in offering practical solutions. Ascribing the crisis to increasing automation driven by artificial intelligence, Yang provides a sober rebuttal to more optimistic thinkers, such as Thomas Friedman, who believe that Americans can be transformed into lifelong learners, and thus keep pace with changes in the workplace that would eliminate millions of current jobs, including white-collar ones, such as attorneys specializing in document review, and even medical positions (computers have proven to be quite adept at reading and diagnosing radiology scans). Yang predicts, all too plausibly, that growing unemployment can lead to violent protests. But his efforts at offering hope fall short, since ambitious measures like providing a universal basic income for every American stand little chance in an ultrapolarized political environment. Utopian ideas like this undercut the seriousness with which his warnings about a dystopian near-future, with even greater income inequality, deserve to be received. Agent: Byrd Leavell, Waxman Leavell Literary Agency. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly

"Andrew Yang is one of those rare visionaries who puts dreams into action. The War on Normal People is both a clear-eyed look at the depths of our social and economic problems and an innovative roadmap toward a better future."—Arianna Huffington,Founder and CEO of Thrive Global

"This book is a must read. Andrew Yang is tackling one of the biggest challenges facing our country the way only an entrepreneur can, but unlike most, he sees the big picture. Making money is good for you-but building a strong society and strong people is good for all of us. The topics Andrew addresses in this book aren't about some dystopian future way down the road. These things are happening today, and every entrepreneur should read this book to understand the challenges of the next decade."—Daymond John, starof ABC's Shark Tank, bestselling author of The Power of Broke, andfounder of FUBU

"In this powerful book, Andrew Yang highlights the urgent need to rewrite America's social contract. In a call to arms that comes from both head and heart, Yang has made an important contribution to the debate about where America is headed and what we need to do about it."—Alec Ross, New York Times bestsellingauthor of The Industries of the Future

"America desperately needs a wake-up call. This book will open your eyes to the ongoing effects of automation. Fortunately, aside from knowing full well the many challenges we face, Andrew Yang has a firm grasp of the solutions, most especially our need for Universal Basic Income. Read this book and hear the urgent call for abundance over scarcity, and humanity over abject madness. The clock is ticking."—Scott Santens,Director, U.S. Basic Income Guarantee Network

"Andrew Yang writes with passion and conviction, offering astute analysis—as well as a hopeful solution—for the looming challenge that may well define the coming decades: How can we ensure broad-based prosperity in a future where labor-displacing technology becomes vastly more powerful?"—Martin Ford, NewYork Times bestselling author of Rise of the Robots

"A sobering portrait of a crumbling polity . . . [and] a provocative work of social criticism."—Kirkus Reviews

"I found [The War on Normal People] fascinating and troubling."—Major Garrett, host of CBS News' "The Takeout"

From the Publisher

2018-02-05
"In places where jobs disappear, society falls apart": a sobering portrait of a crumbling polity.Yang is the founder of Venture for America, a nonprofit that, like the Peace Corps, places young college graduates in urban startup companies in order to boost local economies. One place in dire need of such attention serves as a kind of canary in the American coal mine: Camden, New Jersey, a definitively contracting environment where hope is at a premium and all the negative social indicators high—all because the local economy has declined and disappeared. This is all part of what the author terms the "Great Displacement," which is the product of financialization, globalization, and technologization—i.e., processes that make jobs at the lower rungs of the social ladder very hard to come by, if not extinct. This world of "normal people" may be besieged, but that of the well-heeled, well-schooled, and technological is very bright indeed. As Yang notes, the average starting salary in Silicon Valley for engineers is nearing $200,000, a draw that has led to a decline in humanities enrollments and boost in technical degrees, so much so that Stanford University might just as well be renamed the Stanford Institute of Technology. In a rather depressing tour of have and have-not places (and all too many have-not places have "a casino smack dab in the middle of their downtown"), Yang projects that the latter are likely to grow while the former will become smaller, more isolated enclaves, a vision out of H.G. Wells in which "automation and the lack of opportunity" yield a legacy of social ruin. The author's support of a guaranteed basic income is just one aspect of a platform to fend off that bleak future. He also looks at such things as the "social credit" system of bartering goods and services and reforming the higher education system to "teach and demonstrate some values."Longer on description than prescription but a provocative work of social criticism.

Kirkus Reviews