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

I'm pretty sure I'm not alone when I say this but Andrew Yang's message clicked with me almost immediately. It's no coincidence when a politician posts 100+ policies and a majority of them matches with your view.

I remember very early on Andrews bid for presidency was front page of /r/futurology. I think it is very important to maintain the effort to be inclusive and convert new voters. But I'm sure there are still a huge number of people that didn't need any convincing but just haven't heard of Andrew's campaign.

One thing that really struck me when hearing Andrew speak on Freakonomics was that this guy actually respects the academia aspect of Economics. Instead of the average politician that panders by regurgitating highschool level macroecon concepts, this guy seemed to actually understand what he's talking about. So I bought his book:
https://www.amazon.com/War-Normal-People-Disappearing-Universal/dp/0316414247

And that was really what put me on 100% for Yang. If you guys haven't read this already, I highly recommend it. If Andrew was writing stuff like this when I was in school, it would've influenced all my research.

The strategy of pushing tiny snippets of Yang to the mainstream like his interviews or listing his top 10 views is great. But Yang is more than that. He has actual substance that most other candidates lack. So for the "research" phase of this post, one of the first steps should be to read this book!

I'm not sure how we can get this book into more hands? Are there political book clubs? Can we get this on more must read lists?

I seriously don't have much hope that will happen. After reading Andrew Yang's War on Normal people. I believe that automation and it's cascading effects will devastate the workforce in America, in turn causing massive social upheaval. That is not taking into account problems beyond automation. Ultimately a systemic collapse will likely happen in my opinion at some point in the future.

International Yang Gang can phone bank or text bank for the campaign. It's the most impactful way to help. This video should help, if you want to phone bank (there might bea more updated video out there though): https://youtu.be/iohN7qG4ylg

You could donate to Steve Dannely's patreon. Steve does unofficial advertising for Yang and is planning to mail out 5,000 cards to older voters in New Hampshire. I got confirmation from him that international people can donate to him. Here's a link to his patreon: https://www.patreon.com/stevedannely

You can also buy "The War on Normal People." I think Yang is using the profits from this book to help fund the campaign. Here's a link to it on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/War-Normal-People-Disappearing-Universal/dp/0316414247

Audiobook Link:

https://youtu.be/MC25cPvp4zg

Amazon Link (non-affiliate):

https://www.amazon.com/War-Normal-People-Disappearing-Universal/dp/0316414247

lol it's not a stealth libertarian idea. The meme I see of "Yang doesn't care about class imbalance" is kind of ridiculous.

The dude wrote a book about class imbalance. https://www.amazon.com/War-Normal-People-Disappearing-Universal/dp/0316414247

The person who convinced him to run for president was Andy Stern, the leader of one of the largest unions in the world, and author of Raising the Floor.

> Andrew Yang--who is openly advocating for a saner politics--is getting smeared by hyperbolic, fear mongering, and poorly informed media outlets.

See, I'm not so sure. Yang himself is engaged in hyperbolic fear mongering. No doubt inspired by Trump himself, he's pushing a very extreme agenda of populism and identity politics. That's why Yang writes about "the Great Displacement" and why his book is called The War on Normal People and it is also why Yang's message echoes well with the rants of actual right-wing populists like Tucker Carlson. Let's be frank: these guys are all selling the same poison. At best Yang is interested in expanding the consumer market.

So, quelle surprise, Yang's extremist populism is going to be called out for being... extreme populism. And while Yang may take calculated risks to appeal to those groups who like extreme populism, the down-side is that people are going to accuse him of... appealing to extreme populists. None of this is particularly disturbing.

Anyways it will be interesting to see if Americans will ever find the language to unite and overthrow their capitalist overlords. I very much doubt it but it's interesting to watch figures like Yang and Sanders test out words and phrases.

Great to hear! People respond to truth and passion. You'll find that even folks who resist certain ideas at first will warm up to them if you stick with it. Persist my friend, and you will help us win many converts and fans. Thank you for believing in this campaign - let's go fight for our future! if we don't, nobody will.

I'm hoping that my book will open people's hearts and minds, so if you know someone open-minded enough to read it, it may help you make the case. https://www.amazon.com/War-Normal-People-Disappearing-Universal/dp/0316414247/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1506708384&sr=8-1&keywords=andrew+yang+the+war+on+normal+people. I love this book and am very proud of it and can't wait to get it out there. Let's do it!

I believe OP is talking about Rutger Bregman and his book Utopia For Realists

Also worth checking out Andrew Yang's [The War on Normal People] (https://www.amazon.com/War-Normal-People-Disappearing-Universal/dp/0316414247)

The War on Normal People - Andrew Yang

> Which has happened throughout human history. We have cars today because Ford figure out how to make them in mass.


Yes, I totally agree with this but those kinds of economic transformations like that didn't happen without literal riots. The Yang campaign is trying to get the US economy in front of the coming changes to prevent the riots from disrupting your way of life. We're not talking about disruption as in "I can't get a date on tinder", but like "my money has no value anymore because people are looting stores".

>Amazon has created opportunities for thousands of merchants that couldn't build a brick and mortar store, created the cloud revolution which in turn generated millions of tech jobs.

Again, I agree with what you are saying. Amazon and other tech companies have created millions of jobs. The problem is that at the same time they're taking away millions more jobs from people who have nowhere else to turn. The reality is that those people who lose their jobs predominantly never enter the workforce again, let alone get retrained as a skilled worker like a programmer. The point of the Yang campaign is that we need to stop thinking of a person's economic worth as being the same thing as their human worth. Humans have intrinsic value that is more important than their economic value, since more and more of our economic values are going to tend towards zero over time. Check out this video to learn about why automation is different this time. Or read this book, also about why it's different this time around.

>Corporations have declared war on the American public.

The War on Normal People

Here's the book

He has a book on UBI coming out in April.

I read it in Andrew Yang's book "The War on Normal People" (he's a wealthy entrepreneur who is running for president in the democratic party in the 2020 election)
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0316414247/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i0

Very interesting article, thanks for posting!

The article mentions several books advocating for UBI, including Annie Lowrey's Give People Money, Andy Stern's Raising the Floor, Philippe Van Parijs and Yannick Vanderborght's Basic Income: A Radical Proposal for a Free Society and a Sane Economy, Andrew Yang's The War on Normal People: The Truth About America's Disappearing Jobs and Why Universal Basic Income Is Our Future, and Rutger Bregman's Utopia for Realists. I have not read them, but from the article it sounds like they all make similar arguments in favor of a UBI and differ over the amount it should be. I believe all of them are assuming that it would be done at a national scale - I don't really understand why this couldn't be done at smaller jurisdictions (different states already have different policies about sales and income taxes, and Alaska has the closest thing in the US now to a UBI with its annual oil revenues share), or most ideally (but also more unrealistically) at a global scale (as the article points out a few dollars a week could lift millions of Indians out of extreme poverty.

I hadn't planned to include any of these books in the seminar, but if there is a strong interest in going into more depth on UBI, we could definitely do this. Maybe it would make most sense to select a set of books on the topic and split them amongst the class rather than having everyone read the same book, unless there is one book that is particularly good.

Good question. Yang addresses this in his book- The War On Normal People.

In brief, the changes brought about by AI and advanced robotics are unprecedented in scope and depth; far more so than the Industrial revolution. These changes cause much more fundamental shifts in both efficiency and labor requirements and are particularly severe for the middle class.

Why dont you go to Amazon and read what others have to say.

https://www.amazon.com/War-Normal-People-Disappearing-Universal/dp/0316414247#customerReviews

Read Yang's book - it looks like we're less than 10 years away from the profession of trucker mostly vanishing. That's more than 3M people in the US + 5-10M people offering services to truckers - without a job.

> It's called being held accountable for your actions.

I suggest that you read Yang's book The War on Normal People. Here's the free audio version. He understands why people actually support Trump and describes the major problems facing this country which Trump offered "Solutions" for. It's very insightful.

> it's pointing out that this user is likely to be engaging in deceit and propaganda.

To be fair, everyone unwittingly engages in propaganda.