Is Andrew Yang getting interesting? The favorite mayor has recently developed the habit of making reasonable, though broad, suggestions for governing Gotham – and that is driving his rivals crazy. Yang has not proved that he is ready to be mayor, but his competitors’ unbalanced reactions to even the most obvious of his ideas show that they are not.
Yang’s least interesting or constructive idea is his striking question: universal basic income. Last year, he ran for president for giving every adult in America $ 1,000 a month. The idea is to give the poor the choice of what to do with their money, instead of giving them vouchers for housing, food and so on. The UBI gives everyone else a weapon against wage stagnation and job automation and offshoring.
The Big Apple cannot give each adult $ 1,000 a month. It would cost $ 80 billion a year, exceeding tax revenue. Thus, Yang offers a simplified version of his “universal” plan: $ 167 a month for the poorest half a million New Yorkers. But he never explains important details.
Ignore UBI, however, and Yang has other useful ideas. Last week, he suggested that the city not raise the taxes of the biggest wage earners, as that could drive them away. “If you raise taxes. . . where people actually vote with their feet and go to Florida, so you’re not fulfilling the policy objective, ”he told the Association for a Better New York.
Yang also suggested that the city consider incentives to attract suburban workers who had been away from their desks in Manhattan for a year to give the ride another chance. It’s also worth a try: why not give people vouchers to catch the suburban train, which is due within a few months, to make the bored at home try a trip to the city? (Yang’s rival and city controller Scott Stringer predictably accused him of practicing “Municipal Reaganomics.”)
Yang also suggested that Mayor Bill de Blasio does not spend all of the $ 6 billion in relief money that we are receiving from the feds. Since the city could face years of deficits, Yang said, it would be prudent to save 70%.
This is sensible – but another rival, De Blasio’s former legal advisor Maya Wiley, attacked him. “Our city deserves a serious leader, not a mini-Trump,” said its spokeswoman. Huh?
Eric Adams, president of the Brooklyn district, did not need a political reason to face Yang. At an event that accepted the union’s endorsement – where he should be in a good mood – Adams said that “people like Andrew Yang” “never worked in [their] whole life. . . . you will not come to this city and think that you will disregard people ”.
Yang is a lawyer. He worked at startups, ran a school testing company, and founded and ran a nonprofit organization that trains people to be entrepreneurs in struggling cities. He always had a job. And he has lived in New York for a quarter of a century.
What is behind the attacks is that the inmates are getting scared of the outsider.
The insiders bet is that Yang’s favorite status will disappear as voters pay attention. Yang has about 16% of the vote, followed closely by Adams. Half of the voters remain undecided.
But the idea that people will suddenly learn who Stringer and Adams are and be excited about them is a tenuous one. And, as the latest survey by Fontas Advisors shows, surely – 85% – people know who Yang is.
But they also know who Stringer and Adams are, with 64% and 62%. Wiley, with 42 percent, has room to perform. The others don’t.
Stringer and Adams also face the threat of other candidates with a low recognition name. Ray McGuire was a career investment banker; Kathryn Garcia ran the Sanitation Department. Only a third of voters know who they are. As voters learn, they can like what they see, affecting the undecided.
The final wildcard: vote by choice by classification. Of course, Adams and Stringer could fight each other for a few votes, only to see everyone share their first choice between them and then choose Yang, the affable participant in the Yankees game, as their second choice, placing him on the top.
Yang’s critics are not entirely wrong: he demonstrates an uncomfortable lack of familiarity with the city government, and some of his ideas – how to build a casino on Governor’s Island – are strange and idiotic. But for voters who want change in a crisis, their main well-known rivals are very familiar with the government.
Nicole Gelinas is a contributing editor for the City Journal.
Twitter: @NicoleGelinas