T-R photo by Lana Bradstream Presidential candidate Andrew Yang stopped at the Marshalltown UAW on Sunday.

Roughly 40 people stopped at the UAW in Marshalltown on Sunday to listen to Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang.

Yang, who lives in New York City, is the founder of Venture for America, a nonprofit organization that focuses on creating jobs.

After President Donald Trump won in 2016, Yang said he studied what led to the election of the New York City real estate tycoon to the White House.

“The reason why Donald Trump won is that we automated away four million manufacturing jobs in Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Missouri and 40,000 right here in Iowa,” he said.

Yang said when a factory or manufacturing closes in a town, the political color changes from blue, which is the color of the Democratic Party, to red, which is the color of the Republican. He asked the people if they have noticed shops closing on Main Street and explained the reason behind that is retail internet giant Amazon.

“How much did Amazon pay in federal taxes last year,” Yang asked. “Zero — less than everyone here in this room.”

Yang asked the crowd how many had seen self-serve kiosks in fast-food restaurants, which he said would be found in every state in the country by 2021 and how many knew about the up-and-coming robotic truck drivers. Yang said he has friends in California who are working on robot trucks which never need to stop for food or sleep.

“They said they are 98 percent of the way there,” he said. “How many of you all know a truck driver here in Iowa?”

Yang said this is not a Trump problem, but that the president is a symptom of America going through the greatest economic transformation. The waves of automation and innovation are pushing people to the sidelines which is how Trump got elected. The country needs to transform with the economy. One way he said the country can transform is a universal income.

As a presidential candidate, Yang’s signature policy is a monthly universal basic income of $1,000 for every American adult provided by the sales of data information. Yang said the tech companies, such as Amazon, Facebook and Google, are profiting off of data information gained from each person in the internet.

“Those are some of the policies I am proposing to balance the scales because we are completely outgunned by the tech companies,” Yang said.

——

Contact Lana Bradstream

at 641-753-6611 or

lbradstream@timesrepublican.com