The War On Normal People: The Truth About America's Disappearing Jobs and Why Universal Basic Income is Our Future by Andrew Yang

★★★★★

This book is a call to arms. We are now in the midst of the Great Displacement, Andrew Yang's term for the mass exodus of Americans from the work force, caused mostly by automation. "The revolution will happen either before or after the breakdown of society. We must choose before." (p. 243)

The content of this book is basically laid out in the subtitle: "The Truth about America's Disappearing Jobs and Why Universal Basic Income is Our Future." If all you know about Andrew Yang is that he is a Democratic presidential candidate talking about giving every American adult $1000/month, no strings attached, and you think it's a crazy idea and don't understand where it's coming from, then this book is for you. Everything will be explained. 

On the campaign trail, when asked about climate change, Yang talks about how UBI would "get the boot off people's necks," allowing more people to focus on bigger things beyond their own survival, like the climate crisis. Making that link seems tenuous at best, but the reasoning behind it is laid out in this book. 

The War on Normal People is well-organized into three equally self-explanatory sections:

• Part One: What's Happening to Jobs. (TL;DR: They're being lost to automation.)
• Part Two: What's Happening to Us (TL;DR: The fabric of society is disintegrating.)
• Part Three: Solutions and Human Capitalism (TL;DR: Yang proposes a universal basic income, among other ideas.)

Andrew Yang's writing is approachable and cogent. Using numbers and data, insightful thinking, and common sense, Yang explains exactly which jobs will be lost to automation, and why. He doesn't oppose the coming automation; in fact, he makes convincing arguments for why certain jobs should be automated. What he wants to make clear is that continued and increased automation is inevitable, and as a nation, we should be prepared. We need an economy that will continue to value people, and that "value" should not be tied to jobs or income.  

It turns out, the GDP, stock market, and unemployment rates don't really give us an accurate picture of the state of our nation. Yang presents additional data like life expectancy, marriage rates, measures of confidence in government institutions, rates of deaths by suicide and drugs, rates of disability enrollment, etc., and their trends over time. Our nation is actually not well, and much of it is because "we prioritize capital efficiency above all and see people probably as economic inputs." (p. 160) Instead, "we have to make clear that we value people intrisincally, independent of any qualities or qualifications." (p. 212) This idea is at the center of Yang's "Humanity First" campaign slogan.

Every chapter was eye-opening and chock full of fascinating information, but if I had to pick just a few especially enlightening chapters, they'd be:

• Chapter 8 "The Usual Objections," in which Yang addresses common questions doubting the need to address automation.
• Chapter 9 "Life in the Bubble," in which Yang paints a clear picture of why and how the coastal elites exist, and where smart people fit in in the job market. (I run in these circles and can vouch for this chapter's accuracy.)
• Chapter 10 "Mindsets of Scarcity and Abundance," in which Yang recounts studies that show that the burden of having additional worries (e.g., financial struggles) actually interferes with thinking and self-control, including one's behavior and respect towards others. 
• Chapter 17 "Universal Basic income in the Real World," in which Yang outlines the success of actual implementations of different forms of UBI in various parts of the world, including Canada and the United States.

I picked this book up because I was curious about Andrew Yang as a presidential candidate. Whether he wins or not, I think it's imperative that the federal government start addressing, in very big ways, the issues he's talking about.