Andrew Yang: If elected president I will ‘update GDP for the 21st century’

Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang told Hill.TV on Friday that if elected president he would update U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) for the 21st century.

“Any organization leader knows that if you have bad measurements, then you’re going to be headed in the wrong direction,” Yang told “Rising” co-hosts Krystal Ball and Buck Sexton.

“Robot trucks are going to be great for GDP, but they’re going to be terrible for the 3 1/2 billion truck drivers in the country and the 5 million Americans that work at truck stops, motels and diners,” he added.

Yang cited what he called human-centered capitalism as an important metric for measuring the economy.

“I’d like to talk about my wife, who is home with our two children, one of whom is autistic,” he said. “GDP would include her work at zero when we know it’s the opposite of the truth. So we need to start measuring things that actually indicate how we’re doing — things like health, mental health and freedom from substance abuse, childhood success rates, clean air and clean water, and other social indicators.”

“It’s very straightforward. As president in 2021, I’ll just go down the street to the Bureau of Labor Statistics and update GDP for the 21st century,” he said.

Yang is running on a progressive platform, with a proposal for a universal basic income that includes a $1,000 per month “freedom dividend” for every adult.  

— Julia Manchester