Presidential candidate Andrew Yang on Tuesday fired back at Sen. Bernie Sanders‘s (I-Vt.) after the senator criticized him for his proposal to use a universal basic income to tackle automation.
“Bernie ignores the facts that money in our hands would 1) create hundreds of thousands of local jobs and 2) recognize and reward the nurturing work being done in our homes and communities every day,” the entrepreneur tweeted.
“He also assumes that everyone wants to work for the government which isn’t true.”
Yang’s remarks came in response to a Hill.TV interview where Sanders told “Rising” host Krystal Ball that a federal jobs guarantee is preferable to guaranteeing income.
“We take a very different approach from Mr. Yang and that is, I believe, in a jobs guarantee,” Sanders said in response to a question about automation. “There are an enormous amount of work that has to be done all the way from child care to health care to education to rebuilding our infrastructure to combating climate change to dealing with our growing elderly population.”
Yang has centered his outsider campaign around a promise to give every American adult $1,000 a month, a version of universal basic income.
The former test prep company executive has defended the proposal as a response to automation, which Yang argues will continue to displace thousands of jobs.
Sanders acknowledged the risks of automation but told Ball that “people want to work” and the desire to “be a productive member of society” is a “very deeply ingrained feeling that people have.”
Yang and Sanders are two of the 10 candidates that have qualified for the third round of Democratic primary debates next month.
In the RealClearPolitics average of polls, Sanders currently is second in the crowded Democratic field with 16.7 percent of the vote while Yang is in eight place at 1.8 percent.
