.
@AndrewYang
: “What I’m saying to the American people is technology is the oil of the 21st century. That when I have AI that can do the work of hundreds of thousands of call center workers ... How much of that value is the American public going to see?”
“You have record-high levels of corporate profits, but also at record highs in the USA right now: stress, anxiety, mental illness, depression, even suicides and drug overdoses. Student loan debt, record highs,” says
@AndrewYang
on
@Freakonomics
.
The coronavirus pandemic has added fuel to the fire calling for UBI. Workers who can't work remotely face an impossible decision: go to work to get paid or stay home to help “flatten the curve” of coronavirus.
@AndrewYang
@AOC
@TulsiGabbard
@jasonfurman
.
@AndrewYang
didn't make it to the White House on his plan to give every American over the age of 18 $1,000 per month, but he's still pushing forward the idea of a universal basic income.
@HumanityForward
Billionaire (& perhaps one of the more unconventional tech CEOs)
@Jack
told
@AndrewYang
he is giving away all of his money in his lifetime: “I live by the principle of everything is connected, so if someone is in pain, I’m in pain, ultimately, over time.”
.
@jack
announced he is donating $3 million to the
@mayorsforagi
UBI project. “This is one tool to close the wealth and income gap, level systemic race and gender inequalities, and create economic security for families,” he says.
@AndrewYang
@MichaelDTubbs
"One of my supporters said something to me — that the opposite of
@realDonaldTrump
is an Asian man who likes math,"
@AndrewYang
tells
@CNBCMakeIt
. "We made 'math' signs and then people just hold up 'math' signs."
Billionaire
@mcuban
: "So be Patriotic. Go out there and get rich. Get so obnoxiously rich that when that tax bill comes, your first thought will be to choke on how big a check you have to write."
.
@JeffBezos
on spending his $131 billion: "The only way that I can see to deploy this much financial resource is by converting my
@amazon
winnings into space travel. That is basically it."
.
@AndrewYang
is not the only presidential candidate looking to give all Americans $1000 per month. Universal basic income is also part of
@marwilliamson
's economic plan.
.
@Mcuban
: "The biggest issue for entrepreneurs, for capitalists, for those of us who are successful is, if someone is only going to be paid by the hour...they’re always going to fall behind ... income distribution, disparity is going to get wider & wider.”
There is enough energy in the nuclear waste in the US to power the country for 100 years, & doing so could help solve the thorny & politically fraught problem of managing spent nuclear waste. The tech exists, but it has not been commercialized in the US.
I spoke with a collection of tech workers who shared their stories with me of why they decided to leave tech-first jobs, which in many cases they enjoyed(!!) and were getting paid very well at(!!), because they felt compelled to take climate-first jobs.
.
@AndrewYang
will be speaking at the 2nd
#DemDebate
of the 2020 election tonight. The central tenet of his platform is UBI. He wants to give $1,000 to every American between the ages of 18 and 64. What's UBI? Here's everything you need to know:
From
@TonyRobbins
on planning for the 2019 of your dreams: “We all want certainty so bad ... But if you’re totally certain every moment, what’s going to happen? You’d be bored. So we need uncertainty. We need a lot of it.” via
@successmagazine
We are excited to announce
@CatClifford
as Cipher’s new senior science and economics correspondent based in NYC. Most recently, Cat helped launch the climate desk at
@CNBC
where she was the climate technology & innovation reporter.
Learn more about Cat:
I spoke with Sahil Lavingia, the 2nd employee at Pinterest, who left the company before his equity vested. He talked openly about what it's like to watch Pinterest go public and how his values have evolved in the last decade. cc
@shl
I spoke with
@mzjacobson
of
@Stanford
about his calculations for 100% wind, water, solar energy in the US in 2050. His models include no fossil fuels, carbon capture, bioenergy, blue hydrogen or nuclear power. Here's how/why he comes up with his roadmaps:
.
@Merck
CEO Ken Frazier reflects on his childhood: "I know for sure" that being picked as one of a "few inner city black kids" and bused 90 minutes to get a "rigorous education" fundamentally "put my life on a different trajectory."
.
@mcuban
on the future of healthcare: "My son is 9 and by the time he's 40, let's say, the idea of going to a drugstore and buying over-the-counter medicine that says, 'You might be the one unlucky schmuck that dies from this,' is gonna seem barbaric."
NYU Stern's
@ProfGalloway
: Facebook CEO Zuckerberg is “the most dangerous person in the world.” He reaches 2.7 billion people. And he "has not demonstrated ability, or will, to ensure the doomsday machine will not be weaponized (repeatedly) by bad actors.”
For her nuclear video for CNBC,
@mpetrova92
spoke to
@Heather_mom4nuk
, co-founder of
@moms4nuclear
, & I wrote a piece featuring her voice. “We’re not utility executives. We’re not guys in suits. We’re not mad scientists,” Hoff told CNBC. They’re mothers.
The
#YangGang
got a show of support from
@elonmusk
this weekend. That's perhaps unsurprising as the
@Tesla
/
@SpaceX
boss &
@AndrewYang
have both publicly talked about how UBI will be an eventual necessity when robots & automation put humans out of work.
Huge week for the carbon removal industry. On the heels of $925M announcement from
@stripe
@Google
@Meta
& others Tuesday,
@sacca
's climate investment firm
@lowercarbon
announced today it is launching a $350 million fund specifically for carbon removal.
The central foundation of
@AndrewYangVFA
's campaign for president in 2020 is every American citizen ages 18 to 64 should get $1,000 in cash/month (UBI). So. He's picked one mom in New Hampshire to give $1,000 per month in 2019 to show the benefits of UBI.
Scientists from
@MIT
and
@Stanford
published an analysis of closing Diablo Canyon, the nuclear power plant in Calif. They say keeping the plant open could save $21B in grid costs by 2050 and 90,000 acres of land. Industry watchers say it is a long shot.
Twitter billionaire boss
@Jack
shared the food, sleep and exercise habits he uses to maximize his performance with
@bengreenfield
. Among the biohacks Dorsey uses are ice-cold baths, no food all weekend and meditation.
It's the late season California wildfires which are the most dangerous, according to
@western_fire
. That's because there's more dry vegetation built up from the hot summer weather and because of strong dry winds that blow through California in the fall.
Today I went to the
@CFS_energy
campus in Devens, MA, where I toured the construction site of Commonwealth Fusion System's SPARC system. The tokamak being constructed there will be operational in 2025 & demonstrate net energy shortly thereafter, CFS execs told me. Story to come.
.
@AOC
's idea to raise taxes on those making $10 million or more got a lot of energetic attention. Of note. The billionaire investor Warren Buffett has made repeated claims that he and other ultra wealthy could pay more in taxes/don't need tax cuts.
The first in my "Transmission Troubles" series for
@CNBC
explains WHY the OLD transmission infrastructure in the US is a problem -- and is a particularly acute CLIMATE problem. Thanks to
@RobGramlichDC
,
@JesseJenkins
and
@KStaschus
for their contributions.
I dove into the nitty gritty of the application process power generators go through to connect to the grid. The old, well-intentioned process is holding back the energy transition & reveals, yet again, the elephant in the room: Lack of enough transmission.
On selling
@reddit
for $10 million in 2006 (most recently valued at $3 billion), co-founder
@alexisohanian
(husband of
@serenawilliams
) says he needed guidance. His mom had just been diagnosed with terminal brain cancer, and he had never seen so much $$.
Palm oil is in 50% of packaged goods Americans use, from ice cream to soap to lipstick. Rainforests are slashed & burned to grow palm oil plants, devastating populations of rhinos, elephants, tigers, orangutans.
@C16Bio
is making an alternative w/ microbes.
“Our result is a significant step forward in understanding what is required for it to work. To me, this is a Wright Brothers moment,” Omar A. Hurricane, Scientist at
@Livermore_Lab
, told CNBC. “It’s not practical, but we got off the ground for a moment.”
The coronavirus stimulus package is stuck in Congress. Meanwhile, on Friday,
@AndrewYang
's non-profit,
@HumanityForward
, launched a $1 million+ relief effort, which includes giving $250 to $500 checks away to social media followers who need it.
Details were released this morning about the $100 million carbon capture innovation prize sponsored by
@elonmusk
and being organized and run by
@xprize
. The contest will be for direct carbon capture and will run for 4 years.
“To the rest of America, a [universal basic income] may seem like a pipe dream, but from my vantage point some form of it seems inevitable,” says
@RBReich
, the Secretary of Labor under President Bill Clinton.
45 years after launching
@Apple
with Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak is launching a 2nd company. The Woz is entering the green tech space with
@EfforceOfficial
, a marketplace where organizations find investors to fund projects to improve their energy efficiency.
In the second installment of my Black in Silicon Valley series, I talked to Kyle Woumn, the 25-year-old tech lead of start-up
@getoverflowco
in Silicon Valley. He's young, but he's already seen a lot. And he wants to use his influence to help.
@Kyleculus