Hello and welcome to the GZero World podcast. I'm Ian Bremmer. UBI or Universal Basic

Income was the cornerstone of Andrew Yang's 2020 presidential campaign and a concept not

even his fellow Democrats were quick to embrace. What a difference a few months make.

The White House has now begun sending out relief

checks directly to taxpayers and governments around the world are eyeing more permanent income

solutions in the wake of this pandemic. So I thought it would be the perfect opportunity to check

in with Andrew to see how some of his cornerstone campaign proposals are playing out in a post-coronavirus

world. And here's our conversation.

Andrew Yang, my friend, good to see you, man. It's great to be here. Thanks for having me, Ian. And thanks for

the kind words. Certainly, no one wants to be proven right in a pandemic. Exactly.

Okay, let's jump into some policy, first of all. So let me ask you about UVI, because of course,

you've seen that the Spanish government announcing that they want to move forward with it.

You've seen the Pope come out

just the other day and saying we need universal basic income. I mean, the way that you thought

about it, first of all, was it was $1,000 a month check for everyone. When you see what's been

happening now, the number of people that are being thrown off the roles,

the unemployment level we have right now. How does it make you think? Does it change the nature

of the universal basic income that you think is required in terms of the urgency, in terms of the

amount, in terms of how it's actually implemented. How has it

changed your views? It's reinforced my views in just about every respect, Ian. I thought we were in

the midst of a slow-moving crisis before the pandemic. And what this pandemic has really done is

it's accelerated trends that were already happening where we

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