I later met with a friend who’s a Boston-based venture capitalist. The conversation then quickly shifted to more pleasant topics. It’s impossible to avoid a lost generation of workers.” Her confidence in this assessment was total.

There needs to be a dramatic reskilling of the workforce, but that’s not going to be practical for a lot of people. She responded matter-of-factly, “We are getting better and better at things that will make large numbers of workers extraneous. I asked her whether she believed her work would result in job losses. They replace call center workers with artificial intelligence software. One is an executive who works at a software company in New York. I recently met a pair of old friends for drinks in Manhattan. I am writing from inside the tech bubble to let you know that we are coming for your jobs. Yang proposes that UBI is an essential step toward a new, more durable kind of economy, one he calls “human capitalism.” Read Excerpt At this vision’s core is Universal Basic Income, the concept of providing all citizens with a guaranteed income-and one that is rapidly gaining popularity among forward-thinking politicians and economists. In The War on Normal People, Yang imagines a different future–one in which having a job is distinct from the capacity to prosper and seek fulfillment. The future looks dire-but is it unavoidable?

The consequences of these trends are already being felt across our communities in the form of political unrest, drug use, and other social ills. Rapidly advancing technologies like artificial intelligence, robotics and automation software are making millions of Americans’ livelihoods irrelevant. In The War on Normal People, Andrew Yang paints a dire portrait of the American economy. In a future marked by restlessness and chronic unemployment, what will happen to American society? One recent estimate predicts 45 million American workers will lose their jobs within the next twelve years–jobs that won’t be replaced. The shift toward automation is about to create a tsunami of unemployment. From 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang, a captivating account of how “a skinny Asian kid from upstate” became a successful entrepreneur, only to find a new mission: calling attention to the urgent steps America must take, including Universal Basic Income, to stabilize our economy amid rapid technological change and automation.

The War on Normal People by Andrew Yang