Andrew Yang's $1,000 promise may be coming to a town near you.
The entrepreneur is following his failed 2020 bid with a nonprofit dedicated to bringing his signature campaign promise to life, Yang announced Thursday. Humanity First will turn one New York town into a testing ground for the universal basic income Yang constantly promised during his run, along with other initiatives that make the nonprofit basically an extension of Yang's campaign.
In a beta version of Yang's so-called "freedom dividend," Humanity First — a name borrowed from one of Yang's campaign slogans — will give $500,000 to a to-be-determined town in the form of $1,000-per-month checks for each resident. Also on Humanity First's list is a "data dividend" program that will use its funds to protect people's data privacy rights.
The funding for the UBI initiative comes from venture capitalists, entrepreneurs, and even a professional poker player, as well as some anonymous donors, The New York Times reports. So far, Humanity First has received $3 million in pledges to make the UBI pilots work. "My hands were tied as a political candidate to some extent," Yang told the Times, so now he has a chance to "get to work" and actually give his policies a whirl.