Here's a story about Neoliberalism & Andrew Yang, already getting support in his bid to head America's largest city from "progressives" Kyle Kulinski & Krystal Ball:

Andrew Yang's non-profit, Venture for America, promised to create 100,000 jobs in struggling cities by 2025. 1/

In 2011, the Obama Administration named Yang a "Champion for Change."

This was telling. Venture for America had just started & hadn't created a single job. It was all PR driven by Yang & the Elite, financial-world circle VFA already occupied. 2/

Obama's support for VFA points to his overall approach to governance: Nods toward fully-privatized efforts to create jobs with support from Wall Street stalwarts.

This coming 3 years after the financial crisis. 3/

Yang's Venture for America had a specific formula: Take recent graduates from elite colleges, connect them to billionaires in cities like Cleveland & Detroit and use "entrepreneurship" and hype to create jobs.

Do you see a problem here? 4/

The people involved had little connection to these communities. The billionaires were bleeding them dry & the Ivy Leaguers largely came from somewhere else. Extreme wealth mixed with decisions from academic Elites were part of why these cities were declining in the 1st place. 5/

A quick look at Venture for America's current board & advisors explains why they went with this approach: It's filled with bankers, wealth managers, private equity executives, corporate executives...& there's over 100 of them! 6/

Not only did Venture for America fail to create anything close to the promised numbers of jobs but the jobs it DID create eventually departed to splashier cities, including Los Angeles & San Francisco. Hardly places dying for more billionaire-backed entrepreneurs. 7/

Per a Vox piece from 2019:

"people close to [Yang] say that the Phillips Exeter- and Columbia-educated lawyer has a special touch with the megarich...he managed to secure a personal introduction to UBS chairman Bob McCann, which led to a $150,000 donation from the giant." 8/

Venture for America's webpage touts companies created under its banner. Diamond Hook, a branding company, operates out of offices in 2 cities:

Los Angeles. And Manhattan. 9/

Yang left Venture for America in 2019 during the midst of his presidential run. At this point, Venture for America had created fewer than 4,000 jobs.

Yang & Obama's legacy? More branding companies operating out of cosmopolitan locales. 10/

But that's not where the story ends. You'd think a failed venture reliant on billionaire support wouldn't lead to presidential runs. But it did. And now Yang's running to be mayor of a city with more people than Lebanon. 11/

While running for president, Yang produced no substantive housing plan. Instead, he promised to relax zoning restrictions & empower private development for "micro-apartments" and "communal living." 12/

He supported cutting 20% of the federal workforce because public sector pensions were too expensive & he wanted the American government to run more like tech monopolies. He cited Apple & Amazon as examples.

This is pure Neoliberal logic going back to the Atari Democrats. 13/

In Yang, you have a mayoral candidate who doesn't believe in government. His plans for mayor now include reinstating the SALT deduction, a tax that disproportionately benefits affluent homeowners. That's a strange priority for a "progressive" to have. 14/

Yang also promises to bring tech jobs & entrepreneurship to New York, relying on private capital to turn the 5 boroughs into Silicon Valley.

This isn't "progressive." It's a recipe for MORE gentrification in a city that hardly lacks for it. 15/

Yang will dress his policies up with nods to poverty and the UBI; it's subsistence crumbs for an ideology that overwhelmingly favors STEM graduates and the investment class that profits off both "innovation" and public subsidies when said innovation crashes. 16/

"Progressives" like Ball & Kulinski are showing how ingrained Neoliberalism is in the American consciousness. Yang embodies the Obama years, where affluent technocrats got rich repackaging 80's-era ideals for the Internet Age while the working class further crashed & burned. 17/

Yang offers post-ideological rhetoric ("Not left, not right but forward!"), meaningless labels ("Human Centered Capitalism!") and dodges ("I'm not anti-Charter Schools I'm pro Good Schools!"). Obama but more favorable to geeks. 18/

Yang flatters the affluent by avoiding class conflict. He seduces the struggling with the promise of a UBI.

His politics are hollow and lead to a further consolidation of wealth in high places with enough thrown at the bottom to avoid revolt.

His politics are poison. 19/19

The fun continues...Who's advising Yang?

-Bradley Tusk, a venture capitalist & strategist whose clients include: Michael Bloomberg, Google, WalMart, Comcast & Uber.
-Chris Coffey, Tusk's partner & a veteran of 3 Michael Bloomberg campaigns.

Why is this important? Because when praising Silicon Valley's startup culture, Yang specifically singled out Uber. Not only is Uber unprofitable, it also relies on low-wage labor & was a major force behind Prop 22, one of the most sweeping anti-labor policies in recent memory.

Andrew Yang is surrounding himself with tech investors & trying to turn New York into a city favorable to their interests.

Don't buy the hype or the splashy, Darren Aronofsky campaign ad. Follow the money & read carefully. His Team advises Blackstone.