Andrew Yang is widely identified as a “hi tech entrepreneur,” leading many people (including me) to assume that he is worth many millions of dollars, and independently wealthy. That made sense considering his plan to give a thousand bucks a month (borrowed, of course) to everyone (and it’s not clear to me if legal or illegal aliens qualify).
But according to information in this column by James Freeman in the Wall Street Journal, he isn’t more than middle class, at least by the standards of Silicon Valley.
Julie Bykowicz reported in the Journal in May:
Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang, a self-described tech entrepreneur and philanthropist, earned about $150,000 last year, according to his newly released personal financial disclosure form.
The form shows the 44-year-old’s earnings last year came mostly from speaking engagements, including at the investment bank JPMorgan Chase & Co., and that he has assets worth between about $834,000 and $2.4 million, mostly tied to a Hudson Valley property.
Forbes magazine pegs his net worth at just $1 million. This estimate represents significantly more wealth than the average American enjoys. But if voters are inclined to select him based on his career in the tech industry, they should know that if he wanted to own property in the heart of Silicon Valley instead of the Hudson Valley, he might struggle to find a home he could afford.
Now, Yang has not made any claims to greater wealth than that, but I would wager that most people assumed that his success as a tech entrepreneur was on a much larger scale.
I have nothing against him for being not among the super-rich. But it looks like he has leveraged very modest success and an engaging personality into a major presence