There are MANY things that need to change. While Democratic Socialism may not be the answer for everything there are some things that should not be profit based. HEALTHCARE, EDUCATION, CARE OF THE ELDERLY, QUALITY CARE OF CHILDREN SO PARENTS CAN WORK, WAR and WEAPONS.
Right now this country needs more tax revenue to pay for all of the above, not less tax revenue.
IF YOU CONSIDER ALL OF THE ABOVE TO BE “DEMOCRATIC SOCIALISM”, we hope you will open your eyes and really look at the issues that are preventing this country from putting an emphasis on PEOPLE over PROFITS.
If the cost of the service has gone up by 200%, it doesn't really matter whether it's delivered by a government or a for-profit company - it's still unaffordable and still robbing younger generations of opportunity.
We need our tax system to go back to the pre-Reagan era. We need health care to be not for profit and part of the well-being of the nation. We need to bar Private Equity companies from involving themselves in housing, health care and other essential businesses. We need expeditious legal paths to citizenship for immigrants. We need to revert Citizens United and ban big money from politics. We need to enforce the Rule of Law for every person, especially the powerful and well connected. We need to prioritize the well being of the citizens. The USA is not a great country. There’s lots that needs to be done. Jake, use your power to make this country good. Work with the socialists because they are trying to make life better for people. Align yourself with Bernie Sanders et al and you’ll have mine and my family’s undying support.
You don’t really have a handle on economics. What Mamdani is offering is direct help necessary to lower income folks. Stuff that European countries get as a matter of course that will give them immediate relief. Healthcare? Mandate only non-profit, Dr. organized insurance and costs will immediately come down. Let’s see If you dare. Zoning? That is developer propaganda. It has nothing to do with the skyrocketing costs of construction. Again. Only direct subsidies will help. Market rate housing is for profit and can never get deliver truly affordable housing. You rather exemplify the failure of Democrats. I suggest you update your understanding, make friends with Mamdani. He is the future if there is to be one.
Market rate housing can and has delivered affordability. See the building boom today in Austin and Minneapolis which is driving down or keeping rents flat. See also the boom in market rate housing in Manhattan in the early 20th century, which provided affordable options for immigrants moving to the US and stepping on to the first rung of the economic ladder. Zoning was incepted as an explicitly racist and classist concept to target Chinese laundries in CA, and Russian Jewish garment workers in NY. Affordable housing types were de facto banned. When you see unaffordable high rises go up today, you see the long-term impact- those are the only buildings that are allowed to be built and smaller types are often banned. Removing zoning barriers is not developer propaganda. Subsidies are a short-term bandaid that exacerbates the long-term problem with more $$ chasing the same supply.
Zoning has always been a tool for separating uses like commercial, industrial, and residential. It is used to protect residential from toxic industrial, for example. It has nothing to do with racism. Racial groups were separated through deed restrictions and real estate practices before the 1968 Fair Housing act.
Market rate housing is always affordable for some but not for others. It always has limitations and building a lot of apartments in a single lot is no guarantee just because you are looking at two different types of construction with different requirements. This is a Yimby argument and Yimby was started by Facebook and YELP to force multi unit construction in R-1 districts. It does not deliver low cost housing. And that was never its goal. It contains a lot of propagandistic thinking that works for big development interests.
The bottom line is cost of construction. That is very difficult to reduce. To bring new construction to an affordable cost for…I would say half the population, direct subsidies are essential. It’s good to remember that we used to have pretty functional public housing programs. Many of these legacy projects still exist, thankfully.
Possibly, but most towns and cities have commercial lots an underutilized possibly abandoned buildings that can more cheaply be utilized. The most expensive land for a project is one with a single family home that requires demolition.
What zoning does is it limits density, meaning only single-family homes can be built here. No multi-family hones. Increasing density by allowing multi-family homes increases the housing supply, which brings down the cost. Econ 101. However, most American homeowners don't want density and multi-family housing be cause, they think, it will cheapen the stock of their primary investment, their property.
I really question whether costs are brought down when buying a single family home, demolishing it, and rebuilding. The LA Times had an article about 3 years ago saying that nonprofits were spending $1,000,000 per unit to build. Do the mortgage taxes and insurance calculation on that or the average cost in your town and you will see the problem. The rezoning argument does serve private equity investment firms that are looking for solid high rent investment vehicles in “good” neighborhoods.
Maintaining a piece of land devoted to a single family home does not change the density. If zoning would allow a multi-family unit on that same piece of property, it would increase the supply which brings down cost. Which was my point. So, I'm not sure why you're bringing up a piece of land devoted to a single family unit.
As to nonprofits building housing, in my city those are deed-restricted, meaning they are not high-rent. I'm not sure what the mortgage taxes and insurance calculations problem your citing is, nor for whom it's a problem. The city? The city taxpayers?
More supply doesn’t necessary bring down costs. Rents are determined by how much it costs to construct. Private developers do not build where they cannot recoup costs. What are those costs?
1. Land acquisition, 2. Design and planning, 3. construction, 4. Financing. Let’s say the cost is $1,000,000 per unit. What does the rent have to be to pay that debt service (figuring 100% of costs). Using my calculator, that is $8500/mo not adding an onsite manager, future savings for maintenance or profit for the investors. These are good additions to the high end housing stock but in no way help any one else. Trickle down economics is a fallacy.
Mamdani is hardly a socialist; neither is Bernie Sanders for that matter. Socialism has come to be a dirty word and usually misused. Neither one of these politicians are advocating nationalizing industries and transportation systems. Expanded Medicare is hardly a socialist economic system. Mandami, and Bernie for that matter, advocate for what people need.
There's a problem here. You describe your solution in general terms as needing to commodify things in order to bring down prices but your examples are not about that at all. For example, reducing housing regulations has nothing to do w/ housing being a commodity. If you want to talk about prefab housing, that's a different conversation.
You skirt around problems and solutions in a pretzel like attempt to avoid dread terms like "democratic socialism" but you can't get where you want to go without adopting some of those concepts even with different words or labels. There are many problems w/ medical care in this country. Lack of technology is not one of them. Layers of wasteful needless bureaucracy, otherwise called insurance companies are a far bigger problem. As someone else has pointed out, so is private equity which has no business being in healthcare. We can talk about any number of other problems including the time and cost of medical school, the bad distribution of medical services etc etc etc but sooner or later you get to the real heart of the matter: Why should healthcare be a for profit business? And to ask that question is to come dangerously close to uttering that dread term "democratic socialism." I don't care what you call it but until you're willing to grapple with the real issues your proposed solutions will go nowhere.
Zoning and other regulations certainly slow down housing construction. Fixing them is not a technological or commodification/manufacturing problem. They are political problems.
I think you need to rethink your POV from the bottom up. These problems are not easy but they're not simple either. Your attempt to make them so fails.
The Democratic Party is a knowing token resistance to authoritarian corporate rule so the every day man thinks he lives in a democracy. Notice how dems lose every time, oh ever so barely, by a vote or two, whether it's the big beautiful bill or the next Supreme Court Justice. Folks, it's all theater and the Dems play their part in the play with its outcome in the script. Zohran won. Maybe for a reason. Dems hate the idea that moving left might win them votes because they are all about corporations and not at all about the working person. Dems are just Republicans light. Pro corporations, light. Pro billionaire, light. Remember when Pelosi was okay with Dems being pro-life? Now look. Dem "workable ideas" sound just like this idiotic article. What does the article even say? No mention of national health care, that's for sure. What about the economics of scale under universal health care, that's for sure. But we need more housing by economies of scale. What about all the empty apartments investors have to artificially drive up costs? Why build more? Why not force the usage of what is already in existence, especially the empty apartment buildings in Boston. Oh, because investors wouldn't like that. And they can snap up the new builds and collude on rent pricing those.
Dems are the fake resistance to the already scripted corporate outcome. And working fellow, you're in the audience with your ticket price going up and no place for you to sit.
Stop pretending that the middle class still exists. It’s the rich class, vs the poor class.
I know you have your paid for constituents Jake. But you are a representative of the people. Not of those who signed your checks.
A single payer system, is by far the most effective way to lower medical costs dramatically and for the betterment of all humans in this country.
We don’t need more super PAC’s. (Like the one your parents started for you). We need communal solutions to a problem that affects communities. We need to control these institutions as a collective as they are used for public good and mostly funded by public tax dollars through government grants.
You, Jake Auchincloss, are the problem and the reason we are in the situation we are in today. Those of whom are ideologically aligned with you, but just exist in the past. Created the private, profit driven system we live in today.
It seems so. In Auchincloss's assessment, the short-term bandaids like housing vouchers are only temporary fixes that don't solve any underlying issues. I agree with that - but I also think Auchincloss's whole assessment doesn't actually address the underlying issue, and I think using the "crony capitalism" buzzword functions mainly as an excuse. Some of the ideas in his Economist piece, like building more houses or lowering deductibles and copays, are good but this whole piece seems to regard "cost disease" as a natural disaster, a total accident, rather than a byproduct of the system it grew in.
First of all, he specifically said, "Neither democratic socialism nor crony capitalism will deliver financial freedom." He's not arguing for crony capitalism. So I don't see how he's using it as a buzzword to excuse something. What is it, in your view, he's excusing. Capitalism?
As to "cost disease," I got that cost disease was a function of prices increasing faster than incomes because they were occurring in labor-intensive activities. Productivity increases when inputs lessen. If the inputs don't lessen, and keep requiring more in salaries, which is what has happened to tuition, the price has to go up to accommodate that. It's very hard to make professors think faster. It's not a natural disaster. It's a fact of the economics of productivity.
I don’t think he’s arguing for crony capitalism either, I just think a more honest and useful assessment would drop the “crony” part entirely and connect the defect (cost disease) to the system (capitalism)
"Take on special interests, like the health insurance corporations, that keep prices high."
Is it actually health insurers keeping prices high or are hospitals and healthcare providers actually more culpable with their completely opaque, all-over-the-place pricing?
I think the "cost disease" concept of the way to treat these major kitchen table/monthly expenses are a decent approach, but as you say "not easy" (to say the least!). The problem is Americans realizing these run-away problems took decades to compound themselves, ALONG WITH the sad fact that "the middle class" no longer trusts either side to implement the needed chemotherapy. Ironically, proposing left quick fixes (free buses, rent controls, etc.) will just move the "liberal socialism" dirty word/fears that the right has successfully brainwashed the middle to not buy (actually some fear them), so a real roll up our sleeves longer term approach (like you are trying to describe) is needed. Lack of Trust may be the most serious issue off this chart issue (29% approve of congress - 27% of Dems) -- but concrete "not easy" plans to attack each line of a consumer's budget might just earn that back "slowly" (for the needed mandates in 2026 and 2028). Quick fix gimmicks are counterproductive to curing the Trust Disease! Think the way you have expressed such details and the committee changes you would pursue in 2026 if the Dems are successful, are SOLID -- keep up the great and tough work Jake!
Thank you. Technology has not been applied to the rent taking industries like insurance, banking and definitely health care for the benefit of consumers. While those industries have benefited from lower costs they have not lowered their pricing due to legacy and monopolistic or oligopolistic industry structures and practices. Teddy Roosevelt addressed such problems when he was president. We need leadership that can overcome the influence of big money backers. It is possible and necessary if we are to enjoy a modicum or economic stability for those who do not have above average income. Sadly, half of the voters favor the cruelty that Trump and his cohorts promote. We have to engage the over 90 million voters who did not vote in the last election.
As Jake well knows, the continuation of the TCJA doesn't "slash taxes for the rich". It continues the same tax rates since the original bill passed. It lowers tax rates for ALL taxpayers. It increases the standard deduction (which 90% of taxpayers now use) and increases the child tax credit. Of course much of the tax savings will be felt by those who pay the most in taxes. Just makes sense. The top 10% of taxpayers pay 70% of all federal income taxes and the bottom 50% pay virtually zero. We should be thanking those who fund our federal government instead of vilifying them.
Good grief. "It continues the same tax rates since the original bill passed" sounds no more convincing or rational coming from your fingers than it does from Republican political mouths. It is sophistry and obfuscation of the worst sort in addition to simply being incorrect. As somebody who pays a shitload of taxes I resent being used as an excuse for terrible policy and worse reasoning. It ain't right.
Money is like a storage batty: it creates energy (jobs, incomes, spending, opportunity) primarily in a limited area. This is considerably less true now than it was 30 years ago.
The float of extreme amounts of $ from the middle to the top of the top has now enabled a relatively few multi-billionaires to have contrived enormous control over much of our democracy.
I think that you are on the right path with a pragmatic plan to seize back genuine representative government. Stay with it-you’ll encounter numerous roadblocks. Constant and consistent baby steps lead to constant and consistent progress and ultimately, to a giant leap.
Stay the course, thank you for having the vision and courage to take the lead. —pll
Insightful, important 'back to basics' for the Democratic Party's platform, by focusing on what is important to families and what can be done by government to help them. 👍
Also deal with the private equity takeover of service providers and large merchants.
There are MANY things that need to change. While Democratic Socialism may not be the answer for everything there are some things that should not be profit based. HEALTHCARE, EDUCATION, CARE OF THE ELDERLY, QUALITY CARE OF CHILDREN SO PARENTS CAN WORK, WAR and WEAPONS.
Right now this country needs more tax revenue to pay for all of the above, not less tax revenue.
IF YOU CONSIDER ALL OF THE ABOVE TO BE “DEMOCRATIC SOCIALISM”, we hope you will open your eyes and really look at the issues that are preventing this country from putting an emphasis on PEOPLE over PROFITS.
If the cost of the service has gone up by 200%, it doesn't really matter whether it's delivered by a government or a for-profit company - it's still unaffordable and still robbing younger generations of opportunity.
We need our tax system to go back to the pre-Reagan era. We need health care to be not for profit and part of the well-being of the nation. We need to bar Private Equity companies from involving themselves in housing, health care and other essential businesses. We need expeditious legal paths to citizenship for immigrants. We need to revert Citizens United and ban big money from politics. We need to enforce the Rule of Law for every person, especially the powerful and well connected. We need to prioritize the well being of the citizens. The USA is not a great country. There’s lots that needs to be done. Jake, use your power to make this country good. Work with the socialists because they are trying to make life better for people. Align yourself with Bernie Sanders et al and you’ll have mine and my family’s undying support.
You don’t really have a handle on economics. What Mamdani is offering is direct help necessary to lower income folks. Stuff that European countries get as a matter of course that will give them immediate relief. Healthcare? Mandate only non-profit, Dr. organized insurance and costs will immediately come down. Let’s see If you dare. Zoning? That is developer propaganda. It has nothing to do with the skyrocketing costs of construction. Again. Only direct subsidies will help. Market rate housing is for profit and can never get deliver truly affordable housing. You rather exemplify the failure of Democrats. I suggest you update your understanding, make friends with Mamdani. He is the future if there is to be one.
Market rate housing can and has delivered affordability. See the building boom today in Austin and Minneapolis which is driving down or keeping rents flat. See also the boom in market rate housing in Manhattan in the early 20th century, which provided affordable options for immigrants moving to the US and stepping on to the first rung of the economic ladder. Zoning was incepted as an explicitly racist and classist concept to target Chinese laundries in CA, and Russian Jewish garment workers in NY. Affordable housing types were de facto banned. When you see unaffordable high rises go up today, you see the long-term impact- those are the only buildings that are allowed to be built and smaller types are often banned. Removing zoning barriers is not developer propaganda. Subsidies are a short-term bandaid that exacerbates the long-term problem with more $$ chasing the same supply.
Zoning has always been a tool for separating uses like commercial, industrial, and residential. It is used to protect residential from toxic industrial, for example. It has nothing to do with racism. Racial groups were separated through deed restrictions and real estate practices before the 1968 Fair Housing act.
Market rate housing is always affordable for some but not for others. It always has limitations and building a lot of apartments in a single lot is no guarantee just because you are looking at two different types of construction with different requirements. This is a Yimby argument and Yimby was started by Facebook and YELP to force multi unit construction in R-1 districts. It does not deliver low cost housing. And that was never its goal. It contains a lot of propagandistic thinking that works for big development interests.
The bottom line is cost of construction. That is very difficult to reduce. To bring new construction to an affordable cost for…I would say half the population, direct subsidies are essential. It’s good to remember that we used to have pretty functional public housing programs. Many of these legacy projects still exist, thankfully.
https://www.frbsf.org/wp-content/uploads/wp2025-06.pdf
Zoning limits supply, yes?
Possibly, but most towns and cities have commercial lots an underutilized possibly abandoned buildings that can more cheaply be utilized. The most expensive land for a project is one with a single family home that requires demolition.
What zoning does is it limits density, meaning only single-family homes can be built here. No multi-family hones. Increasing density by allowing multi-family homes increases the housing supply, which brings down the cost. Econ 101. However, most American homeowners don't want density and multi-family housing be cause, they think, it will cheapen the stock of their primary investment, their property.
I really question whether costs are brought down when buying a single family home, demolishing it, and rebuilding. The LA Times had an article about 3 years ago saying that nonprofits were spending $1,000,000 per unit to build. Do the mortgage taxes and insurance calculation on that or the average cost in your town and you will see the problem. The rezoning argument does serve private equity investment firms that are looking for solid high rent investment vehicles in “good” neighborhoods.
Maintaining a piece of land devoted to a single family home does not change the density. If zoning would allow a multi-family unit on that same piece of property, it would increase the supply which brings down cost. Which was my point. So, I'm not sure why you're bringing up a piece of land devoted to a single family unit.
As to nonprofits building housing, in my city those are deed-restricted, meaning they are not high-rent. I'm not sure what the mortgage taxes and insurance calculations problem your citing is, nor for whom it's a problem. The city? The city taxpayers?
More supply doesn’t necessary bring down costs. Rents are determined by how much it costs to construct. Private developers do not build where they cannot recoup costs. What are those costs?
1. Land acquisition, 2. Design and planning, 3. construction, 4. Financing. Let’s say the cost is $1,000,000 per unit. What does the rent have to be to pay that debt service (figuring 100% of costs). Using my calculator, that is $8500/mo not adding an onsite manager, future savings for maintenance or profit for the investors. These are good additions to the high end housing stock but in no way help any one else. Trickle down economics is a fallacy.
Mamdani is hardly a socialist; neither is Bernie Sanders for that matter. Socialism has come to be a dirty word and usually misused. Neither one of these politicians are advocating nationalizing industries and transportation systems. Expanded Medicare is hardly a socialist economic system. Mandami, and Bernie for that matter, advocate for what people need.
Yes, he is not socialist. He is a self-described Democratic socialist.
There's a problem here. You describe your solution in general terms as needing to commodify things in order to bring down prices but your examples are not about that at all. For example, reducing housing regulations has nothing to do w/ housing being a commodity. If you want to talk about prefab housing, that's a different conversation.
You skirt around problems and solutions in a pretzel like attempt to avoid dread terms like "democratic socialism" but you can't get where you want to go without adopting some of those concepts even with different words or labels. There are many problems w/ medical care in this country. Lack of technology is not one of them. Layers of wasteful needless bureaucracy, otherwise called insurance companies are a far bigger problem. As someone else has pointed out, so is private equity which has no business being in healthcare. We can talk about any number of other problems including the time and cost of medical school, the bad distribution of medical services etc etc etc but sooner or later you get to the real heart of the matter: Why should healthcare be a for profit business? And to ask that question is to come dangerously close to uttering that dread term "democratic socialism." I don't care what you call it but until you're willing to grapple with the real issues your proposed solutions will go nowhere.
Zoning and other regulations certainly slow down housing construction. Fixing them is not a technological or commodification/manufacturing problem. They are political problems.
I think you need to rethink your POV from the bottom up. These problems are not easy but they're not simple either. Your attempt to make them so fails.
This is spot on. We need more Democrats to embrace big, workable ideas like this instead of wallowing in anti-Trump fervor. Please post to LinkedIn.
The Democratic Party is a knowing token resistance to authoritarian corporate rule so the every day man thinks he lives in a democracy. Notice how dems lose every time, oh ever so barely, by a vote or two, whether it's the big beautiful bill or the next Supreme Court Justice. Folks, it's all theater and the Dems play their part in the play with its outcome in the script. Zohran won. Maybe for a reason. Dems hate the idea that moving left might win them votes because they are all about corporations and not at all about the working person. Dems are just Republicans light. Pro corporations, light. Pro billionaire, light. Remember when Pelosi was okay with Dems being pro-life? Now look. Dem "workable ideas" sound just like this idiotic article. What does the article even say? No mention of national health care, that's for sure. What about the economics of scale under universal health care, that's for sure. But we need more housing by economies of scale. What about all the empty apartments investors have to artificially drive up costs? Why build more? Why not force the usage of what is already in existence, especially the empty apartment buildings in Boston. Oh, because investors wouldn't like that. And they can snap up the new builds and collude on rent pricing those.
Dems are the fake resistance to the already scripted corporate outcome. And working fellow, you're in the audience with your ticket price going up and no place for you to sit.
Stop pretending that the middle class still exists. It’s the rich class, vs the poor class.
I know you have your paid for constituents Jake. But you are a representative of the people. Not of those who signed your checks.
A single payer system, is by far the most effective way to lower medical costs dramatically and for the betterment of all humans in this country.
We don’t need more super PAC’s. (Like the one your parents started for you). We need communal solutions to a problem that affects communities. We need to control these institutions as a collective as they are used for public good and mostly funded by public tax dollars through government grants.
You, Jake Auchincloss, are the problem and the reason we are in the situation we are in today. Those of whom are ideologically aligned with you, but just exist in the past. Created the private, profit driven system we live in today.
You can’t escape the failures of capitalism simply by labeling it “crony capitalism” and ignoring the contradictions inherent to it.
Is that what Auchincloss is doing here, just labeling in crony capitalism?
It seems so. In Auchincloss's assessment, the short-term bandaids like housing vouchers are only temporary fixes that don't solve any underlying issues. I agree with that - but I also think Auchincloss's whole assessment doesn't actually address the underlying issue, and I think using the "crony capitalism" buzzword functions mainly as an excuse. Some of the ideas in his Economist piece, like building more houses or lowering deductibles and copays, are good but this whole piece seems to regard "cost disease" as a natural disaster, a total accident, rather than a byproduct of the system it grew in.
First of all, he specifically said, "Neither democratic socialism nor crony capitalism will deliver financial freedom." He's not arguing for crony capitalism. So I don't see how he's using it as a buzzword to excuse something. What is it, in your view, he's excusing. Capitalism?
As to "cost disease," I got that cost disease was a function of prices increasing faster than incomes because they were occurring in labor-intensive activities. Productivity increases when inputs lessen. If the inputs don't lessen, and keep requiring more in salaries, which is what has happened to tuition, the price has to go up to accommodate that. It's very hard to make professors think faster. It's not a natural disaster. It's a fact of the economics of productivity.
I don’t think he’s arguing for crony capitalism either, I just think a more honest and useful assessment would drop the “crony” part entirely and connect the defect (cost disease) to the system (capitalism)
"Take on special interests, like the health insurance corporations, that keep prices high."
Is it actually health insurers keeping prices high or are hospitals and healthcare providers actually more culpable with their completely opaque, all-over-the-place pricing?
I think the "cost disease" concept of the way to treat these major kitchen table/monthly expenses are a decent approach, but as you say "not easy" (to say the least!). The problem is Americans realizing these run-away problems took decades to compound themselves, ALONG WITH the sad fact that "the middle class" no longer trusts either side to implement the needed chemotherapy. Ironically, proposing left quick fixes (free buses, rent controls, etc.) will just move the "liberal socialism" dirty word/fears that the right has successfully brainwashed the middle to not buy (actually some fear them), so a real roll up our sleeves longer term approach (like you are trying to describe) is needed. Lack of Trust may be the most serious issue off this chart issue (29% approve of congress - 27% of Dems) -- but concrete "not easy" plans to attack each line of a consumer's budget might just earn that back "slowly" (for the needed mandates in 2026 and 2028). Quick fix gimmicks are counterproductive to curing the Trust Disease! Think the way you have expressed such details and the committee changes you would pursue in 2026 if the Dems are successful, are SOLID -- keep up the great and tough work Jake!
Thank you. Technology has not been applied to the rent taking industries like insurance, banking and definitely health care for the benefit of consumers. While those industries have benefited from lower costs they have not lowered their pricing due to legacy and monopolistic or oligopolistic industry structures and practices. Teddy Roosevelt addressed such problems when he was president. We need leadership that can overcome the influence of big money backers. It is possible and necessary if we are to enjoy a modicum or economic stability for those who do not have above average income. Sadly, half of the voters favor the cruelty that Trump and his cohorts promote. We have to engage the over 90 million voters who did not vote in the last election.
As Jake well knows, the continuation of the TCJA doesn't "slash taxes for the rich". It continues the same tax rates since the original bill passed. It lowers tax rates for ALL taxpayers. It increases the standard deduction (which 90% of taxpayers now use) and increases the child tax credit. Of course much of the tax savings will be felt by those who pay the most in taxes. Just makes sense. The top 10% of taxpayers pay 70% of all federal income taxes and the bottom 50% pay virtually zero. We should be thanking those who fund our federal government instead of vilifying them.
Good grief. "It continues the same tax rates since the original bill passed" sounds no more convincing or rational coming from your fingers than it does from Republican political mouths. It is sophistry and obfuscation of the worst sort in addition to simply being incorrect. As somebody who pays a shitload of taxes I resent being used as an excuse for terrible policy and worse reasoning. It ain't right.
Money is like a storage batty: it creates energy (jobs, incomes, spending, opportunity) primarily in a limited area. This is considerably less true now than it was 30 years ago.
The float of extreme amounts of $ from the middle to the top of the top has now enabled a relatively few multi-billionaires to have contrived enormous control over much of our democracy.
I think that you are on the right path with a pragmatic plan to seize back genuine representative government. Stay with it-you’ll encounter numerous roadblocks. Constant and consistent baby steps lead to constant and consistent progress and ultimately, to a giant leap.
Stay the course, thank you for having the vision and courage to take the lead. —pll
Insightful, important 'back to basics' for the Democratic Party's platform, by focusing on what is important to families and what can be done by government to help them. 👍