The Economy

Far too many people in the US are forced to live paycheck to paycheck, not knowing if they will be able to make the next month's rent or if they will be able to buy groceries next week. This is because there is an epidemic of underpaid jobs. Many companies are making money hand over fist while leaving their employees with just enough hours to not qualify for benefits and paying them a wage that doesn’t even cover the cost of food and housing. Nobody should have to work multiple jobs to be able to provide for themselves and their family.

The solution to these issues is the same as the solution 100 years ago, a federal jobs program. The way we got out of the Great Depression was by making sure everyone who wanted to work had the opportunity to get a good paying job. A federal work program could be used to do so much that our country needs. It could be used to build the housing our nation lacks, to fix the crumbling roads, pipes, electrical lines, and bridges all around us. It could be used to make sure that the cutting edge of sustainable energy technologies are being developed in the US, to ensure that we can all have the best medicine and medical technology, the best medical care, and beyond. It could be used to build the high speed rail network that our country needs. We could make sure that any and all of the problems that our country is facing are taken care of, while also giving every single person who wants or needs it, a good paying job.

Taxes are always a hot button issue for people, and for good reason, it’s the money we pay the government to make sure what needs to get done is done. The two main issues we see today in taxation are that the people making the most money are almost always paying the least in taxes and the current government does not use our taxes to do what it should for the people of this nation. What we need to do is tax the rich, once you get beyond a certain point any extra money you have becomes literally meaningless, just a number in an account. We, the working people of this country, recognize the true value of our money because we earned it. The billionaires don’t understand money’s true value because they have more money than they could have possibly worked for. The money they have is money they stole and money that they now hide so they don’t need to contribute to society. There is no way that a person could work hard enough to earn a billion dollars. The minimum wage in California as of June 2025 is $16.50/hr. To be able to make one billion dollars at that rate it would take over 29,000 years and that's assuming you don’t spend a single penny. Let’s look at it another way, for someone to have one billion dollars they would earn over $480,000/hr. No billionaire is working 29,000 times harder than a fast food worker. The worst part is this is all assuming that it’s just one billion. People like Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, or Jeff Bezos have hundreds of billions, more money than entire countries.

The IRS is an organization that a lot of people have mixed feelings about and because of that a lot of people have tried to defund it, but that is not the solution, let me tell you why. Because when the IRS has less money they go after poor people. How do I know that? Because poor people don’t have armies of accountants and lawyers to find loopholes and fight the IRS in court. When the IRS has good funding it can go after the billionaire tax-cheats because it has the resources to fight them in court and win.

Our taxes today don’t go toward helping the people or making the world a better place. Untold amounts of money are put into the creation of weapons of war. Why do we spend our money on making killing machines when our infrastructure is crumbling. Why does our money go towards subsidies for highly profitable oil and gas companies while people go hungry and don’t have access to clean water? Why do our taxes go to bailing out banks that repeatedly ruin our economy while our neighbors are forced to sleep on the streets? Why do our taxes pay private prisons that profit off the work of unpaid prisoners held for nonviolent crimes while our fellow citizens have to suffer and die from preventable illnesses because they can’t afford healthcare? Our economy, our government, and our society need to change so that we, the people, can benefit from our work.

The cost of living crisis is felt especially hard when it comes to housing and transportation. Run-down, unrenovated homes built in the 1950s are sold for over a million dollars, an entirely unattainable prospect for most. People are forced to pay more than half of their income to be able to afford a studio apartment. On top of that, our communities are built so the only way you can get anywhere in a reasonable timeframe is with a car. The cost of cars is immense, from the upfront cost of buying one to maintenance, insurance and gas. Car ownership can be an immense and unseen burden on individuals, families, and our communities. Even worse than the price tag of cars are the other negative effects they have had on our communities: An unsafe outdoor environment for children to play in, a built environment that makes it uncomfortable, inconvenient, and unsafe to walk places pushing people to live in less healthy ways, worsened air quality around us, and more.

The solutions to these problems are simple: a robust public housing program like in Vienna, zoning reform like that of so many other countries, and significant improvements to the frequency, speed, and reliability of our public transportation, amongst some others.