economic insecurity

Yana is pro-workers. All workers. This includes military personnel, coal miners, auto workers, and literally anyone else who needs to work for a living. Whatever criticisms she may have of the companies people work for, she recognizes that we are in a shared struggle for economic security.



Our economy is structured around the interests of the wealthy and corporations, and everyone else is getting screwed. We have some brilliant economic warriors in the Senate right now, and I will follow their lead on many issues (student debt forgiveness, wealth taxes, breaking up big banks, capping credit card interest rates, etc.) Overall, I favor restructuring the economy away from mega-corporations (big banks, big pharma and big oil) and toward locally-specific worker-owned cooperatives, state-held public utilities, and green infrastructure projects that care for both the economy and the planet.

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Finally, Citizens United has to go.

I am a socialist, grounded in the true meaning of that word: worker ownership of the means of production and distribution, and a significantly democratized economy. The federal government should limit their activities to those things that genuinely benefit from organization at a massive scale, such as healthcare, education, and sensible environmental regulations. My socialism focuses much more on local control, worker owned cooperatives and community-based organizing. The federal government can do a lot to simply get out of the way of these projects, and incentivize their formation.

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Socialism is about curbing corporate and CEO power, and building worker power. I propose a mandated Wage Ratio of 20:1, which was the average ratio of CEO to worker pay in 1951. I further propose a full empowerment of unions and worker owned cooperatives across the US to get economic power solidly in the hands of the people, including first right of refusal and material assistance to workers who wish to buy out the current owners of their companies. Banning “Right to Work” laws is key.



Finally, I favor public banks with social and climate justice values built into their charters, and postal banking as a way to provide free and low-cost financial services to underserved communities. We should also restructure legal penalties (such as traffic tickets) to be set based on income, and end cash bail practices, as both disproportionately affect the poor.



