Platform
Democrats: Let’s UNITE and WIN with UNITY of PURPOSE in 2026
ENVIRONMENT
A most impactful macro trend is the globalization and compression of wages. Locals no longer work ‘down the street’ at the factory – they compete for knowledge jobs vs workers all over the world.
The consequence of stagnant real wages is the affordability crisis, especially in high cost locations.
Compressing home economics is not a partisan issue. Yet Republicans and Democrats spar over after the fact solutions (e.g., free buses) rather than address the core issue.
We must raise the hourly value of our work force through education. In NYC only 50% of our kids can read, write, or do math at grade level.
SOCIETAL CONSEQUENCES
The consequences of a poorly educated, disengaged young person can be seen as a long trail of indignity for the person. For the state, this means a stream of negative cash flows for social services paid for by the government (e.g., negative $500,000 in present value terms for each needy 25 year old).
By contrast, a well-educated, engaged young person produces ($1 to $2 million) direct taxes to the government over a lifetime. With sales taxes, property taxes and high-performing offspring the number can be much higher.
If only 50% of ‘blue’ city kids can read, write, or do math at grade level – many are doomed to a life of delivering hamburgers on bicycles to kids who got off to a better start. Poor educations unfortunately spin off massive follow-on social services budgets. This chronic problem is the
Democrats’ (far left and centrist Dems) weak spot in central cities.
Poor schooling and poor attitudes towards learning create a permanent, pernicious sub-class which can be a target for either the radical left or right.
Our goal therefore should be to produce as many well-established 25 year olds as possible whilst minimizing the number of those not poised to succeed.
The hard part from a public policy perspective is to get at the attitude towards learning. What’s inside the schools matter, but what also matters is the attitude at the home and in the community to learning and how this converts into earning.
REPUBLICAN VS DEMOCRAT APPROACH
The Republican approach is hands off: they quite fairly identify that it SHOULD be OBVIOUS to parents and kids that education leads to higher earnings.
Well it is OBVIOUS that people should save for retirement– but FDR’s New Deal created Social Security. Saving for a rainy day – the New Deal invented unemployment insurance.
“Taxes for the win in 2026” proposes that we use the tax system to support a change in attitude within our families and 10-25 year olds so that policy clarifies that Democrats are the champions of turning learners into earners.
Such a mainstream foray can address the perception that Democrats only raise taxes and only champion small issues (the far left) which alienate the mainstream. Only with programs which impact EVERY FAMILY in their pockets and change attitudes can we win the central ground – then by providing simple mainstream value we can add the trimmings to the turkey, so to speak, with other niche policies.
It would do no harm if novel policies created talking points to unify the party. The Democrat approach to differentiate can be for tax policy to slam the message home to the country and to voters that we are for anything and everything which turns 10-25 year old young
learners into mature earners.
As a tactical matter, it can actually be an ADVANTAGE to Democrats that we control statehouses in California, Illinois, and New York -- high state income tax states -- where we can quite easily rollout variations of the following policies as experiments/templates which directly appeal to our core voter base. Many of our Congressional representatives come from our state Assemblies/Senates – novel tax policies to promote earnings can graduate from the States to the Congress.