My Dream Of A Future For America
The twenty-first century will be undoubtedly known as the century where American democracy failed, and through bigotry and blind republicanism, the people voted away the only adequate instrument with which they can work for the uplifting of the masses of all Americans.
After I graduated from Brooklyn College, my family and I fought and lost the battle of the foreclosure of our home. Afterwards, I, through the connection of an old college buddy who was much more well-off then I was, snagged a job as an editor for the New York Times. During all of this, I became involved in a long battle to settle my father’s estate. This experience helped me learn firsthand how attorneys appointed by the court can enrich themselves at the expense of the struggling and downtrodden families. After finding I had been purged from the New York voter rolls and could not vote in the 2016 primary, I worked as an organizer for Bernie Sanders's 2016 presidential campaign. After that, I traveled across America by car, visiting and speaking to people affected by the human rights violations related to the Flint water crisis and the Dakota Access Pipeline. Before that I had felt that the only way to effectively run for office was if you had access to wealth, social influence, and power. But during my travels, I saw others putting their whole lives and everything that they had on the line for the protection of their community, and I was inspired to begin to work for my own community.
I wouldn't call our dear orange president a tyrant, but I will simply call our government a tyranny of the minority, as good ol’ Roosevelt used to say. And this minority only works to grow the power of the minority, and continue to oppress and disenfranchise the majority. So, I dream of a future where the government works to secure the liberty of the wage workers, of the men and women who toil in industry, to save the liberty of the oppressed from the oppressor.
For this to happen, three things must be achieved;
- The reduction of poverty in every part of the United States, by any means necessary
- Maintenance and expansion of Human Right and Civil Rights
- Shift the pressure of taxes more towards those with higher incomes, and increase welfare for those who have lower incomes.
What is more important is that the left, whether it be us, the democrats, or even communists, gain complete control of the senate so that our quest for complete emancipation is not hindered. Once we have control of the senate, our first move will be to fix our crumbling infrastructure, such as public roads, transportation, buildings, bridges, etc. Not only does the current state of our infrastructure decrease efficiency, but directly disadvantages the working class. Next on our list will be to make it drastically easier for workers to unionize, and go on to expand our civil and workers’ rights regularly through our term. We need to make the minimum wage a living wage, and index it towards inflation. The minimum wage needs to be enough for a person to afford all their basic needs without requiring government assistance.
However, the most pressing concern we have is recessions. We need to start taking recessions more seriously by avoiding them and by making them as short as possible - and if that means short bursts of inflation during supply-side shocks, or reduced bank profits due to restrictions on lending, or high deficits to stimulate the economy, we need to be willing to make those trade-offs. We should increase regulations in the financial sector to make it more difficult for bubbles to form in the first place. Stricter lending standards should be required for banks to ensure that the people they are loaning to can afford to repay their loan.
Also, we hope to cut taxes for the middle and working class, and raise taxes on those who have a income higher than $200 thousand dollars. If this fails, then we could cut into public spending, specifically the defense budget and corporate subsidies. On top of it all, we’ll simplify the tax code to make paying taxes less expensive and less bureaucratic.
Afterwards, we hope to implement new social assistance policies that reflect the citizens’ needs and assist their entry or re-entry into the workforce. This process may take the majority of our term, but we are prepared to do everything we can to gain every bit of ground towards our goal. The last thing I want to talk about is the current state of our education system. We should end programs like Common Core and No Child Left Behind, and make it easier for schools to innovate and try new things. Focus less on standardized testing and more on teaching to each student’s potential and promoting a love of knowledge. The current state of the education system ignores the needs of those who learn unconventionally, and serves to breed a new generation of the destitute.
