There is something about the idea of universal basic income that empowers people in the finest tradition of capitalism by allowing them to make decisions about what they most need.

The current earned income tax credit creates opportunities for financial firms like H&R Block to profit through refund anticipation loans, which governments have had to crack down on.

The rise of neoliberalism beginning in the 1980s—the idea that unleashing the free market will solve problems without government intervention—has failed because it ignores built-in, long-standing structural inequities and has left younger Americans unable to afford housing and childcare.

If Biden decides not to run, the Democratic nominee selection process should not be an appointment by party elites but rather a robust, engaging, democratic process (possibly through convention) involving the American people to choose the candidate.

UBI is a way to address wealth inequality and economic displacement from automation—if fewer worker hours are needed in the economy, people still need to live, so a basic income ensures people can survive even if full-time employment is not available for everyone.

Housing prices have increased five times faster than incomes since 2008, creating a structural affordability crisis that makes home ownership impossible for younger Americans regardless of income.

Government policy directly shapes housing affordability through 30-year mortgage structure and tax policy, and the claim that government cannot do anything about housing is false—government has already done tremendous things to structure housing markets, just in ways that excluded historically marginalized groups and lower-wage workers.

Childcare costs more than college tuition in more than half of states and far exceeds rent—families cannot penny-pinch their way out of this expense in the way they can reduce discretionary spending, making it a fundamental structural barrier to parenthood and economic participation for younger generations.

The PROACT (Protecting the Right to Organize) would update federal labor laws to address modern work arrangements and make NLRB labor enforcement more effective by preventing companies from refusing to negotiate even when majority workers vote to unionize.

Labor is not antithetical to capitalism—capitalism is premised on negotiations where workers can push back on employers for wages; true capitalism is workers and employers bargaining over compensation, and what is actually non-capitalistic is an exploitative, extractive economy where workers are forced to take wages as offered with no negotiating power.

Companies refusing to negotiate with unionized workers even when the majority votes for a union is nothing new—A. Philip Randolph faced 12 years of Pullman company refusal to negotiate (1920s-1930s) until federal government intervention forced negotiation.

Current safety net programs are unnecessarily complex, making them difficult to navigate and preventing the most needy from accessing help—for example, school districts spend more money each year asking which children deserve meals than it would cost to provide universal free lunch to everyone.

Universal programs are politically more durable than targeted programs—Medicare, which is universal, has survived approximately 85 years, while many other programs have been dismantled or depleted; universality is the only way to create long-term stable political support for social programs.

President Biden's debate performance was poor, but his policy deliverables are stronger than any president in the past 50 years—he brought manufacturing jobs back (not just talked about it), managed the economy without crashing after COVID, and genuinely understands childcare and elder care as issues.

Biden was not a strong debater in 2020 either—this was predictable, not surprising; the concern that he's weak was avoidable if people had known his age was a factor rather than appearing as sudden revelation after the 2024 debate.

Single-parent families are not 'broken'—the term is stigmatizing and misframes the issue; the problem is systemic failure of safety nets and investment in underserved communities, not family structure itself.

Ways and Means Committee staff indicated that the disparate tax treatment of single parents versus two-parent families was not due to deliberate policy but rather because 'nobody's ever asked us before'—suggesting policy inequities can persist due to lack of attention rather than malice.

People don't go bankrupt because of small purchases like Starbucks; they go bankrupt because of large fixed costs like housing and childcare.

Biden has a strong record on antitrust enforcement, consumer protection, labor organizing, and unemployment reduction, and we should be careful what we wish for if we replace him because a second Trump administration may not maintain these policies.

Homeless people given UBI in Denver were more likely to have stayed in shelters after receiving UBI, because before you can climb the ladder, you have to have a place to start climbing from.