What if the way to support families and the middle class was to put our money where our values are and invest in the changes we want to see to make life better for the average American?
It's a loaded question, and I get why some folks would be mad--supporting new families and encouraging homeownership are fine things for people who want to talk about financial security for households to reference, but actually doing something about it? Isn't that the business of other people to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps about?
Look, I used to do a feature on this blog about our "Know Your Class War" and just like "Climate Sunday", it fell by the wayside because we have a first-world economy with disastrous outcomes in terms of health, happiness, and upward mobility in general. Democrats have, through measures like Social Security, Medicare, the ACA, and others--actually tried to do something about this. Republicans usually dub these measures "Communism". (See Reagan and Medicare.)
Upward mobility, the thing where each generation does a little better than the one before--has been stalled. But we used to call that the "American Dream".
The way we haven't looked forward regarding the economy, in the exact way as we have not looked forward about the environment and climate change, became too frustrating to me, as I was looking at too vastly rich a pool of stories. All of them a bit demoralizing. And I believe we need to reserve hope and make plans to do better things, rather than dwell on broken things that don't work.
Kamala Harris gets that and has plans to get people into homes they can afford by increasing supply and subsidizing down payments for first time homebuyers and especially first-generation homebuyers, which builds equity and probably pisses off the rentier class. She supports the child tax credit and strengthening the EITC, both of which are exceptional tools for ending child poverty rates. She means to go after the price-gouging of the food monopolies (did you know how few companies actually control our food production here in these United States with amber waves of grain and all that or think about why meat recalls cover such a large area? Monopolies. Trusts. Used to be, Republicans were anti-trust too.)
No politician is perfect, and I don't know where all these supports for housing and child tax credits come from. Me, I would soak the fucking rich, though. An awful lot of them have dirtied their hands trying to kill democracy. Your Mellons, and Wilks, and Uehleins, and Princes and De Vos and all them. Musk. I'd pretty much personally like to see them hung upside down until their recess nickels come out of their noses. This is because no rich asshole should get to determine your rights and circumscribe you in an economic kettle. Or determine for you whether your kids deserve clean air and water, etc.
Kamala Harris might employ more delicate, mindful and demure means than me, though.
Some Republicans think Harris is a radical because her dad is a Marxist scholar. Barack Obama's father wrote about socialism as well. Pete Buttigieg's father was a scholar of Gramsci. But would you assume because my college studies and papers were about Ezra Pound I was pro-fascism?
Logically, no. To read about something is not to endorse all propositions therein, And also the conflation of first-generation homeowner with first-generation American, the scaremongering that Harris is going to overlook natural-born American to give homes to undocumented migrants (as suggested by JD Vance and Tom Cotton), is laughable. the reflex of people with no good ideas of their own to counter with.
And of course, none of this is possible if she does not hit the "trifecta"--winning the White House and both chambers of Congress.
I am very intrigued about the government putting our money where our mouths are though. If you want to strengthen middle class families, give them the best shot at positive outcomes. Relieve them of some of the burden of health care and housing. Build it and they will come.
I think we all will do better when we realize all can and try to make that happen. And I would like to see it. I support the Harris/Walz vision.
It has hope and joy. We need it.
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