What is “The Inclusive Prosperity Act?” Why should we support it?
HR 1579, “The Inclusive Prosperity Act” proposed by Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN) in 2013, creates a tax on the trading of financial assets (a Financial Transaction Tax, or FTT), often called a “Robin Hood” tax. The bill focuses on how the global financial crisis was created by an out-of-control financial sector that crashed the U.S. and world economies.

Climate activists are justifiably fearful of the changes that runaway “Global Warming” can make to our world. Fear of climate change and its effects is justified and important. Fear is a two-edged sword. How can activists fight corporate-backed campaigns for fear at work?

In 2011 and 2012 the U.S. Congress, driven by Tea Party extremism and corporate money-fueled hysteria over a contrived “debt crisis,” enacted $1.7 trillion in deficit reduction over ten years, mainly by slashing vitally needed domestic programs that serve our most vulnerable citizens.

“You can’t talk about ending the slums without first saying profit must be taken out of the slums. . . . There must be a better distribution of wealth . . .And maybe America must move toward a democratic socialism.”

-Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., speech to the SCLC staff, Frogmore, S.C., November 14, 1966

The Fiscal Cliff deal just approved by Congress was both good news and bad news.  The Good News:  99% percent of Americans (according to Wall Street Journal writer Laura Saunders) will see little or no change in their income taxes for 2013. Wealthy individuals with incomes above $400,000 a year will pay higher income taxes, and taxes on capital gains and dividends will rise from 15 to 20% to help address the federal deficit. Congress also agreed to assist low and moderate income families by: extending unemployment insurance, extending the Earned Income Tax Credit for a year and extending the American Opportunity Tax Credit (for college expenses) five years.  Most across-the-board spending cuts were postponed by two months. 

What is the real economic crisis facing the American people? 

Mass unemployment and growing impoverishment are a national emergency.

Make the rich and corporations pay their fair share and end the wars and military hardware spending.

What is the cause of the $14.8 trillion dollar long-term federal debt?

Conservatives claim that runaway spending is the cause of the long-term federal debt burden, which has risen from $1.5 trillion dollars in 1981 to $14.8 trillion today. But the true cause of the federal debt has been thirty years of tax cuts for the rich and corporations.

Education Is A Right, Not A Privilege

College, in the popular imagination, is still seen as both a time of freedom & intellectual exploration, and as the gateway to future economic opportunity. Yet young people today are increasingly working harder & taking on debt just to get a degree whose value is becoming more questionable. At the same time, universities are increasingly being subordinated to the needs of the corporate world. It hasn’t always been this way and needn’t always be this way. We suggest that in addition to being an important part of fighting for social justice & equality, a high-quality & accessible public education system can be part of the fight for a world which is not based on exploitation and economic inequality - a world beyond capitalism.

Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) favors both the DREAM Act as well as broader immigration reform legislation that would grant immediate permanent resident status to all undocumented workers and their children and would establish an expeditious and non-punitive road to citizenship for these workers and their families. Such measures should render illegal the all-too-frequent local law practice of using racial-profiling to arbitrarily check individuals’ immigration papers. These practices effectively criminalize “breathing while brown.”

The question of pay equity, obscured by Mitt Romney’s “binders of women” remark in the presidential candidates’ debate this fall, remains critical to American families—two-parent and female-headed households alike. According to the Institute for Women’s Policy Research (IWPR) analysis of the gender wage gap by occupation, despite progress since the 1970s, the median wage for women employed full time in 2010 was only 81% male full time worker, a gap of 19%.  Not surprisingly, for Latinas, it’s 59.8% of the average white male’s pay, and for African American women, 69.6%. (The gap is considerably smaller within these groups.)