Lets change policy
Require Employers to pay a living wage. Support Unions. People who work for profitable businesses shouldn’t need state help to meet basic needs
Reduce housing costs:
Support long term stable housing by subsiding home ownership in co-op housing. Decrease rents. Optimize use of existing housing. Make it easy to build basic housing and difficult to build luxury housing. Keep close connection between people and the land.
Reduce Health Care Costs:
Implement Vermont’s Universal Health Care Law to reduce costs, increase access, and improve outcomes.
Revamp employment and social service systems:
Build thriving communities where we all contribute what we can and work together to meet the needs of the people. Create coordinated and effective systems built on a mutual aid model.
Increase public safety with strong social support, holding people accountable to the community, and developing creative strategies that protect people, work better than prisons, and cost less.
Revise tax policy.
Decouple state and federal taxes. Use progressive taxation to fund state government. Take advantage of the $200,000 federal tax exemption that wealthy people can get for paying state and local taxes. Tax unearned income at least as much as we charge earned income. Charge the percentage we pay for social security on income over the current cap of $175,000 and use that money to help people with very low social security incomes. Stop relying on homestead taxes to pay for education. Use tax policy to incentivize choices that improve the wellbeing of all of the people of Vermont.