Socialist Party on Welfare & Poverty Socialist Party Platform

Increase housing subsides; allow rent control

Nationalize assets of private corporate pension funds

• We call for a National Pension Authority to hold the assets of private pension funds, and a levy against corporate assets for any pension fund deficits.
• We call for increased and expanded welfare assistance and increased and expanded unemployment compensation at 100% of a worker's previous income or the minimum wage, whichever is higher, for the full period of unemployment or re-training, whichever is longer.

Eliminate poverty by eliminating for-profit system

We propose the elimination of poverty through the elimination of the for-profit system, and to transform it into worker control with full employment, a free national health system and full access to a free education. We also call for a guaranteed annual income which will enable all citizens to participate in a quality of life which will include food, water, shelter and mutual respect.

Expand welfare with guaranteed income for all

Important Issues:
• Design and Initiate a guaranteed income for all American families, working or not.
• Abolish poverty in all its forms in America by assuring every American family with the basics in income, health, education and housing.
  
  Brian supports these summary positions from the Socialist Party Platform:
• worker and community ownership and control of corporations
• expand welfare assistance and unemployment compensation

Neither Dems nor GOP talk about income inequality

Perhaps more remarkable were the issues NOT talked about. There was virtually no discussion of class, despite the fact that we have the most unequal distribution of wealth and income in the industrialized world, and real wages of workers continue to fall. There was no discussion of our huge trade deficit, nor of corporate investment in China & other 3rd World countries, which is causing the loss of millions of decent-paying jobs. There was no mention of the fragility of a democracy in which half the people no longer vote & have given up on the political process.

Land Trust: affordable housing by resale below market rates

Working with a tenant organization and nonprofit housing groups, we prevented the largest subsidized housing development in the state, Northgate, from being converted into expensive condominiums.