The Affordability Crisis

A full-time minimum wage worker earns $15,080/year — below the poverty line for a family of two. The federal minimum wage has been frozen at $7.25 since 2009, the longest stretch without an increase in American history, and after inflation is 40% lower than it was in 1970. Union membership has fallen from 35.7% in 1953 to ~6% of private-sector workers today. The correlation between deunionization and the productivity-wage gap is not coincidental.

• $17+ federal minimum wage with automatic annual indexation: Raise immediately to at least $17/hour; thereafter, automatic increase whenever the CPI for the lowest quintile rises 2%+, plus mandatory partial participation in broader productivity-driven wage gains (France’s SMIC model). No tip credits. No youth sub-minimum. The political fight over the minimum wage ends permanently.
• Federal Living Wage Commission — the Australia Fair Work model: Create an independent expert body that conducts annual reviews of actual cost-of-living indexes, real wage trends, and labor market conditions, then issues binding adjustments. No country with an independent wage commission has experienced a 16-year freeze. The Commission monitors the productivity-wage gap and issues annual public reports.
• The PRO Act — restore genuine organizing rights: End mandatory anti-union captive-audience meetings, ban employer delay tactics, require first-contract arbitration, impose meaningful penalties for illegal retaliation, treat union organizing as the protected fundamental right it is.
• End gig worker misclassification: Workers who function as employees must receive employee protections. Federal enforcement treats systematic misclassification as wage theft, with penalties proportionate to scale.
• Index Social Security COLA to a senior-specific CPI: A senior renter paying median rent of $1,406/month spends 73.7% of their Social Security on housing alone, leaving $501 for all other expenses. The standard CPI systematically understates the healthcare and housing costs retirees actually face.

Corporate profits drove 53% of inflation in Q2–Q3 2023 against a historical baseline of 11%. The average American family paid approximately $3,546 more per year due to profiteering above legitimate cost increases. This is not market pricing — it is extraction.

• Federal Anti-Price-Gouging Law — permanent, not emergency-only: Prohibit price gouging at the federal level as a permanent consumer protection. Empower the FTC and state AGs with a rebuttable presumption of gouging when a dominant firm raises prices materially above cost increases. $1 billion in dedicated FTC enforcement funding.
• Federal mandatory unit pricing: Require all grocery retailers to display price-per-unit in standardized, prominent format at point of sale and online. Iowa State research found unit pricing increases consumer price sensitivity by 30–84%. Household paper products are 34.9% more expensive per unit than January 2019, with 10.3% attributable to undisclosed package size reduction.
• Algorithmic pricing ban — RealPage is per se price-fixing: Codify as federal law: sharing competitively sensitive, nonpublic pricing data among competitors — whether directly or through third-party software — constitutes per se price-fixing under the Sherman Act. Applies to all industries, not just housing.
• Shrinkflation and ingredient substitution disclosure: FTC rulemaking classifying undisclosed shrinkflation as a deceptive trade practice. When companies substitute cheaper ingredients while maintaining prices, mandatory disclosure on packaging is required.
• Percentage-based fines: All price gouging and deceptive pricing fines calculated as a percentage of annual revenue or profits for companies above $500M in revenue. Fine revenue flows to the Consumer Protection and Public Media Trust Fund.

U.S. drug prices are 2.78× higher overall and 3.22× higher for brand-name drugs than in peer nations. Insulin costs $2.28–$3.42 to manufacture yet sells for $322 in the U.S. — a 1,500% increase in 20 years. Every peer democracy has solved pharmaceutical pricing through government purchasing power; the U.S. has chosen to pay 2.78× more instead.

• Expand Medicare drug negotiation from 10 drugs to all high-cost drugs: Set maximum negotiated prices at 120% of the average price in six peer nations (UK, Germany, France, Canada, Japan, Australia). Estimated savings: $450 billion over 10 years.
• International reference pricing — 120% of the 6-nation average as the national ceiling: No drug sold in the United States may be priced above 120% of the average price charged in the reference nations. The UK’s NICE, Germany’s AMNOG, Canada’s PMPRB, Japan’s centralized pricing, and Australia’s PBS have each achieved 30–70% lower prices than the U.S.
• PBM reform — de-link compensation, mandate transparency, prohibit vertical integration: Three PBMs control ~80% of all prescription drug benefits while driving prices up. De-link PBM compensation from drug list prices; end spread pricing and rebate kickbacks; mandate full transparency; prohibit vertical integration; require all manufacturer rebates to pass directly to patients. USC Schaeffer Center: de-linking could lower annual drug spending by ~$100 billion.
• Patent reform — end evergreening, enable compulsory licensing: Reform the FDA Orange Book to prevent trivial-modification evergreening. Create compulsory licensing for any drug where U.S. prices exceed 500% of the international average.
• Expand the $35 insulin cap to all Americans, then extend to EpiPens, inhalers, and essential medicines where the cost-to-manufacture-to-price ratio is most extreme and substitution is not possible.

Auto insurance premiums rose 24% in 2023 and an additional 15% in H1 2024. Home insurance premiums rose 34% between 2017 and 2023. Major insurers have exited California and Florida entirely — leaving approximately 7.4% of homeowners without insurance, representing $1.6 trillion in property value at risk. The McCarran-Ferguson Act of 1945 granted insurance companies a broad federal antitrust exemption that has enabled this.

• Repeal or substantially reform McCarran-Ferguson to restore federal antitrust authority over insurance pricing, rate-setting, and market concentration
• Coverage continuity mandate: Prohibit large insurers from withdrawing from state markets without multi-year notice, a transition plan approved by state regulators, and demonstrated replacement coverage availability
• Federal reinsurance backstop for climate-related disasters: Create a federal reinsurance program that absorbs catastrophic climate disaster losses above defined thresholds, reducing insurer incentives to exit markets while ensuring coverage in high-risk areas
• Prior authorization reform — physician judgment over corporate algorithms: Limit prior authorization for standard-of-care treatments; mandate denials be reviewed by licensed physicians in the relevant specialty; prohibit retrospective denials when prior authorization was granted; 24-hour emergency authorization standard
• Loss ratio enforcement: The ACA requires insurers to spend at least 80–85% of premiums on medical care. Enforce it aggressively and index the required percentage as premiums rise.

Building directly on Issue 3 (Housing). Gen Z homeownership stands at just 26.1%, compared to ~40% for their parents at the same age. The median first-time buyer age hit a record 40. 22.7 million cost-burdened renter households represent not a market failure but the designed outcome of exclusionary zoning, algorithmic pricing cartels, institutional investor concentration, and persistent supply restriction.

• Federal zoning reform as condition of federal funding — the Tokyo model: Condition federal housing and transportation funding on elimination of single-family-only zoning, minimum parking requirements, and discretionary review delays. Tokyo’s permissive national zoning system enables 150,000 new housing starts per year; housing prices flat in real terms for two decades. Supply works.
• National Housing Corporation (NHC) at scale — the Vienna model: Vienna houses 60% of its residents in social housing with rents capped at 20–25% of income. The NHC must build and maintain millions of mixed-income units as permanent public stock, with a non-privatization guarantee.
• Regulate corporate landlords — 100+ unit registration, rent increase caps: Require all landlords owning 100+ single-family rentals to register with HUD annually. Restrict rent increases from large institutional landlords to 5% or local CPI in markets with vacancy rates below 5%.
• Short-term rental reform: Federal minimum standards requiring jurisdictions with residential vacancy rates below 5% to have enforceable authority to limit STR density and levy vacancy fees on properties held off the long-term rental market.
• Housing First mandate — Finland’s proof of concept: Require all federally funded homeless assistance programs to operate on Housing First principles. Finland reduced long-term homelessness 68% between 2008 and 2022; saves EUR 15,000–52,000 per person per year in reduced emergency costs. 770,000 Americans experienced homelessness on a single night in January 2024 — an 18% increase from 2023.

Every wealthy democracy provides universal coverage spending 40–65% less per capita than the U.S. with better outcomes. Healthcare debt is the leading cause of personal bankruptcy. 36% of adults skip care due to cost. U.S. life expectancy: 76.1 years. Switzerland: 84. The U.S. spends $15,474 per person per year to rank below nearly every peer nation in health outcomes.

• Medicare for All or a robust public option: Medicare for All eliminates the $19,276 average employer premium — compensation workers never see but that suppresses wages — and deploys collective purchasing power to control costs. A robust public option achieves much of the same outcome while preserving private insurance competition.
• CFPB restored in full, with independent authority: Restore the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to full independent authority to keep financial institutions honest about medical debt, insurance practices, lending discrimination, and consumer protection.
• Healthcare cost transparency as a floor: Enforce and strengthen hospital price transparency requirements. Require insurers to publish all contracted rates, denied claims rates, and prior authorization rates by procedure. A market where buyers cannot know prices is not a market.

The national average cost of childcare is $13,128 per child per year — approximately 35% of a single-income household budget. College costs have risen 1,200% since 1980. Average student loan debt: $42,673 per borrower; $102,790 for graduate degree holders. Every $1,000 increase in student debt is linked to a 1.8% decrease in homeownership likelihood.

• Universal subsidized childcare — Nordic model, capped at 7% of household income: Sweden provides universal childcare from age 1, capped at 1–3% of household income, with 84% of children ages 1–5 enrolled. France’s système crèche provides care from age 2 months, income-scaled, never exceeding 10% of family income. Universal childcare is simultaneously a feminist economic policy and a workforce policy — the investment returns directly through workforce participation.
• Eliminate in-state tuition at public universities — restore the post-war bargain: Restore the post-war model where a factory worker’s child could attend college without debt. Vastly expand Pell Grants.
• Cancel student debt for borrowers with balances under $50,000, with income-scaled forgiveness above: The student debt crisis is a policy-created crisis — the correction of a systemic policy failure that trapped a generation. Of Americans born in 1984, only 50% earned more than their parents by age 30, compared to 92% of those born in 1940.

Robert Bork’s 1978 consumer welfare standard made courts reluctant to challenge mergers unless short-term prices could be shown to rise immediately — ignoring market power, barriers to entry, worker impacts, and long-term competitive harm. The result: 40 years of rising concentration, rising markups, and rising prices. This is not the market working. This is the market being replaced by monopoly.

• Reject the Chicago School consumer welfare standard — replace it with a competition standard: Consider all dimensions of competitive harm: market power, barriers to entry, worker impacts, and long-term pricing effects — not just immediate consumer prices.
• Grant the FTC Article 102-equivalent authority — price investigation powers the EU has always had: Under EU Article 102 TFEU, a dominant firm can be penalized for charging excessive prices. Grant the FTC authority to investigate and penalize excessive pricing by dominant firms in concentrated markets — starting with pharmaceuticals, food processing, housing, and fuel.
• Mandatory merger blocking thresholds: Any merger creating a combined entity with more than 15% of a regional grocery market, or 25% of any essential goods market nationally, faces mandatory structural remedies. The blocking of Kroger-Albertsons should be the rule, not the exception.
• Meatpacking concentration — structural remedy required: Tyson, Cargill, JBS, and National Beef now control 80–85% of the U.S. beef market (up from 36% in 1980) — directly driving the 73.8% increase in beef roast prices since the pandemic. Require mandatory competitive audits and bring structural remedies including divestiture.
• Annual market concentration reviews: Conduct mandatory annual reviews of concentration in food, fuel, pharmaceuticals, housing, and insurance, with public reports and enforceable action triggers.

U.S. grocery prices are approximately 15% higher than Western Europe not because of agriculture but because of market structure. The Guardian analysis of 36 top food corporations found net profits up a median of 51% since the pandemic, with restaurants recording a median 72% profit increase and Kraft-Heinz posting profits up 450% for Q4 2022.

• Block anti-competitive grocery mergers as standard practice: The proposed Kroger-Albertsons merger was correctly blocked. Enforce merger standards aggressively in grocery retail and food manufacturing; market concentration in essential food categories is a direct driver of the food price crisis.
• Investigate food manufacturer concentration — DOJ Antitrust must act: Direct DOJ Antitrust to conduct comprehensive sector reviews of market concentration in major grocery categories — breakfast cereal, condiments, beverages, processed foods — and bring enforcement actions where oligopoly pricing is evident.
• Protect farmers from corporate extraction — the French EGalim model: Prevent supermarkets from purchasing agricultural products below production costs; create transparent annual price negotiation cycles protecting farmers from absorbing all cost increases. Adapted for U.S. agricultural markets and integrated with Issue 26 (Food Policy) provisions.
• School nutrition programs at French standards: As mandated in Issue 34 and Issue 26, comprehensive school nutrition programs modeled on the French school food system reduce family household food costs across income levels while supporting domestic agriculture.

Between July 2020 and July 2022, corporate profits rose 75% — five times as fast as inflation. Five oil companies made nearly $200 billion in 2022; the entire oil industry recorded $400 billion — more than double the prior year — while spending $114 billion on stock buybacks. The pandemic and supply chain disruptions were real. The extraction layered on top was not.

• 95% tax on crisis-period profits above inflation-adjusted pre-crisis baselines — $500M+ revenue companies only: Modeled on Senator Sanders’ Ending Corporate Greed Act. The threshold excludes small businesses entirely. Estimated $400 billion in revenue from the 30 largest profiteers in a single year.
• Stock buyback excise increase to 4.6%+: The Yale Journal on Regulation found 4.6% is the rate necessary for dividend tax parity. Increase from the current 1% to at least 4.6%, indexed to maintain parity. The oil industry alone spent $114 billion on buybacks in 2022 while Americans paid record prices at the pump.
• The windfall profits tax is the historical norm, not the exception: The U.S. imposed windfall profits taxes during World War I, World War II, and the Korean War. The Excess Profits Tax of WWII applied rates of 80–90% on profits above a pre-war baseline. This is proven precedent, not radicalism.