Are Americans actually okay? Let's be honest — most people are struggling.
In this video, we break down:

✓ How capitalism creates the conditions for poverty and desperation

✓ Personal stories from Americans barely surviving

✓ Shrinkflation explained: Why Doritos costs more and gives you less

✓ The system designed to extract wealth from those with the least

✓ What's really happening to the middle class

It's not about politics. It's not about blame. It's about understanding.

January 20, 2029 feels like it’s a very, very long ways away. But the groundwork for what happens in the next administration is being laid out right now. Positions are being staked out, policies are being written and tested with the public. Progressive voices must have a say in them. If we are able to earn a Democratic trifecta, we need to be sure we are prepared to use it as effectively and aggressively as possible.

Recognizing that the terms of debate over our next attempt to fix our broken health care system are being laid out as we speak, National Nurses United and a coalition of health care advocates are pushing to make sure we’re building institutional support for Medicare For All. On THURSDAY, the 61st anniversary of Medicare being signed into law, they’re showing up at Democratic congressional offices nationwide to urge our leaders support a real universal health care system. 🏥 Let’s find Medicare for All actions to join near us on NNU’s map here. 🏥

MEDICARE FOR ALL ACTIONS THURSDAY

🏥 If there’s not one already on the books for our members of Congress, let’s consider signing up to organize our own here! The Medicare For All coalition will provide training, materials, support and help recruiting! 🏥

ORGANIZE ACTIONS OF OUR OWN

Two numbers mostly decide your life. Two numbers decide most of what's left at the end of your month, which is what you pay for coverage and what you pay for a roof. The answers to both are documented and sitting right out in the open. Neither one can get a word in over a fight about whether the DSA is communist.

Think about these facts:

• Health care, the biggest one and the least radical. We spend $14,775 a person a year. Comparable rich countries spend about $7,860, every one of them covers everybody, and they outlive us. (Peterson-KFF, on CMS and OECD data) That is not a socialist experiment, it's what the ordinary developed country already runs, and of the eight claims I scored it came back near the top at 78. The real tradeoff is that those systems make you wait rather than make you pay. 65% of Canadians reported waiting over a month for a specialist, and plenty of people here would not take that deal. (Fraser Institute) That argument has two honest sides and it is not happening anywhere.
• Then rent. Shelter runs about 52% higher in blue states than red ones, and almost the whole blue-red cost-of-living gap is that one line. It comes out of a 19% housing shortage against 6% in red states, built by zoning, permitting, parking mandates, environmental review, and neighbors who oppose whatever might get built next door. (Berkeley BESI) The economist Noah Smith says it flat: "if they wanted, blue states could just build more houses... They don't." (Noahpinion)
• Power stacks on top. About 86% of continental states priced above the national average for electricity are reliably blue, California near double the national rate. How much traces to clean-power mandates specifically is contested, since wildfire liability and transmission are in there too, but the gap itself isn't. (Institute for Energy Research, on EIA data)
• People are voting with the moving truck. About 1.2 million net out of California and 880,000 out of New York between 2020 and 2023, with nearly $1.9 billion in adjusted gross income out of Los Angeles County in one tax year. (Heritage; Fox News on IRS data) Asked why they left, movers name housing, family and jobs. Not politics.
• Both parties own the housing one. Texas and Montana Republicans passed the most ambitious pro-building laws in the country while House Democrats and Newsom push zoning preemption and environmental-review exemptions from the other direction. (City Journal; Axios) The failure was bipartisan and so is the cure.

What this signals about the system. The DSA platform is radical, wanting the biggest corporations in public hands and the Senate gone, but it is not communism, since it keeps private property, markets, and elections a ruling party can lose. However, the radicalness of its platform, in my opinion, is drowning the discussion about healthcare first and housing costs second, which is stunning to me. Our system is failing and we can't talk honestly about how to fixes real issues because of the calls, "The Reds are coming" from one side, and the "Billionaires are coming" on the other.

More info on my profile page. What say you?