Climate Change

Climate change is the greatest danger to the survival of our species. As the country with the highest GDP, it behooves us to take the lead on fixing the problem that we’ve done more than our fair share of causing – only China emits more greenhouse gasses than the US, and they have over 4X as many people. The fact that billionaires exist and we can waste so much money on military spending shows just how inequitable our nation’s priorities are – we surely have the resources necessary to solve this problem, what we lack is leadership with the will to do what is necessary to save the human race.

We need action on a grand scale, and we’ve done it before – FDR’s New Deal to address the Great Depression built out tremendous infrastructure that has become key to all our lives. What we need is a Green New Deal, an idea the Green Party has been pioneering & refining for a decade before another party (that shall remain nameless) watered it down and presented it as their own invention. That’s front and center of our platform, not just something thrown in as an afterthought for the sake of appeasement, and we’re committed to an ecosocialist way of doing it, so that the People control the resources democratically and locally, rather than all the profits being gobbled up by billionaires who then pretend they’re broke and need taxpayer money to bail them out the moment they start losing money.

On the subject of billionaires, we should have what I like to call a “Dragon’s Hoard” tax. If you lived for 100 years, and spent $100,000 per day, every day, that would be $3.65 billion (ignoring leap years). 86% of Americans earn less than $100,000 per YEAR. All these people have a net worth over $4B last year, and they certainly don’t have 100 more years to live. So for round numbers, let’s call $4B “More money than anybody needs to retire & live the rest of their life in opulent luxury.” All net worth above this should be taxed let’s say 15% every year, with an even higher marginal rate past $50B, say 25%. If this means company founders need to sell their stock or 5th homes or second yachts to get the money to pay the tax, that’s a good thing, That’s the goal. It will only affect about 150 people, and they’d still be fabulously wealthy.