ECONOMIC JUSTICE

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Our economic system was broken long before COVID-19 ravaged our country and put tens of millions of people out of work. In addition to laying bare the deficiencies in our health care system, COVID-19 has also revealed the massive gaps in our social safety net, federally and here in Massachusetts. We must act now to build a just society and a moral economy, one that guarantees housing and health care as human rights, fair wages for every worker, and a social safety net that leaves no one behind.

Jordan’s economic justice plan calls for ensuring fair, living wages, expanding workers’ rights, taxing the rich and big corporations, protecting and including the undocumented, and passing Medicare for All in Massachusetts.

FAIR WAGES

1. Raise the minimum wage to $20/hr and index it to inflation so that wages rise with the cost of living.

2. Eliminate the sub-minimum wage for tipped workers and create one fair, living wage.

3. Restore Sunday and holiday time-and-a-half.

4. Expand overtime protections

5. Stop wage theft

 

EXPAND WORKER'S RIGHTS

1. Pass fair scheduling laws to give workers more predictability and control over their schedules

2. Expand collective bargaining rights

3. Expand protections for injured workers

 

TAX THE RICH

For far too long, big corporations and wealthy individuals have not paid their fair share in taxes in Massachusetts. Over the last few decades, Massachusetts has enacted large tax cuts, depriving our state of needed revenue and drastically reducing our ability to invest in our communities and our infrastructure. Our upside down tax structure has forced low- and moderate-income households to pay a larger share of their income in taxes than wealthier households.

 

It’s time for Massachusetts to end these decades of austerity and tax the rich so we can build the Commonwealth we deserve. Jordan has a few ideas on how we can do so:

1. Pass the Fair Share Amendment to ensure millionaires pay their fair share in state income taxes.

2. End step-up-in-basis for capital gains, a tax break on capital gains from inherited wealth.

3. Raise the estate tax for estates valued at over $1 million.

4. Implement a tax on the sale of homes over $1 million.

5. Raise the corporate tax rate on large corporations from 8% to 9.5%, which was the corporate tax rate before the Great Recession. 

 

PROTECT & INCLUDE UNDOCUMENTED RESIDENTS

Massachusetts should not discriminate against workers based on immigration status, and it is morally indefensible for Massachusetts and the federal government to leave undocumented residents out of COVID-19 cash assistance relief programs. send a direct cash payment to every resident, as California has done, and open unemployment insurance to everyone regardless of immigration status. We must also pass the Safe Communities Act so no worker fears deportation as retaliation for exercising their rights. Finally, we must join New York, California, Maryland, Nevada, and several other progressive states in issuing driver’s licenses to everyone, regardless of immigration status.

 

MEDICARE FOR ALL

We cannot build a fair and moral economy without a fair and moral health care system that guarantees high quality health care to everyone as a human right. When Jordan is in the State House, he will co-sponsor An Act Establishing Medicare for All in Massachusetts (currently pending as S.683/H.1194). This legislation would guarantee equitable health care access to every resident of the Commonwealth through a single payer system.