SDA Plan 2026
Stability.
Dignity. Accountability.
Not a slogan — a promise. A governing vision built on twenty years of doing the actual work.
"The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much — it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little." — FDR
The Framework
The Extraction Economy — Why Everything Costs So Much and Where Your Money Went
America's economy isn't broken. It's been rewired.
It used to circulate money through workers, families, and communities. Now it pulls money up and out — and calls it growth.
For fifty years, the rules of this economy got rewritten — not by accident, but page by page, by people with good lawyers. The result has a name: the Extraction Economy.
And here is the part that should matter to anyone, left, right, or in between: an economy built on extraction doesn't just hurt the people at the bottom. It grows slower for everyone. We had 4–4.5% GDP growth when the rules made money circulate. We have had about 2% growth since the rules changed to let it pool at the top instead.
Fairness and growth aren't in tension here. They're the same fix.
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How Extraction Works
Five Ways the Economy Has Been Rewired Against You
You feel all five of these every day, even if the mechanics stay hidden.
01
Wage Compression
The "Steal It at the Source" Problem
Since 1979, worker productivity has grown three and a half times faster than worker pay. $50 billion a year is stolen from workers through unpaid overtime, stolen tips, and wages paid below minimum wage — more than all robbery, burglary, and car theft combined.
The Fix: Enforce wage theft like theft. Build in the right to know when an algorithm is managing you. Make sure that when AI makes workers more productive, workers share in that gain.
02
Rent Capture
The "Bought Up Everything You Need" Problem
Two companies control 70% of the dialysis market. Wall Street bought up single-family homes and drove rents up 35–44% in targeted cities. When that few players control that much, they don't compete. They extract.
The Fix: Antitrust enforcement with teeth. A monopoly isn't a free market. It is a private tax on everyone who has no alternative.
03
Externalized Costs
The "Privatize the Gains, Socialize the Pain" Problem
One family extracted more than $10 billion from an opioid company while their drugs killed hundreds of thousands. Private equity firms bought nursing homes, cut staff, and raised mortality by an estimated 10%. The investors made money. The families buried their loved ones.
The Fix: When private risk becomes public catastrophe, the people who can least afford it get hurt worst. That is what regulation is for.
04
Public Subsidy Capture
The "We Built It, They Kept It" Problem
The internet was built with public money. GPS was built with public money. The research behind AI — funded in significant part by taxpayers. The returns went to private shareholders. And the deal keeps getting renewed.
The Fix: Close the tax gap, apply the rules uniformly. That is arithmetic, not ideology.
05
The Care Crisis
The "We Take What You Give and Pay You Nothing" Problem
Family caregivers — mostly women, disproportionately immigrants and people of color — provide an estimated $600 billion in unpaid care annually. The median home health aide earns $14.50 an hour. Annual turnover in the caregiving workforce runs 40–60%. The economy runs on this labor and has never compensated the people doing it.
The Fix: Pay care workers what their work is worth. Build portable benefits. Fix Medicaid reimbursement. Build federal infrastructure for family caregivers.
"They compressed your wages, bought up everything you need and charged you what they wanted, kept the profits when it worked and handed you the bill when it didn't — and built an entire economy on the unpaid and underpaid labor of the people who care for us, then told those people it was a calling, not a job."
It isn't. It is a set of policy choices. And policy choices can be changed.
The Cross-Aisle Test
In Plain Language
These are not ideological positions. They are the answers the American electorate gives when the questions are asked without partisan framing. They are the foundation of every policy in this plan.
Should wage theft be treated as theft?
YES
Should wage theft be treaShould the same income be taxed at the same rate regardless of how many lawyers structured it?ted as theft?
YES
Should a market where four players control 75% of capitalization be called competitive?
NO
Should ordinary workers' retirement savings be put into opaque, high-fee markets without public market protections?
NO
Should the government collect the $696 billion in taxes already legally owed before cutting programs people depend on?
YES
Should companies that build on public research pay taxes proportionate to what they extract from the public system?
YES
Should a drug that costs $6 to make cost $2,000 to access?
NO
Should workers know when an algorithm is managing them and have the right to contest it?
YES
Should the people providing $600 billion in unpaid care annually receive any public support?
YES
Should care workers earning $14.50 an hour be paid more for some of the most essential work in the country?
YES
The Plan
Eleven Pillars. One Framework. Everything Connected.
Each pillar answers the same question: does this fix a pipe that has been redirected toward extraction? And does this reach the people who need it most?
S·1
Stable Costs
Affordability, healthcare prices, tax fairness, antitrust, and western water. Attack the structural causes — not just the symptoms.
S·2
Stable Work
Labor, AI, unions, small business, and dignity. Tripling union density would shift $1.2 trillion annually to working people.
S·3
Dignified Health
Healthcare, prevention, and care. Only 23% of Americans want to return to the pre-Trump healthcare system.
D-2
Dignified Housing and Generational Wealth
Supply is necessary. It is not sufficient. Here is why — and what else must happen.
D·3
Dignified Schools and Future-Ready Pathways
A four-year degree is no longer a reliable protection against displacement. Federal policy that pretends otherwise is not serving the people it is supposed to serve.
D·4
Dignified Care — For Every Stage of Life
Government by organized money is just as dangerous as government by organized mob. — FDR, 1936. Still true.
A-3
Senior Dignity and Aging with Dignity
A 72-year-old model tenant on West 71st Street in NY-12 is being told to leave her home of four and a half years. This is what policy failure looks like in one person's life.
A-1
Accountable Tech
AI governance, civil rights, legal identity, and defense contracting. Before law can hold an AI agent accountable, it must determine which agent did it.
A-2
Accountable Government, Veterans, and Democracy
Government by organized money is just as dangerous as government by organized mob. — FDR, 1936. Still true.
A-3
Accountable Foreign Policy and Global Leadership
Foreign policy is affordability policy. The US-Iran war drove energy prices up 23% and gas up 40% in 2026.
A-4
Accountable Communities
Orderly, humane, and grounded in reality — honest enough to acknowledge when two Supreme Court rulings present genuinely different questions.
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Copyright 2026, All Rights Reserved.
Paid for by Wilneida NY-12 Committee
