Essentials are public and at cost. At cost means covering the real costs of providing a service without a profit markup. Taxes or contributions fund services that are free at the point of use. Personal property and private small businesses are protected.
One exception is printed in plain sight: water, electricity and natural gas are fully public utilities, with no private option. For other essentials, a public option must exist and private provision may remain a choice, never the only door.
The program is called The Rethink. Patch: plug the holes in what already exists. Fix: repair what can be repaired. Rethink: what should not be profit-driven at all is run for everyone, at cost.
Start with economic rights. The 1944 Second Bill of Rights and the 2015 Georgetown speech set the program: a useful job, a living wage, housing, healthcare, education and economic security. Win these rights through elections, legislation, unions and public institutions.
Extend democracy into the economy. The Democratic Socialists of America describe a long-term direction of democratic control of major economic institutions, with workers and communities deciding how essential resources are used. Free elections, independent courts, free speech and civil liberties are core requirements.
Capitalism centers private ownership and investment. Socialism centers social ownership or control of productive resources. Democratic socialism combines that direction with political democracy and civil liberties. Social democracy typically retains predominantly private ownership while expanding public services and worker protections. Communism is a distinct tradition aiming at common ownership and a classless society. Nordic countries are mixed economies.
Britannica · Socialism · Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy · Socialism · Democratic Socialists of America · Georgetown · 2015
The 1944 Second Bill of Rights proposed eight economic rights. The last three items add this site’s commitments for today.
Guarantee access to public work, protect unions, repeal right-to-work laws federally, and provide 12 weeks of paid family and medical leave.
Make basic groceries available through public at-cost stores.
Buy directly from growers where practical and offer fair terms to small producers.
Fully protect private small-business ownership and fair competition. Fight monopoly, unfair terms and barriers to credit.
A standing public builder builds public social housing directly and rents it at cost. Private builders remain legal for high-end homes. The homes, cars and personal belongings people own always remain private property.
Guarantee public healthcare with no insurance companies: medically necessary care is free at the point of use.
Expand Social Security. Raise SSDI and SSI, remove asset traps and decide claims faster, so disability, sickness and unemployment do not become destitution. One universal public pension, paid into at first by employers with 100 or more workers and phasing in for every employer, stands behind working life.
Guarantee free public college and trade training, on a public path that starts with universal childcare.
Guarantee free universal childcare, including pre-K, with trained and fairly paid staff.
Make basic broadband an essential at cost. Water, electricity and natural gas are fully public utilities, and clean power is part of that public system.
Protect personal property and the right to build wealth. No one keeps a fortune above $1 billion: the excess is taxed back down through annual mark-to-market valuation, with an exit tax on leaving and IRS wealth audits.
At-cost public grocery stores are our lead food policy. Buy directly where practical and sell at acquisition cost, with no retail markup.
Open public stores in underserved areas. Use transparent purchasing and publish a separate operating budget for wages, rent, refrigeration, freight and spoilage.
Make a basic basket of groceries available at cost to everyone. Private grocers and specialty shops remain free to compete.
At-cost prices remove the retail markup on participating goods. Reliable stores in underserved neighborhoods improve access.
The operating budget still needs funding. Compare the same basket, quality and location and count the full costs before reporting savings.
Publish the acquisition price and the operating budget alongside each other. USDA’s Food Dollar shows where spending goes across the supply chain.
Healthcare is a right. Guarantee access through a public system at cost, with care based on need.
Expand public coverage and invest in public clinics, staff and rural care. Reduce the bills patients face at the point of care.
A universal public system with no patient charges for essential care, financed openly and governed democratically.
Broad coverage spreads risk and makes access less dependent on employment or income.
A guarantee needs staffing, capacity, a funding plan and independent appeals.
The costs ledger shows OECD per-person spending and separately reports employer family premiums from AHRQ and KFF.
OECD · Health at a Glance 2025 · AHRQ · MEPS-IC 2024 · KFF · Employer Health Benefits Survey 2024
The only hospital in a region is public; a private hospital may open later. Essential and shortage drugs are produced by public and nonprofit makers at cost, while new patented drugs stay private under patent-buyout and compulsory-licensing rules. Medical debt is void by law.
Build Vienna-style social housing with rents tied to construction, financing, maintenance and reserves. Your own home remains private property.
A standing public builder builds new social housing directly and preserves publicly owned homes on public land. Rent help can prevent eviction, but payments to corporate landlords transfer public dollars to owners without necessarily adding homes.
A large, well-maintained public housing sector at cost, open across incomes, alongside protected private homeownership.
Adding homes keeps the public investment in lasting housing and gives renters another option.
Private builders remain legal for high-end homes. Land, construction, repairs and local approvals still matter. Publish costs, vacancies, wait times and maintenance performance.
Vienna has city-owned and subsidized limited-profit housing. Its eligibility and financing differ from this US proposal.
End insurance as a product, everywhere. Public and social pools cover the risk directly: no company sells a policy, takes a profit, or decides whether a covered loss counts.
Replace health, car, home, life and disability policies with public or social pools. Claims follow published coverage rules, with independent appeals, disaster reserves and public or nonprofit administration during the transition.
Protection is a public guarantee, not a product. Contributions, claims, appeals, reserves and solvency are publicly accountable.
Pool risk broadly and direct money to claims and reserves instead of shareholder payouts, marketing and denial machinery.
Removing insurers saves overhead and profit, not the cost of the claims themselves. The guardrails are written in: global budgets where they fit, so billing games gain nothing; rules instead of risk prices, including rebuild-once and mitigation duties after repeated property losses; claims and payout data published by region; a fraud unit with real penalties; and discretionary extras paid privately.
Social Security, Medicare, unemployment insurance and federal flood insurance pool different risks. Flood insurance covers specified flood losses.
Social Security Administration · Medicare · Basics · U.S. DOL · Unemployment insurance · FEMA · NFIP · NAIC · 2024 auto insurance expenditure
“It's bogus only the wealthy get the chance for a higher education.”
Remove tuition and required fees at public colleges and public trade programs. Make childcare universal and free, including pre-K, with pay and training for staff.
A public path from universal childcare and pre-K through higher education and apprenticeships, free at the point of use.
Fewer financial barriers to learning a trade or earning a degree, and reliable care for families.
Budget for classrooms, staff and places. Free tuition alone does not pay for transport, housing or food.
Head Start serves eligible families. The college exhibit uses College Board’s published 2024–25 tuition and fees, before aid.
Protect unions, repeal right-to-work laws federally in every state, guarantee access to a public job and provide 12 weeks of paid family and medical leave.
Raise wages toward a living wage, enforce collective bargaining rights and fund 12 weeks of paid leave. Start a public jobs guarantee through local employers and public agencies.
Anyone who needs work can take a useful, union-standard public job. People can take time to care for family or recover without losing their income.
A stronger wage floor, collective bargaining and paid leave give workers more security.
Set regional wage rules, fund jobs people need, and give small businesses a workable transition and leave reimbursement.
Federal FMLA generally provides eligible workers up to 12 workweeks of job-protected unpaid leave. Paid leave here is a policy demand.
U.S. DOL · FMLA · U.S. Code · 29 USC § 157 · U.S. DOL · Worker rights
Strengthen retirement, disability and survivor benefits. Add one universal public pension and, separately, no-fee public retirement accounts. Keep basic income open for exploration.
Improve benefits for people with low lifetime earnings. Raise SSDI and SSI, remove asset traps and process disability claims faster. Employers with 100 or more workers must pay into the one government-run universal pension system for their staff; companies do not each run their own pension. The mandate starts at employers with 100 or more workers and phases in for every employer; universal coverage is the end state, and smaller employers get a phase-in runway. Publish a financing plan.
An adequate, durable public income floor through old age, disability and unemployment: a pooled universal pension, plus individual 401(k) and IRA accounts held publicly with no account or management fees.
Shared protection covers risks private savings alone may not. The pension is pooled and universal; the no-fee accounts are separate individual savings. One is not the other, and neither charges savers a fee to take part.
Contribution rates, eligibility and benefit formulas must add up. Basic income requires separate analysis of funding and benefit interactions.
Social Security already provides retirement, disability and survivor benefits under separate eligibility rules.
Social Security Administration
A recurring cash payment could reduce income volatility. Compare it with expanded targeted benefits and the jobs guarantee. Study cost, funding and whether any existing benefits would change.
Treat water, electricity and natural gas as fully public utilities. Reliable, affordable clean electricity is an essential public service, not a private concession.
Bring water, power and gas under public ownership and operation, by buyout at original-cost value: original cost less wear, with no monopoly premium and no acquisition markup. Weatherize homes, invest in clean generation and publish rates, bills and outage performance.
A reliable, fully public utility system with charges that cover service, upkeep and reserves without shareholder markup. Telecom is different: cell service keeps the public-option and wholesale-access model in its own section.
Public ownership lets communities direct investment, scrutinize the bill and plan for reliability instead of guaranteeing a private return.
Grid upgrades, storage, reliability and debt service need long-term funding. Public ownership does not guarantee a low bill.
The costs exhibit uses APPA’s national extrapolated residential bills from 2024 EIA utility data.
APPA · EIA-861 (2024), p. 11 · EIA · Residential natural gas
Public transit is free in cities and towns. Intercity trips are sold at cost.
Remove fares from local buses, trains and trams, fund operations openly, and publish frequency and reliability.
Moving inside your own community needs no payment at the door; regional and national links charge the cost of operation, with no markup.
No fare standing in the way of short trips, and an honest at-cost price for long ones.
Free to ride is not free to run: drivers, maintenance, safety and capacity still have to be funded. If the service is infrequent, a zero fare alone will not move anyone.
Give everyone access to basic public accounts at cost. Private banks and credit unions can operate alongside them.
Create accessible public transaction accounts and partner with local lenders for small-business credit. Publish fees and guarantees.
Everyone can use a low-cost public account and payments service with clear privacy, capital and oversight rules.
A public alternative gives households and small businesses more choice and less exposure to penalty fees.
Protect deposits, manage credit risk and keep lending decisions independent of political favors.
Bank of North Dakota is state-owned and offers basic accounts to state residents. Its retail policy is limited and its role differs from a nationwide option.
Bank of North Dakota · Public accounts · CFPB · 2023 overdraft/NSF data · CFPB · 2024 rule estimate · RegInfo · RIN 3170-AA42
Bank of North Dakota is state-owned and offers basic accounts to state residents. Its retail policy is limited and its role differs from a nationwide option.
More than $5.8 billion in overdraft and non-sufficient-funds fees was reported in 2023 by banks in the CFPB sample.
CFPB · 2023 overdraft/NSF data
The CFPB estimated up to $5 billion a year in potential savings under its December 2024 rule for very large institutions. Congress overturned the rule in May 2025.
Police, prisons, and courts must never run for profit. Public authority over arrest, detention and judgment requires democratic oversight, due process and independent review.
GAO reported that ICE spent $20.5 million in May 2020 on more than 12,000 unused beds per day on average. End contracts that pay for unused capacity and private profit from detention.
Enforce applicable minimum wage, safety, organizing and anti-retaliation protections. The Department of Labor explains workplace rights regardless of immigration status.
Free elections, civil liberties and a real say at work are essential to the program.
Public stores still need wages, rent, transport and refrigeration. The policy publishes the operating budget and sells groceries without a retail markup.
Federal FMLA generally offers up to 12 unpaid, job-protected workweeks for eligible workers. This site calls for 12 paid weeks.
GAO found guaranteed minimum payments for detention capacity regardless of use. In May 2020 it reported $20.5 million for unused beds.
Per-person system spending and family premiums measure different things. A family premium is the total employer and employee premium, with separate out-of-pocket costs.
They combine markets and private enterprise with extensive public services and labor institutions.
Bills also reflect usage, debt, fuel mix, geography and subsidies. The APPA exhibit gives reported group averages with different usage levels.
British Columbia’s public insurer provides mandatory basic coverage. Its benefits and prices are specific to that jurisdiction.
The federal program bears the insurance risk. Participating private insurers can be paid to write and service policies.
Social Security pools specified income risks through a public program. Public insurance still needs adequate funding and rules.
Pool risks, direct investment toward needs and keep service revenue in the service.
Transparent budgets, capacity, independent appeals, public oversight, and a way to change course when performance falls short.
All five are mixed economies with private businesses.
| Country | Main healthcare model | Life expectancy at birth |
|---|---|---|
| 🇺🇸 United States | Employer and individual insurance, Medicare and Medicaid | 76.4 years |
| 🇩🇰 Denmark | Universal, mainly tax-funded | 81.5 years |
| 🇸🇪 Sweden | Universal, mainly tax-funded | 83.1 years |
| 🇩🇪 Germany | Compulsory coverage, mainly social insurance | 80.8 years |
| 🇬🇧 United Kingdom | Universal NHS, mainly tax-funded | 80.4 years |
Historical data for both sexes, 2021 or nearest year (UK: 2020). Outcomes also reflect housing, income, behavior and the pandemic.
OECD · Health at a Glance 2023 · WHO · Health system reviews
This site's anchor is the DSA definition of democratic socialism as the long-term direction, so here is the honest comparison. The DSA column comes from DSA's 2021 platform and its Workers Deserve More program. The other column is this site's settled positions, updated for the positions adopted on November 12, 2026.
| Topic | DSA | Symphon |
|---|---|---|
| Healthcare | Single-payer Medicare for All. Dental, vision, and mental health included, free at the point of service, paid for by taxes on the wealthy and corporations | No insurance companies. All medically necessary care, dental and mental health included, free at the point of use |
| Education | Free public college, universal childcare and pre-K | Universal childcare including pre-K, free college and free trade school |
| Work | A federal jobs guarantee, a union right for every worker, repeal right-to-work laws, a higher minimum wage | A jobs guarantee, federal repeal of right-to-work in every state, a living wage, 12 weeks of paid family and medical leave |
| Retirement and disability | Fully fund and expand Social Security and disability benefits | Expand Social Security. Raise SSDI and SSI, remove asset traps and speed up approvals. One government-run universal pension, paid into at first by employers with 100 or more workers and phasing in for every employer, plus separate no-fee public retirement accounts |
| Utilities | Public ownership of utilities and the grid, 100% renewable power | Water, power and gas are fully public utilities. Clean power is part of that public system |
| Housing | Build social housing, decommodify housing | A standing public builder builds social housing directly and rents it at cost |
| Banking | Public development banks, postal banking, a public banking system | A public banking option, so nobody is forced to bank for profit |
| Taxing the rich | Wealth taxes, higher top income rates, estate taxes, a financial transactions tax | No billionaires: wealth above $1 billion is taxed back down, with annual mark-to-market, an exit tax and IRS wealth audits. Every estimate labeled by scorer and solidity |
| Public works | Bring infrastructure planning, engineering, and construction in-house instead of depending on private contractors | A standing public builder, rebuilt public engineering, a public cost book and caps on change orders |
| Money in politics | Public financing of elections, overturn Citizens United | No corporate money at all, including PACs. Public financing replaces it. Paid lobbying is banned for everyone, no carve-outs, while unpaid citizen petition, testimony and meetings stay legal. Scores published |
| Existing debt | Cancel all student debt and all medical debt | Medical, student and other debts for now-free services are void by law |
| Topic | DSA | Symphon |
|---|---|---|
| Owning big business | Social ownership of all major industry and infrastructure. Nationalize railroads, utilities, banks, and insurers | A citizens' fund that builds slowly, through share issuance funded from profits, to a maximum 25% stake in companies with 1,000 or more employees. Small business fully protected, the rest stays private |
| Private practice | Public ownership of hospitals and drug production, a publicly run health system | Public payment, your choice of provider, with two settled exceptions: the only hospital in a region is public, and essential drug production is public or nonprofit. Doctors and dentists can stay private and bill the public system, or take a public salary |
| Prices and transit | Water, energy, transit, and food guaranteed free of charge | Essentials sold at cost with no profit markup. Healthcare and a basic funeral are free at the point of use. Transit is free in cities and towns, and at cost between them |
| Insurance | Nationalize insurance companies as part of finance | No insurance product at all, for anything. Health, car, home, life and disability become social pools with the anti-abuse layer written in: budgets where they fit, rules instead of risk prices, published claims and payout data, and a fraud unit with penalties |
| Drugs | Public ownership of pharmaceutical research and production | A layered model: public and nonprofit production for essential and shortage drugs; private innovation for new patented drugs, with patent buyouts, compulsory licensing, prices tied to the public funding share, and one patent per drug type |
| Police and prisons | Abolition is the stated goal. Defund police budgets toward zero, free all incarcerated people | Police, prisons, and courts should never be private. Public, funded, and accountable, not abolished |
| Immigration | Abolish ICE, end all deportations and detention, unconditional amnesty, voting rights for all residents | No border policy position. The site covers detention profit, immigrant work rights, and fact checks only |
| The Constitution | A second constitutional convention, abolish the Senate and the Electoral College, move to a parliamentary system | No constitutional convention. A true parliamentary system: one proportionally elected chamber, with a 3% threshold, chooses the government and the head of state. No separately elected president, so the Electoral College goes with the office, and the Senate is replaced by that chamber |
| Foreign policy | Slash military spending, withdraw from NATO, close all overseas bases, end all military aid | Close most overseas bases; keep a few only by treaty for genuine defense. Cap weapons acquisition prices at the best credible comparable-system price worldwide, and ban arms sales or gifts to human-rights abusers. No position here on NATO withdrawal or ending all military aid |
| Housing relief | Universal rent control and canceling rent debt | Build at cost instead. Rent help only as emergency relief |
| Sales taxes | Reduce and eliminate sales and excise taxes as regressive | The funding section also prints a broad consumption tax with rebates as an option, labeled as an estimate, alongside the wealth taxes |
| Coverage | Free abortion on demand is a platform plank | The site does not cover abortion or guns, by design |
| Funerals | Not addressed | A basic burial or cremation is a public service at no charge |
No insurance companies. All medically necessary care is free at the point of use, paid from public funds. The ban is on insurance, not on private provision: private hospitals, doctors and dentists can all keep working inside the system, and a public option must exist in every essential service. Private provision is a choice, never the only door.
All medically necessary care, including dental care and mental health, at no charge when you use it. Cosmetic procedures are excluded. Anyone who wants one can buy it privately, the same as today.
Hospitals stop billing per procedure and run on annual global budgets, the Maryland model: a set yearly budget agreed in advance instead of a meter running on every test and scan. About four in five US hospitals are already nonprofit or publicly owned. For-profit hospitals may keep operating under the same budgets and rates, or convert. Staff keep their jobs. The work that shrinks is billing.
Keep your own practice and bill the public system at standard published rates. This is the Canadian pattern: public payment does not mean government employment.
Work as a salaried clinician in a public clinic, with no billing at all. The choice belongs to the doctor or dentist.
Dental care is fully part of the model, not a carve-out, at rates that fund the work. The warning is printed on purpose: Britain's NHS dentistry was included on paper but funded so thinly that it barely exists in much of the country. Inclusion without funding is a promise that evaporates.
If a hospital is the only hospital serving a region, it is public. A community's only emergency door should not depend on a private balance sheet. A private hospital may open later and compete under the same budgets, rates and quality rules: competition is allowed, monopoly is not.
The model is layered. Essential generics and shortage drugs are produced by public and nonprofit makers at cost, with guaranteed public purchase contracts so the lines keep running. New patented drugs may stay private, but the public keeps teeth: patent buyouts that pay the innovator once and open production; compulsory licensing when a price is abusive or a drug is in shortage; and prices that reflect how much public money funded the research. One patent per drug type: changing a medicine's size or shape, releasing an extended-release version, or switching its delivery system earns no new patent term. Production capacity, shortages, prices and contract performance are published and audited. The honest limit: public production still needs research, plants, ingredients, quality control and skilled staff, and buyouts or licences must keep supply stable.
Medical debt is void by law under the fresh-start rule in this guide. Having received care does not leave a household owing for a service that is now public and free at the point of use.
A basic cremation or a burial in a simple coffin is a public service at no charge. Private funeral homes may deliver it at public rates, or a municipal service can provide it. Premium coffins, ceremonies and extras stay a private market, bought by choice.
Nineteen comparisons. Dates, units and limits sit next to each figure. The policy is public essentials at cost. These figures describe existing bills, rates or spending.
The utility rule: water, electricity and natural gas are fully public. Local transit is free in cities and towns and priced at cost between them. Neither rule changes the telecom model in the cell-service section.
Our food policy sells groceries at acquisition cost, without retail markup. A separately published public budget funds operations. There is no national price quote for this proposed system.
| Essential | Public / comparison | Private / U.S. | What to know |
|---|---|---|---|
| Water2025 · USD per household/year | $494Public systems | $823For-profit systems | Food & Water Watch survey of large U.S. systems. Typical water bills in the sample, not a matched household quote. Excludes sewer.Food & Water Watch · 2025 bills |
| Electricity2024 · USD per residential customer/month | $123.78Public power | $139.42Investor-owned utilities | APPA national extrapolated bills from Form EIA-861. The two groups have different average usage.APPA · EIA-861 (2024), p. 11 |
| Natural gas2024 · USD per thousand cubic feet (Mcf) | No comparable national public-vs-private figure exists. | $14.50/Mcf · U.S. residential average, for scale only | The EIA series does not split prices by ownership.EIA · Residential natural gas |
| Healthcare2024 or nearest year · USD PPP per person/year | $5,967OECD average | $14,885United States | The OECD average includes different coverage models. Both figures are total system spending. In separate 2024 employer surveys, total family premiums averaged $24,540 (AHRQ MEPS-IC) and $25,572 (KFF). Premiums combine employer and employee contributions.OECD · Health at a Glance 2025 · AHRQ · MEPS-IC 2024 · KFF · Employer Health Benefits Survey 2024 |
| College2024–25 · USD per student/academic year | $11,610Public four-year, in-state | $43,350Private nonprofit four-year | College Board’s 2024 edition. Average published tuition and required fees before aid, excluding housing and food.College Board · 2024 report |
| Sewer / wastewaterUS examples · USD/household/month at 4,000 gallons | $45.51NYC municipal sewer only, FY2027: $8.51/100 cubic feet × 4,000/748. Calculated example. | $133.16PA American Water, Zone 1 residential tariff effective Aug. 7, 2024, 5/8-inch meter. | Different regions and years, infrastructure and rate designs. Sewer-only examples, not national averages. PA figure is historical and has since been superseded; NYC example excludes water and minimum-bill effects.NYC Water Board: Rate history · PA American Water: Wastewater tariff |
| Trash + recyclingUS local examples · 2026 review · USD/household/month | $25.29Wilmington city fee schedule: 35-gallon cart. Weekly trash; recycling and other waste services included. | $31.17SeaTac private Recology: weekly 32-gallon cart $29.31 + $1.86 county disposal charge; recycling and yard waste included. | Published local rates, not ownership averages. Different cart sizes, regions, fees and collection schedules. Recology is an employee-owned private contractor; municipal arrangements can use private contractors too. Wilmington effective tariff year not independently verified.Wilmington: City fee schedule · Wilmington: Included waste services · Recology: SeaTac 2026 rates |
| Broadband internetUS local / advertised examples · Nov. 2026 · USD/month | $67.99EPB municipal fiber in Chattanooga: 1 Gig plan, as listed in its 2026 report. | $60Xfinity advertised 1 Gig cable offer for five years; new customers, bank-account autopay and paperless billing required. | Not national averages or identical service areas. Cable and fiber differ on upload speeds. Xfinity taxes/fees extra; availability and promotional terms vary by address. Equipment and unlimited data listed as included. No universal public-price advantage is implied.EPB: Municipal fiber, 2026 · Xfinity: Published internet offers |
| HousingUS · public rules reviewed 2026 / rental benchmark 2024 | Income-basedPublic housing TTP generally starts with the highest of 30% of adjusted monthly income, 10% of monthly income, welfare rent or the local minimum; flat-rent options exist. | $1,487 / monthCensus 2024 national median gross rent, including utilities. Market-rent-only national benchmark not verified here. | A rent formula versus an observed median, not equal homes. Census includes subsidized renters; this is explicitly not a pure private-market average. Public housing eligibility, waiting lists and utility allowances matter.HUD: Public housing rent calculation · Census: 2024 housing costs |
| Pre-K / Head Start vs childcareUS · 2026 program rules / 2024 price benchmark · USD/child/year | $0 tuitionHead Start for eligible families. Public pre-K may be low-cost or free, depending on state, age and eligibility. | $13,128Child Care Aware’s 2024 national childcare price benchmark. | Public programs have eligibility and capacity limits and may not cover a full working day or year. The childcare estimate mixes ages, settings and provider types; it is not a private-preschool-only or for-profit-only average. Tax funding is not zero.Childcare.gov: Head Start / pre-K · Child Care Aware: 2024 prices |
| Transit vs car ownershipNYC fare 2026 / US new car 2025 · different units | $3 / rideMTA subway/local bus adult fare; OMNY caps eligible fares at $35 per rolling seven days. | $11,577 / yearAAA 2025 average new-car ownership and operating cost at 15,000 miles/year. | A subsidized fare versus full vehicle costs, not the same service. Car figure includes depreciation, financing, fuel, insurance and upkeep; do not add a separate insurance benchmark. Transit needs a useful route and may not replace a car.MTA: OMNY fares · AAA: 2025 driving costs |
| USPS vs UPS / FedExUS domestic parcel examples · Oct.–Nov. 2026 · USD/shipment | $14.65USPS Priority Mail Small Flat Rate Box, retail price effective Oct. 4, 2026. | $10.85 startingUPS Simple Rate Extra Small (up to 100 cubic inches), published starting price. FedEx matched price: unverified. | Different service speeds and terms, not a matched delivery quote or national average. USPS requires its flat-rate box; UPS permits customer packaging. The USPS box is about 83 cubic inches externally. Check destination, delivery date, weight, surcharges and discounts.USPS: October 2026 price list · UPS: Simple Rate · FedEx: One Rate |
| Credit unions vs banksUS national average quoted rate · June 27, 2025 · % per year | 5.82%Member-owned credit unions: reported rate for used-car loans, 48 months. | 7.79%Commercial banks: same product category in NCUA’s comparison. | Historical reported product-rate averages, not matched borrower offers or guaranteed APRs. Credit unions are private nonprofit cooperatives, not government banks. Membership and underwriting apply. Not every credit-union product beats every bank product.NCUA: June 2025 bank comparison · NCUA: Member ownership |
| Bank of North Dakota vs banksUS institutional comparison · reviewed Nov. 2026 · loan APR / deposit yield | Program-specificBND is state-owned and works with financial institutions. No matched national average loan rate verified. | Product-specificCommercial banks offer retail and business products. No matched BND-versus-bank rate verified. | BND is not a nationwide retail replacement for commercial banks. Its deposits are state-guaranteed, not FDIC insured. Compare the same product, maturity, eligibility and guarantee; numeric spread is unverified.Bank of North Dakota · Public accounts |
| Federal student vs private loansUS new undergraduate loans · 2026–27 · annual interest / APR | 6.52% fixed interestFederal Direct Subsidized/Unsubsidized undergraduate loans first disbursed July 1, 2026–June 30, 2027. Not an APR. | Credit-priced APRPrivate lender quote required; current like-for-like average unverified. Rates may be fixed or variable and depend on borrower/co-signer. | Federal loan fees mean interest is not total APR. Borrowing limits, subsidies, eligibility and repayment protections differ. A private quote below the federal interest rate alone does not establish the best overall deal.Federal Student Aid: 2026–27 rates · Sallie Mae: Undergraduate loans |
| FHA vs conventional mortgagesUS program structure · reviewed Nov. 2026 · % of base loan | 1.75% upfront MIPStandard FHA upfront mortgage insurance charge; annual insurance also applies. Mortgage interest/APR requires a lender quote. | Quote requiredConventional mortgage interest/APR and any private mortgage insurance depend on borrower, down payment and lender. | FHA usually insures privately originated loans; this is public insurance versus conventional lending, not public versus private lenders. Both charge interest and fees. Conventional PMI is typically required below 20% down; FHA can cost more for some borrowers.CFPB: FHA loans · HUD: FHA insurance premiums · CFPB: Conventional mortgages |
| Flood insuranceUS · 2026 NFIP analysis · USD/policy/year | $976 / yearNerdWallet’s analysis of National Flood Insurance Program rates; public underwriting, private servicing may occur. | Average unverifiedPrivate flood premiums require property-specific quotes; no matched current national average verified here. | Different properties and coverage limits defeat simple price rankings. This is a third-party NFIP average, not an official FEMA universal price. FEMA rates depend on flood risk and coverage. Public flood insurance is not comprehensive social home insurance.NerdWallet: NFIP costs, 2026 · FEMA: NFIP premiums · FEMA · Write Your Own program · NAIC: Flood insurance |
| Car insuranceUS · Nov. 2026 modeled benchmark · USD/policy/year | Proposal, not a quoteA social/public auto pool is proposed here. ICBC in Canada is a real example, but its rates are not a US price estimate. | $2,357 full coverageNerdWallet’s US benchmark for a 35-year-old driver, good credit, clean record; methodology uses median rate estimates. | Not actual average spending across all vehicles. NAIC’s separate 2024 expenditure measure is $1,431.63 per insured vehicle/year across different coverage choices. No US social-pool savings estimate verified.NerdWallet: Auto rates, Nov. 2026 · NAIC: 2024 auto expenditure · ICBC · Basic insurance |
| Home insuranceUS · 2026 modeled benchmark · USD/policy/year | Proposal, not a quoteA broad social/public home pool is proposed here, with catastrophe reserves, prevention and an explicit funding backstop. | $2,490 / yearNerdWallet benchmark: $400,000 dwelling, $300,000 liability, $1,000 deductible; 40-year-old owner with good credit. | Not every owner’s bill or a for-profit-only sample. GAO’s distinct modeled 2024 private-market estimate was $2,829 per home/year. Different samples/coverage, not a time series. Flood generally requires separate coverage.NerdWallet: Home rates, 2026 · GAO: Home insurance premiums · NAIC: Flood insurance |
Local buses, trains and trams carry no fare. Intercity services charge the cost of running them, with no profit markup. The comparison above describes today's prices; it is not a fare quote for the proposed system. The honest limit is capacity: a free ride on a bus that rarely comes is not mobility, so operating funding, frequency and reliability are published alongside the fare rule.
Hampstead, North Carolina has no public water system. The only provider is a private company, Carolina Water Service. A few miles away, Wilmington drinks from a public system. The two bills are not close.
| System | Combined water and sewer bill |
|---|---|
| Carolina Water Service, private, Hampstead | About $298.04 a month for 5,000 gallons in year one of the approved rate plan, rising to $318.41 by year three |
| CFPUA, public, Wilmington | About $85 a month, average combined bill |
NC Utilities Commission reporting · CFPUA
The system worked as designed, and that is the problem. Carolina Water Service is authorized a 9.8% return on equity, so its profit grows with its spending. Under NC law (G.S. 62-133.1A), a private company that buys a public water system may put the full purchase price into its rate base, so customers pay a return on the price of their own system being sold. Water and Sewer Investment Plans (G.S. 62-133.1B) pre-approve further annual increases between rate cases. And a small system spreads its fixed costs over far fewer households than a regional public system can.
Day one, nothing breaks. The only provider simply bills the public system under public rates and budgets, and the taps stay on. Then the rules change, in this order:
Private essential rates may not exceed a set margin over comparable public systems. If the public system down the road charges $85, the private one does not charge $298.
Never the purchase price. The fair-value acquisition premium ends, so no one profits from buying a public system and billing the public for it.
The allowed return moves toward the cost of public borrowing, and earnings above a set band are refunded to customers automatically.
Small systems fold into county or regional authority systems that spread costs the way CFPUA does.
At original-cost value: the original cost of the system less wear, not at a price the owner inflated through the rate base. The public pays no monopoly premium and no acquisition markup, and the same buyout rule applies to power and gas.
Underneath all of it sits a provider-of-last-resort duty: if no one else will serve a community at a fair price, the public system must.
The destination is settled: the ladder above is a transition, not a permanent licence for private monopoly. It ends in public ownership and operation. The general rule that private providers may coexist does not apply to water, electricity or natural gas.
Employee shares give workers an ownership stake. Voting rights depend on the plan. Consider broad-based ownership in large companies, fair valuation, exit rules and the risk of tying wages and savings to one employer.
In Q1 2024, the wealthiest 10% held 87.5% of household corporate equities and mutual fund shares (50.1% plus 37.4%). The top 1% held 50.1%, and the bottom 50% held 0.6%. These are shares of asset value by wealth group.
Federal Reserve DFA · WFRBST01122 · Federal Reserve DFA · WFRBSN09149 · Federal Reserve DFA · WFRBSB50203
NCEO identified 6,609 ESOP plans and 15.1 million participants in 2023. Participants include active and other covered participants.
Compare documented votes and public statements against the same Checklist. See the funding, lobbying filings, trading disclosures and bill text alongside the evidence. The score measures alignment with this site’s positions. Voter guides compare records without endorsements.
Corporate money is out of elections entirely: no direct corporate contributions and no corporate PACs. Public financing gives qualifying campaigns a public route that does not depend on wealthy donors. Paid lobbying is banned, and the ban covers everyone with no carve-outs: corporations, unions, nonprofits and trade groups alike. That ban targets the purchased profession, not citizenship: anyone may petition, testify, publish evidence or meet officials without being paid to influence them. Scoring therefore treats corporate-money and paid-lobbying ties as evidence of the system a candidate supports; it does not punish constituents for speaking.
Passed the House March 9, 2021.
Checklist alignment · 1 / 1 reviewed provisions
GovInfo · H.R. 842, 117th Congress · House Clerk · Roll Call 70
Introduced and referred August 6, 2026, at the stage documented here.
Checklist alignment · 2 / 2 reviewed provisions
GovInfo · S. 5284, 119th Congress · NY-14 · Official statement, Aug. 6, 2026
Coverage today: one sample record. Full House and Senate coverage, audited industry rankings and complete transaction histories are pending.
No separately elected president, and no structure that squeezes voters into two parties. The rules about money are in Follow the money; this section is the structure itself.
Election officials publish the full vote count and the seat-allocation calculation for the chamber. Independent audits can redo the arithmetic from the published records. The rules, including the threshold, are fixed before the election, not after officials see whom they benefit.
This requires constitutional change, and proportional elections make coalition bargaining normal: the largest party may still need partners to govern. Majority support in the chamber is the price of every government, and this site prefers printing that to pretending a new structure has no trade-offs.
Small business is protected on this site, and protection has to mean more than kind words. A small firm pays more than a chain for the same card swipe, the same supplies and the same weeks of waiting to be paid, and it competes for public contracts packaged too big to bid on. These five rules close the size gaps that have nothing to do with running a better business.
What breaks: the card networks charge the same interchange on a given type of card no matter who takes it, so the size gap sits in the processor's markup, where big merchants negotiate and small ones take a bundled rate. The rule: one published processor markup schedule for every merchant, regardless of size. Size-negotiated markup tiers are banned, and statements are itemized by law, so any merchant can see the interchange, the markup and the total side by side. On top of that, a public at-cost checkout option built on the Federal Reserve's FedNow service stands as the yardstick: the Fed publishes its price, $0.045 per credit transfer, with no volume tiers, so a private markup has to justify itself against a public number. The Federal Reserve operates the yardstick; processors publish their schedules, and the itemized statements are the audit.
What breaks: a company big enough to threaten to leave can negotiate taxes its smaller competitors simply pay. The rule: company-specific tax deals are banned, meaning abatements, PILOTs and one-company incentive packages, and the ban cannot be routed around through a development authority. Every business follows the same published tax rules. General incentives stay legal when they are written into law for a whole class of businesses, open to anyone who qualifies. Legislatures write the rules; the published tax code and the public incentive statutes are the audit.
What breaks: governments and chains buy in volume and pay less per unit; a small firm buys the same goods at retail-plus. The rule works through both doors at once. Small businesses may buy through public contracts at the prices the government already negotiated. And purchasing cooperatives, where small firms pool their buying, get public support: charters, startup help and credit from the public bank. Public purchasing offices run the contracts; cooperative charters and loan records are public, and prices paid through public contracts are published.
What breaks: a large buyer can stretch a small supplier's invoice for months, borrowing from the weakest party in the deal for free. The rule: large buyers pay small suppliers within 30 days. Interest accrues automatically after day 30, and contract terms longer than 30 days are void. The audit is the invoice itself: delivery date, payment date and interest owed, enforceable without the supplier having to sue to be paid on time.
What breaks: one giant contract shuts out every bidder without a giant balance sheet and bonding capacity. The rule: large public contracts are unbundled into lots small firms can realistically bid on and bond, and a share of public contracting is reserved for small business. The guardrail: review, disclosure and competition rules apply to the project's total value, so unbundling widens who may bid without shrinking oversight of the whole. Contracting agencies publish the lots, the bidders and the awards.
A 2024 DoD inspector general audit found a 7,943% markup over a commercially available price for a C-17 lavatory soap dispenser. It reviewed 46 parts and found unreasonable pricing for 12. The findings apply to the audited sample.
GAO reported that the F-35 fleet’s estimated lifetime sustainment costs rose from about $1.1 trillion in 2018 to $1.58 trillion in 2023, an increase of 44%. This is a program estimate across decades.
Close most overseas bases. Keep only the few justified by a treaty commitment and a genuine defensive need; a base kept for routine global reach does not meet that test. For weapons and military equipment, set a maximum acquisition price benchmarked to the best credible comparable-system price worldwide — including adversary systems when the capability is genuinely comparable. Any US premium above that benchmark must be justified by verified capability, reliability or support differences, and justified publicly before purchase. Where no credible comparable exists, the ceiling is audited production cost plus a capped margin. Do not sell or give arms to governments that abuse human rights. The audit trail is the base-by-base treaty and defense case, comparable-system prices worldwide, the verified case for any premium, contract exceptions and end-use reports.
One rule runs through all of it: the government negotiates. A list price is an opening offer, not a formality to sign.
Our position: fund genuine defense needs, audit contract prices and long-term costs, and weigh each additional commitment against what the same resources could buy in housing, care or infrastructure. Only money actually recovered or spending actually avoided can fund another program.
First, the bankruptcy argument, because it is backwards. The money is already being spent. The United States pays $14,885 per person for healthcare, against a $5,967 average in countries with universal systems (OECD). Roughly half of US health spending is already public money, through Medicare, Medicaid, veterans' care and the tax break for employer plans. And premiums are a tax in everything but name: a fixed charge you must pay to get care, collected by a company instead of a government, with a profit margin on top. Funding this program means redirecting flows that already exist and removing the insurance layer that skims them. It does not mean finding a second pile of money.
Every figure on this page carries its source, its year, and a label for how solid it is. Official score means the Congressional Budget Office or the Joint Committee on Taxation ran the numbers. Independent estimate means a nonpartisan model, such as the Penn Wharton Budget Model. Sponsor claim means the lawmaker's own figure, never independently scored. Where no estimate exists, we say so instead of inventing one. Scorers use different decades and assumptions, so any total here is arithmetic, not a promise.
The Democratic Socialists of America name directions, not numbers. Their 2021 platform calls to "increase tax rates on upper income earners, institute wealth taxes, increase estate taxes, and tax financial transactions, capital gains, luxury purchases, and domestic and global corporations," and in the same plank to reduce and eliminate regressive sales and excise taxes. Their 2026 program, Workers Deserve More, says to "enact aggressive wealth taxes on the richest individuals and corporations" and to defund the Department of War. Healthcare, in the 2021 platform, is "financed through taxes, predominantly on the wealthy and corporations." Neither document names a single rate, threshold, or dollar amount. So every number below comes from a named bill or proposal by allied lawmakers, labeled by who scored it. For the record, Senator Sanders is not a DSA member.
DSA · Political platform, 2021 · DSA · Workers Deserve More, 2026
Federal agencies spend 4.9 times more in the last week of the fiscal year than in a typical week, and IT projects bought in that rush were 2.2 to 5.6 times more likely to earn low quality ratings (Liebman and Mahoney, American Economic Review, 2017). The one comparison office with rollover authority showed no spike: 3.4% of its IT spending landed in the last week, against 9.3% on its expiring funds. The fix is a capped rollover, letting agencies carry a share of unspent money into the next year. Honest limit: no study puts a dollar figure on the waste itself. An advocacy group, OpenTheBooks, counted $97 billion obligated in September 2018, $53 billion of it in the final week. That is gross spending, not proven waste, and we label it that way.
For decades, GSA Schedule contracts ran on a most favored customer rule: vendors disclosed their best customer, and if that customer later got a lower price, the reduction had to flow to every government buyer. GSA is retiring that clause in favor of Transactional Data Reporting, mandatory across the Schedule from the February 2026 refresh. The catch: GSA's own inspector general found in 2025 that the replacement data is largely unusable, with 73% of reported sales unusable for price analysis. An auditable most favored rule, enforced from real transaction data, fixes both versions. Honest limit: no published estimate says what the old clause saved. The nearest measured discipline is category management, with $58.3 billion in agency-reported cost avoidance from fiscal 2021 to 2024 (GAO), and over $111 billion cumulative since 2014 (OMB, reported by GAO). Related, but not a score for this rule.
GSA · MAS Refresh 31 changes · GSA OIG · Alert A140143-4, 2025 · GAO · GAO-25-108638
The settled end state is no billionaires. A fortune may grow to $1 billion, not beyond it. Above that line, wealth is taxed back down. Fortunes already above the line phase down to it over 10 years; the annual tax runs from day one, so no new billionaires form while the existing ones come down. The mechanism is annual mark-to-market valuation for large fortunes, an exit tax when a taxpayer tries to move a fortune beyond the rule, and IRS wealth audits with aggregate results published. The table below does not invent a combined revenue total for that end state: it keeps each named proposal, scorer and solidity label separate.
Most favored pricing is a ceiling check; it is not a substitute for bargaining. The rule for every purchase the government makes, not just construction: agencies do not accept a first or list price as a formality. Professional public buyers negotiate against the published benchmarks: most favored pricing, the public cost book, and comparable prices. They keep the record of what was asked, what was offered, and what was agreed. A sole-source purchase that still carries a premium needs a written justification, published, naming why competition was impossible and why the premium is worth paying. The audit is the negotiation file itself: benchmark, offers, final price, and the name of the buyer who signed. The honest limit: negotiation cannot manufacture competition where only one seller exists, which is why there the sole-source justification, not the haggle, carries the weight.
| Proposal | Design | Revenue, 10 years | How solid |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sanders wealth tax, 2019 | 1% on net worth over $32 million, rising to 8% over $10 billion, married couples | $4.35 trillion sponsor figure; $2.8 to 3.3 trillion Penn Wharton | Sponsor claim and independent estimate |
| Warren Ultra-Millionaire Tax | 2% over $50 million, 3% total over $1 billion | About $3 trillion sponsor figure, 2021; $2.1 trillion Penn Wharton | Sponsor claim and independent estimate |
| No more billionaires: Sanders and Khanna, 2026 | 5% per year on wealth above $1 billion; about 938 people | $4.4 trillion, Saez and Zucman | Sponsor claim, never scored |
| Wyden Billionaires Income Tax | Yearly tax on gains in tradable assets for people over $1 billion in assets | $557 billion | Official score, Joint Committee on Taxation |
| Estate tax, For the 99.5% Act, 2021 | Top rate 65% on estates over $1 billion | $430 billion | Official score, Joint Committee on Taxation |
| Financial transaction tax, 2019 | Sanders design: 0.5% on stocks, 0.1% on bonds, 0.005% on derivatives | $2.4 trillion sponsor claim; CBO scored a smaller 0.1% version at $751.9 billion | Sponsor claim and official score |
CBO · Financial transaction tax option · Warren · Ultra-Millionaire Tax · Sanders · Billionaire tax proposal
Denmark funds a large welfare state partly with a 25% value added tax, in place since 1992, with no reduced rate for food. The OECD average standard rate is 19.3%, and VAT raises about 7% of GDP across the OECD. CBO estimated in December 2024 that a 5% US VAT would cut deficits by $3.38 trillion over 2025 to 2034 on a broad base, or $2.18 trillion on a narrow one, roughly $676 billion per point of tax per decade. The honest problem: measured against yearly income, a VAT is regressive. The known fixes are automatic rebates (the Tax Policy Center modeled a 1% VAT with a poverty-line rebate still netting about $1 trillion over a decade) or the Danish route, offsetting on the spending side with universal services. And the tension, printed plainly: DSA's platform calls for reducing and eliminating regressive sales taxes. This site's position is that a consumption tax belongs in the mix only with rebates that make the whole package progressive. Note that US states already average about 7.5% in combined sales tax, so a federal VAT would stack on top.
CBO · Value added tax option, 2024 · OECD · Consumption Tax Trends 2024 · Tax Foundation · State sales tax rates, 2025
The bottom half of earners pays about 3% of all federal income tax (IRS data for 2022), so exempting them entirely costs little. Relief gets expensive in the middle: one point on every income tax rate raises about $980 billion over a decade (Tax Policy Center), and cuts price out the same way. Design decides the cost. Senator Booker's Keep Your Pay Act, raising the standard deduction to $75,000 for joint filers, carries a net cost of $5.4 trillion over a decade (Yale Budget Lab). Senator Van Hollen's targeted version, an exemption phased out at higher incomes, costs $1.367 trillion (Penn Wharton) and scores as roughly budget neutral paired with its own millionaire surtax (Yale Budget Lab). The bottom line, honestly: stack the independently scored pieces above, Warren at $2.1 trillion, a 5% broad VAT at $3.38 trillion, Wyden at $557 billion, CBO's transaction tax option at $751.9 billion, and the arithmetic reaches roughly $6.8 trillion over a decade, before rebates and interactions. That can buy zero federal income tax under a high threshold, or fund a large share of the checklist on this page. No scorer has certified a package that abolishes the income tax entirely, and this page will not pretend otherwise.
Yale Budget Lab · Keep Your Pay Act · Penn Wharton · Zero bracket designs · Sanders · Options to finance Medicare for All
Medical debt, student debt and debts for other services that are now free are cancelled by law. They are not bought, refinanced or forgiven one application at a time: they stop being enforceable debts. Collectors may not collect, sell or report them, and credit reports must remove them.
The operator is the law itself, enforced by courts and consumer regulators. The audit is public: complaints, credit-report corrections and collection cases should fall toward zero for the cancelled categories. The honest limit is the boundary fight: contracts, dates and categories have to be defined precisely, so a bill cannot be relabelled to survive and a provider cannot shift the same charge to a new name.
For other debts, a person who files for bankruptcy keeps a home, a car, the tools of their work, retirement savings and a cash floor for basic living costs. The point is a fresh start with the means to work and live, not punishment by destitution.
Protection is capped at what the filer could reasonably afford, tied to local costs. It does not protect doubling the house, car or tools on the way into bankruptcy, and a look-back window can reverse last-minute conversions and the stuffing of money into protected retirement accounts to hide it from creditors. The process itself should be faster, and filing-to-discharge time should be published as part of the audit.
Exemption amounts rise automatically with living costs every year. Congress must also review the bankruptcy law annually, in public, so the protections cannot quietly rot for a generation while prices move.
Why do we pay for-profit contractors blank checks to build public buildings and infrastructure? Start with the prices. NYU's Transit Costs Project, which compares rail construction across dozens of countries, puts New York's Second Avenue Subway at about $2.5 billion per mile. The global average is about $350 million per mile. Madrid expanded its metro in the 1990s at about $80 million a mile.
NYU Marron Institute · Transit Costs Project
The MTA's capital projects staff fell from 1,600 in 1990 to 124 in 2011. Boston's MBTA had four to six full-time employees managing the largest capital project in its history. On California's high-speed rail, consultants outnumber agency staff about 25 to 1. An owner that cannot estimate a job or supervise it cannot say no, so every bid carries padding and every change order gets signed. Design and management, the soft costs, ran 21% of construction cost in New York. Abroad they run 5 to 10%.
In-house public engineering, restored as a condition of public construction funding. Milan has run its own engineering company, MM, since 1955. Madrid's expansion was run by a small in-house team.
Build the same station, school and clinic repeatedly, and pay for the design once.
Every project's cost per mile and per square foot, published and benchmarked against world prices. An outlier project explains itself in public.
Public buyers negotiate every contract against the cost book and comparable prices; the first bid is an opening offer. Where only one bidder can do the work, any premium over the benchmark needs a written, published justification.
Caps on contract increases, public change-order logs, and no profit made in the amendments. Turkey caps increases at 20% of contract value, which forces honest bids up front.
Past cost and schedule performance, published and tied to eligibility for future public work.
A standing public builder builds social housing directly and keeps repeat public work in public hands: homes, schools, clinics, water plants. Private builders remain legal, including for high-end private homes; they are not the builders of the public housing guarantee.
Where competition is not genuinely competitive, price public work as verified cost plus a fixed margin, with the books open.
Spain and Turkey still use private contractors. They just face a competent public buyer. The goal is not zero profit. It is ending the arrangement where the seller grades his own homework.
The United States has had three national carriers since T-Mobile absorbed Sprint, and the prices show it. Rewheel's 2026 cross-country study finds that three-carrier markets run 74 to 153% higher monthly prices than four-carrier markets. When Britain consolidated from four carriers to three, prices rose about 31%. Economists Mara Faccio and Luigi Zingales found US monthly prices at about three times Germany's and more than twice Denmark's.
Rewheel · 2026 · Faccio and Zingales
Carriers do not own the airwaves. Spectrum is a public resource, rented to carriers under license, and a license can carry conditions. That is the whole mechanism: the public sets the terms of the rent.
No more four-to-three consolidation. The measured cost of a merger is paid by every subscriber, every month.
Carriers using prime public spectrum must sell network access to independent retailers at regulated rates, so brands compete on price even where only three physical networks exist.
Mexico's Red Compartida runs on the public 700 MHz band, open to any retailer. It reached 95.3% of the population by June 2024, and Mexican mobile data prices fell from about $15 per gigabyte in 2019 to about $2.03 per gigabyte in 2023. The honest downside: its operator, Altán Redes, went through bankruptcy protection in 2021 and needed a government recapitalization, and the big carriers mostly stayed off the network.
Mexico's state operator, CFE, sells about 40 GB for roughly $13 a month in underserved areas under its Internet para el Bienestar program. A public plan does not need to win the market. It needs to exist, so the carriers' price stops being the floor.
Every year, employers and banks send the IRS copies of your W-2 and 1099 forms. Then you pay a company, or spend your own hours, telling the IRS what it already holds. Filing a tax return in America is paying a toll to hand the government its own data.
The incentive is the toll itself. A private filing industry earns more when filing stays complicated, confusing, and separate from the agency that already has the data. The public alternative proved it does not have to work that way, and then it was switched off. The IRS Direct File pilot in 2024 filed 140,803 accepted returns across 12 states, free, directly with the IRS. Its users claimed more than $90 million in refunds and saved an estimated $5.6 million in preparation fees on their federal returns alone. In a General Services Administration survey of more than 11,000 users, 90% rated the experience Excellent or Above Average. In 2025 the service expanded to 25 states and 32.2 million eligible taxpayers, and accepted returns more than doubled to 296,531. Then, on November 3, 2025, the IRS told state administrators Direct File would not be available for the 2026 filing season, and no future launch date was set.
IRS · Direct File pilot results, 2024 · IRS · Direct File Filing Season 2025 report · Associated Press · November 2025
Denmark and Sweden run pre-filled returns as the normal system. Their revenue bodies build the return from third-party reports, wages, interest, and other data they already receive, and the taxpayer reviews it, corrects it if needed, and approves it. California tested the same idea at state level with ReadyReturn, starting with a 2005 pilot that offered pre-filled returns to 51,850 taxpayers with very simple returns. The lesson is not that every return is simple. It is that the simple majority should never have been a product.
OECD · Pre-filled returns, Denmark and Sweden · California Franchise Tax Board · ReadyReturn pilot
Restore Direct File as a permanent, free IRS service, written into statute with its own funding. A service Congress created cannot be ended by an agency email. That is the plug for the kill switch that closed it in 2025.
The IRS builds the return from the W-2 and 1099 data it already holds, shows the source of every line, which employer or bank reported it, and the taxpayer reviews, corrects, and approves before anything is filed. Nothing is filed silently, and a correction is one step, not an audit.
Anyone can still use a paid preparer, commercial software, or paper. Complex returns, businesses, and self-employment income start outside the pre-filled door and are added only when the data supports them honestly. A public option must exist. It is never the only door.
The public service charges nothing, sells nothing, and offers no refund loans or add-ons. Filing data is used to file the return, and for nothing else. Those rules go in the statute too, so a future operator cannot quietly turn the filing door into a store.
The honest downside of Direct File was its unit cost at pilot scale. The Treasury report to Congress put the 2025 cost at at least $41 million, about $138 per accepted return, against $24.6 million for the 2024 pilot. That number is printed here because it is true, and because it is the number that falls as use grows. The service reports its cost per return, error rate, and correction rate in public, every filing season, so the country can judge it on evidence instead of on lobbying.
Pre-filling works where third-party data is complete and on time. Cash income, tips, gig work with missing forms, and tangled investments will still need real filing work, and an error in an employer's report has to be fixable by the taxpayer, not treated as the taxpayer's fault. None of that is an argument for charging wage earners to retype a W-2. It is an argument for starting where the data already proves the model, as Denmark, Sweden, California, and the IRS pilot all did.
Every mechanism on this site gets attacked before it ships: how would a determined actor route around this? This register records the holes, how each was used, and the plug. It starts with a worked example.
The ballroom replacing the demolished East Wing was announced on July 31, 2025 as privately funded, and that one choice routed around the entire system. No congressional appropriation. No competitive bidding: Clark Construction received about $200 million in August 2025 with no evidence of a bid process. No upfront planning review: demolition began on October 20, 2025, before plans were submitted to the National Capital Planning Commission, on the argument that demolition is not construction. The donors include federal contractors Lockheed Martin, Meta, Palantir and Booz Allen Hamilton, and a $22 million settlement contribution from Alphabet. The money was routed through a Park Service donation acceptance and transferred on to the Executive Residence. The project's own architect was later appointed to the Commission of Fine Arts, one of the bodies reviewing his design. And the work continued through a government shutdown, while the oversight agencies were closed.
| The hole | How it was used | The plug |
|---|---|---|
| Gift funding changes the rules | Private money built a public building with no appropriation, competition or review | Rules follow the project, not the funding source. Gift money accepted for a public purpose becomes public money on acceptance, and competition, review and disclosure attach |
| Project splitting | Demolition was separated from construction to dodge the review trigger | Anti-segmentation: demolition, site preparation and construction are one project for review purposes |
| Donor pass-throughs | Donations routed through an intermediary blurred who actually paid | No pass-throughs. Public-project gifts land directly on the managing agency's public ledger |
| Donors who sell to the government | Federal contractors funded a project of the government they sell to | Real-time donor disclosure above a small threshold, and a ban on public-project gifts from federal contractors and registered lobbyists |
| Reviewer capture | The project's architect joined a commission reviewing his own design | A conflict bar: nobody with a stake in a project sits on a body reviewing it, during the project and for a cooling-off period after |
| Starved oversight | Work continued through a shutdown while the reviewers were closed | Work on a public project pauses automatically whenever its oversight bodies are closed |
| Patent evergreening | A drug maker extends a monopoly by changing a medicine's size or shape, releasing an extended-release version, or switching the delivery system, and claiming a new patent term for the same drug | One patent per drug type. A new size, shape, extended-release version or delivery system earns no new term |
More holes will be added as they are found. That is the point of a register.
Enter what your household actually pays. The calculator runs on this page and uses your entries only. Avoid counting insurance twice.
Pick a sourced comparison. The result shows the ledger benchmarks and their units. A household tax or future bill requires a funded plan and local data.
“Democratic socialism means giving up your vote.”
“Public services still have operating costs.”
“Federal family leave law already guarantees 12 paid weeks for everyone.”
“A detention contract can pay for unused beds.”
“Public health spending per person is what a family pays in premiums.”
Banks in the CFPB reporting sample collected more than $5.8 billion in overdraft and insufficient-funds fees in 2023. A later rule projected up to $5 billion a year in savings at very large institutions. Congress overturned the rule in 2025. The estimate belongs to that rule. The money did not magically go back to households. A public banking option gives people a place to take their business.
CFPB · 2023 overdraft/NSF data · CFPB · 2024 rule estimate · RegInfo · RIN 3170-AA42
A shelf price hides who gets paid along the way. The USDA Food Dollar breaks down spending across the food supply chain. Our policy is public grocery stores that sell at acquisition cost. Put the operating budget on the same page so anyone can see what it takes to run the store.
The NAIC supplement reports $1,431.63 per insured vehicle in 2024. The measure combines different coverage choices and describes past expenditures. Compare it with like-for-like records before claiming a change in full-coverage prices.
S. 5284 was introduced and referred to committee on August 6, 2026. It would fund upgrades including energy efficiency in public housing. This entry records the introduction as documented in the official bill record.
GovInfo · S. 5284, 119th Congress · NY-14 · Official statement, Aug. 6, 2026
Essentials are public and at cost. Small businesses remain protected. Your home, car and personal belongings remain private property.
The shelf price covers acquisition. Publish the separate public operating budget for wages, rent, freight, refrigeration and food waste.
Yes. Reserves pay claims in difficult years. Contributions fund claims, operations and prudent reserves.
It is a site position on net wealth. People can prosper and build businesses. A ceiling needs valuation, rules against avoidance and due process.
Voting rights depend on plan rules. An ESOP holds employer shares in a retirement plan. A worker cooperative gives members governance rights.
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