Providing an economic alternative to Trump

Sam Smith - While watch-dogging the Trump regime is essential, we shouldn't ignore the problem that helped put him in the White House: the lack of a strong progressive alternative agenda. We need to tell people how America could be different without Trump. Here, to begin with, are some examples of an alternative approach to economics. Pick the ones you like and go for them.

• National paid leave law
• Minimum wage raises
•  A constitutional amendment that denies corporations the rights of  a real person.
•  Encourage a shared equity program for decent homes in danger of foreclosure. The government would pay off a part of the mortgage, enough for the owners to stay afloat, and then  could, in many cases, even make money when the house was sold.
•  Get our troops out of pointless wars and use the savings to create a badly needed public works program with veterans having a favored status for employment in these projects. 
• Boost public campaign financing to stop corprrations from buying our politicians
• Get banks out of financially risky and speculative activities by restoring key provisions of the Glass-Steagall Act.
• Support cooperatives and worker-owned businesses.
• Establish state banks as in North Dakota.
• Encourage community run public internet service, community credit unions, co-ops and co-housing
• End usury, starting with the prohibition of two digit interest rates on credit cards.
• Strong support for small businesses and strong regulation of large corporations.
• End offshore tax havens
• A maximum wage as supported by the British Labor Party's leader
• A guaranteed income
• Bring back enforcement of anti-trust laws
• Postal banks
• Let homeowners stay in their houses as renters rather than being foreclosed  
• Stop paying interest on the national debt

We should also bear in mind that money and our rules about it were developed in a vastly different time. We are already in an era, thanks to technology and robotics, when not everyone is needed to work. We haven't faced up to this and begun providing some rational solutions which is why, for example, a guaranteed income is desirable to talk about. Trump is not only liar; he represents drastically outdated values.