Platform
Young people are facing shrinking economic opportunity, an affordability crisis, and mass erosion of communities. Further, AI is threatening to accelerate each of these problems. Neither political party is prioritizing these pressing issues affecting our generation, and as a result, our generation is losing faith in the American Dream.
The Young People's Alliance is a political home for young people across party lines who are solving the biggest challenges of our era:
- 🏭Opportunity: Creating an economic future of your generation.
- 🏠Affordability: Ensuring our generation can afford a good quality of life.
- 🤝Community: Giving our generation the ability to find meaning and a place in society.
Opportunity
Despite America's status as the land of opportunity, many young people are struggling to find fulfilling and stable careers. Higher education is more expensive than ever and is no longer a promise of success. Meanwhile, those in alternative career paths are on track to make less than their parents. AI has already automated millions of entry-level jobs, spiking youth unemployment, and is on track to automate vast swaths of industry, cutting off access to meaningful careers. We work to:
- Create millions of apprenticeships and training programs in both blue-collar and white-collar fields to give our generation an AI-resilient entry point into careers.
- Make 4-year colleges more cost effective, ending legacy admissions, and reform occupational licensing requirements to make employment more accessible.
- Explore how we can retain purpose in a mass-automation scenario, for instance by better supporting families and community institutions through policy.
Affordability
From housing to basics, it is getting too expensive to live a fulfilling and dignified life. The American Dream promises us the ability to buy a home, but that feels like a fantasy to many of us. While 42% of young people are barely getting by financially[1], we pay a disproportionate amount of taxes and benefit significantly less from government spending than other generations. Further, everyday life is made more expensive by manipulative practices like hard-to-cancel subscriptions, AI algorithms colluding to artificially increase prices, and rental discrimination against young people. We work to:
- Make housing more affordable by reforming zoning laws that artificially increase the price of housing and create incentives to encourage more housing construction.
- Stop manipulative corporate practices that raise prices, like AI price fixing and dark patterns.
- Explore reforming the tax system to be more fair for our generation.
Community
Our generation has been gutted by loneliness and a lack of strong communities, and 83% of young people are not deeply connected to any community[1]. Emerging technology like social media and AI companions are designed to steal our attention away from the things that truly matter to us, while eroding our ability to build relationships. Our civic communities have also crumbled, and while our generation believes in the potential of America, only 41% are proud of our country[2]. We work to:
- Eliminate the manipulative effects of attention-based technology like social media and AI companions, while encouraging innovation for tech that is truly pro-social.
- Through our work, we create community and purpose for our generation, bound by a shared mission to make the American Dream our reality.