Three Questions on Affordability/Wealth in Arizona that I’d Ask Any Politician

By: Gavin Dougal

1. Economist David Ricardo’s law of rent suggests that, so long as housing is scarce, any wage increase will simply be a rent increase, and therefore, landlords will take any wage increase. What economic policies (appropriate to your political office) will you pass to increase the housing supply?

2. Arizona’s minimum wage is already indexed to CPI, which means wages chase inflation rather than beat it — wage policy alone cannot restore purchasing power. Beyond raising the wage floor, what economic levers appropriate to your office will you use to lower the cost of living for working Arizonans?

3. The wealth gap in America isn’t just about income - it’s structural. The ultra wealthy shelter and grow their assets through mechanisms such as Securities-Based Lines of Credit, Irrevocable Trusts, and the Buy, Borrow, Die strategy, which allows wealth to pass between generations largely untaxed. Even aggressive income or capital gains taxes leave these structures intact. Meanwhile, most working people have no ownership stake in the enterprises that profit from their labor.

What policies will you support to help working people build actual ownership and wealth - whether through worker cooperatives, Employee Stock Ownership Plans (ESOPs), profit-sharing mandates, public banking, or preferential contracting with worker-owned enterprises? And how will you address the structural tax and estate mechanisms that allow dynastic wealth to compound outside the reach of conventional redistribution?

— putting this at the end so people can get right into the questions.

PREAMBLE: For too long, political conversations about affordability have relied on surface-level fixes - temporary subsidies, nominal wage bumps, and vague promises to "cut red tape." But working-class Arizonans are facing a structural crisis, not a temporary one. Wages are merely chasing inflation, the constrained housing market extracts every hard-earned wage gain, and our current frameworks protect dynastic wealth while taxing labor.

We are not looking for platitudes, and we do not need you to diagnose the problem - we all know the rent is too high. This section is designed to identify candidates who understand the actual mechanics of economic exploitation and have the political courage to dismantle them. We want to know your concrete mechanisms for shifting power, capital, and true ownership back to the working people who build this state.

Please be specific. Cite the exact levers, policies, and structural reforms you will champion if endorsed.

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