Build your own Socialist Program

This module lets you make choices about what to include in a socialist program, and tells you what it might cost. Pick the planks of the socialist platforms you want to price. Each one uses costs derived from the same published federal statistics the full report draws on — add them up to see what the whole program would take.

Figures are federal costs only, in 2026 dollars, before any offsets or one-time asset transfers. Low and high resolve every open assumption in each direction; central is the report's judgment or a neutral scorer's published estimate. State and local costs, and two large one-time transfers (reparations and student debt cancellation), are not included in this running total. Full derivations and sources are in the companion report.

Federal job guarantee

15 million public-service jobs priced against what the federal government actually spends per employee — payroll and benefits alone at low, payroll plus facilities and admin at central, plus capital at high.

$2.0T/year–$6.1T/year central $5.0T/yearSource

Universal health care

Single-payer coverage replacing employer and private insurance. Central case is CBO's most expensive illustrative option — no cost sharing, long-term care included, matching what the 2025 Medicare for All bill actually proposes.

$2.1T/year–$4.1T/year central $3.0T/yearSource

Thirty-two hour week

A shorter week at full pay raises the cost of an hour of labor 25%. Applied only to the compensation the federal government would already be paying under the ownership plank.

$1.7T/year–$3.0T/year central $2.5T/yearSource

Universal retirement benefit

Every eligible person gets a pension based on the full Social Security benefit ($49,824/yr), not the average.

$0.6T/year–$1.8T/year central $1.4T/yearSource

Public hospitals, operating cost

Annual cost of running roughly 469,000 new hospital beds needed to close the gap between U.S. and OECD bed counts. This is the recurring operating cost, not the one-time construction cost.

$0.3T/year–$0.4T/year central $0.4T/yearSource

Publicly owned energy buildout

Capital spending on energy infrastructure that already happens privately today and is recovered through utility rates. Under public ownership it becomes a federal budget line instead.

$0.3T/year–$0.3T/year central $0.3T/year

Social housing construction

Annualized-over-ten-years cost of closing the 7.2 million-unit shortage of affordable rental housing for low-income renters.

$0.2T/year–$0.3T/year central $0.2T/yearSource

Childcare, birth to three

Covers roughly 10.9 million children under three at median full-day care prices.

$0.1T/year–$0.2T/year central $0.1T/yearSource

Universal pre-kindergarten

Covers 7.47 million three- and four-year-olds at public per-pupil spending rates, net of children already in state pre-K and Head Start.

$0.1T/year–$0.1T/year central $0.1T/yearSource

Tuition-free public college

Replaces net tuition and fee revenue at all public degree-granting institutions.

$0.1T/year–$0.1T/year central $0.1T/yearSource

Paid family leave, twelve weeks

Twelve weeks at 66% wage replacement, the FAMILY Act structure. PSL's platform actually promises two years, priced separately in the full report at $117-398B on top of this.

$0.1T/year–$0.2T/year central $0.1T/year

Public hospitals, construction

One-time construction cost for the roughly 469,000 new beds above, annualized over ten years.

$0.0T/year–$0.1T/year central $0.1T/year

Social housing operating subsidy

Annual operating subsidy for the 7.2 million new social housing units, at HUD's current per-unit rate.