Affordability

California’s Affordability Policy Agenda

04. 22. 2026

The 2026 Economic Security California Action Policy Agenda

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Affordability is the defining issue in California today. Food, housing, childcare, healthcare, and energy costs have outpaced wages for years, and federal cuts are stripping the safety net from the families who need it most.

ESCAA’s Affordability Agenda identifies the four drivers at the root of the crisis and the policy solutions to meet them. The following briefs illuminate these four major issues:

1. A tax system that favors corporations over people;
2. Inadequate cash support for working families;
3. Big Tech’s unchecked costs to households; and, 
4. Antitrust laws that no longer protect consumers, workers, or small businesses from concentrated corporate power.
   An affordability agenda for California should:

Restore California’s competition advantage

Through monopolization and mergers, most sectors of the California economy are now dominated by a handful of corporations, costing everyone else in higher prices, lower wages, and fewer choices. California’s laws haven’t kept up. The Cartwright Act doesn’t reach what a single dominant firm can do on its own. The state has limited tools to block mergers that further consolidate already concentrated markets. And platforms can gatekeep their own marketplaces to squeeze out competitors with no legal consequence. California needs to close these gaps by reforming single-firm conduct rules, strengthening merger review, and prohibiting platform gatekeeping.

Rein in Big Tech that costs California families, workers, businesses and communities 

Californians are paying Big Tech’s bills whether they use the products or not. Residents are subsidizing AI data center buildout through their electric bills. Retailers use surveillance pricing to charge each customer the maximum they will pay, or collude using digital platforms to raise prices for consumers. Gig platforms set workers’ pay through hidden algorithms that workers have no power to contest. California has the tools to rein in Big Tech, and needs to use them. 

Close corporate tax loopholes to invest in California 

The Golden State’s economy is among the largest in the world, but the gains of its prosperity bypass the millions of Californians who are responsible for its success. And the State’s budget crisis is real and only deepening. Meanwhile, California corporations pay a shrinking share of their profits in state taxes, even as those profits keep climbing. Multinationals exploit loopholes that small businesses cannot use, and the same corporations driving up costs for families are the ones starving the state’s response. Closing these loopholes and ending the preferential treatment of large corporations would generate billions in sustainable revenue to fund necessary public goods and services.

Put cash in Californians’ pockets

Cash is what families fall back on when wages cannot keep up with costs. California’s wage has stayed flat for four decades, while housing, childcare, and healthcare costs have climbed. At the same time, federal cuts are now stripping the safety net that used to support families during major life transitions, or when earnings were lowest. Even though California has the fourth-largest economy in the world, the workers driving that prosperity aren’t sharing in it. California has built some of the strongest state tax credits in the country and pioneered the modern guaranteed income movement; now, it must expand on what it currently delivers.