Economic Dignity, Workforce Development, and Small Business Growth
An economy must work for the people who build it every day, not just corporate monopolies, private equity firms, and out-of-state shareholders. When my children reached the age to hold their first jobs, they felt that universal, youthful thrill of earning their own paychecks and gaining the independence to purchase what they desired. Freedom! In that moment, I taught them a crucial lesson that fundamentally altered how they viewed money: never measure the price of an item in dollars and cents. Instead, calculate the cost in the exact hours of labor you must work, after taxes, to buy that item. Whether evaluating a meal from a fast-food counter, a mobile device accessory, or a new piece of clothing, that calculation completely reshapes your understanding of real purchasing power.
Try applying that lesson right now. Imagine earning the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour, or even Maryland’s minimum wage. Calculate how many hours you must work just to pay for one average fast-food meal. How many gallons of gasoline can your hard labor buy for each hour on the clock? Worse yet, do you even work enough available hours in an entire month to pay the rent, let alone keep the electricity and water turned on? When full-time employment cannot cover basic survival, our system fails working people. We must restore true economic dignity to our workforce. Affordability cannot remain an empty campaign catchphrase or a term of partisan derision; affordability must serve as our non-negotiable guiding principle.
In the General Assembly, I will champion the Living Wage for All Act to set a 25-dollar hourly wage target indexed to inflation. Hardworking Marylanders deserve wages that match real-world living costs. Simultaneously, we must build our workforce at every level to provide District 4 communities with strong, diverse, and expansive economic power. Drawing on my twenty years in the military maintaining complex aviation systems, I know skilled trades demand elite intellect and rigorous technical precision. I will partner directly with local trade unions to expand union Registered Apprenticeship programs in clean energy, mechanical systems, advanced manufacturing, and healthcare. We must mandate that public high schools grant union apprenticeship recruiters the same institutional access, promotion, and respect that four-year universities receive.
Furthermore, we must give our small businesses, particularly our minority-, women-, and veteran-owned enterprises, every opportunity to thrive. Small businesses animate our historic commercial corridors and keep capital circulating locally. I will fight to cut bureaucratic red tape, streamline occupational licensing, and create dedicated micro-grants and revolving loan funds for local Main Street shops. Finally, I will mandate prevailing wage standards on all state-funded capital projects and fully fund the Attorney General's ability to prosecute wage theft and worker misclassification aggressively. When we respect labor, expand debt-free apprenticeships, and invest in local entrepreneurs, we construct an economy anchored in durable community dignity.