If Socialists Are For the Working Class, Why Are They Coming For Your Paycheck?

Payroll taxes shrink your gross pay to pay for more "free" stuff.

The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) love to talk about the "working class" or "working people" as a downtrodden lot living a meager life. Yet like a bully stealing your lunch money, DSA funds its policies by shaking you down with a payroll deduction tax.

The working class must band together, DSA says, and demand a better life through union membership—so workers can stop production at will—and through elected officials who can change policies businesses must follow. This is playing out in real time in Wisconsin's high-stakes race for governor.

"Many working-class people have felt left behind," Wisconsin DSA gubernatorial candidate Francesca Hong said in a recent interview on CBS. "To know that there is someone who is a working-class person right now, fighting for these very practical policies, that's resonating with folks all across the state."

Great conversation with @CBSNews about why working-class candidates are winning all over the country 💪

Rural, urban, or suburban, we all want the same things: a government that delivers policies that materially improve the conditions of people's lives.https://t.co/RHot2V6ap4 pic.twitter.com/mFaJXOteik

— Francesca Hong For Governor (@FrancescaHongWI) June 11, 2026

Hong's working-class waltz doesn't square with her outrageous plan for taxpayers to fund free childcare by taking a cut every time you get paid. We all do better, socialists reason, when you keep less of your hard-earned money so others can pay nothing. She described the plan in a recent podcast discussion with anti-Semite Hasan Piker.

"We would make sure that families of four making up to about $114,000 a year, or 400 percent above the federal poverty level, would have fully subsidized childcare from zero to [age]12," Hong promised. "We all know that summer camps cost money too. And just because your kiddo is in school doesn't mean that there aren't going to be additional care costs involved—and now those families making above that, would have a partial subsidy. And we ensure that there's subsidies available for the providers too, while raising wages for childcare workers and educators, and we pay for it by putting in a very small payroll tax that will end up actually being a massive economic investment."

Were you going to spend all of your paycheck? Just one teeny-weeny, little-baby payroll tax won't hurt too much—right? Think of the children in working families!

It's amazing DSA is able to sell this stuff to working voters who surely know that once a tax is in place, it will be raised whenever those "hard-working" lawmakers can't balance the budget without squeezing a bit more from you.

Pay Day Shrinky Dinks 

As DSA gets a toehold in state legislatures across the United States, pulling from pay to fund the socialist agenda is being pitched across the country.

Vermont's Act 76, passed last year, levied a 0.44 percent payroll tax to pay for childcare that covers just 1,200 children—but increased wages for childcare workers. It doesn't take a crystal ball to see the future holds requests to expand the number of children under taxpayer care, and just a teeny bit more from your pay.

Washington state's House Bill 2100, which has stalled in committee, would levy a 5 percent payroll tax on private employers with workers who earn more than $125,000 per year. It would apply to companies with as few as 20 employees, with payroll in excess of $7 million and gross receipts of more than $5 million. That is the starting point. If passed, it will surely creep down to those with lower incomes.

Pennsylvania lawmakers are pushing for a 1 percent payroll deduction for all workers to pay for a union benefit the SEIU badly wants. This is an example of how unions infiltrated by DSA have moved outside the workplace to promote socialist agendas. The Pennsylvania Paid Family Leave Act would allow 12 to 20 hours of paid leave for workers for the birth of a child, a major illness or for domestic violence victims. A half-week off is nothing to brag about, but again, it is a starting point. Once the tax is in place, it's easier to demand more.

California nearly implemented a 3.7 percent payroll tax this year to repay more than $20 billion in federal unemployment debt. If California's leftist leaders cared about working people, it would have guarded the unemployment fund from rampant fraud. During Covid, California implemented a pay-now-verify-later policy, paying out benefits to scammers who did not qualify for the benefit.

In Hawaii, HB2360 would have required the state Department of Labor and Industrial Relations to establish a family and medical leave insurance program and begin collecting "payroll contributions"—doesn't that sound nicer than payroll deduction?—to fund payment of benefits. The measure died on May 8.

Oregon will have employers and employees split a new employment payroll tax for the Bureau of Labor and Industries expenses fund. The initial tax rate has not been established—they passed it without knowing the amount—but is expected to start at roughly $0.002 cents per hour worked. The plan is to collect more than a year of projected expenses or $4.25 million by 2029, and $9.5 million by 2031 to pay for more government workers.

Working Class Like You 

Socialists want voters to believe they are humble, lowly, working people, just like you. In reality, most don't understand work at all.

Hong, an elected Wisconsin state representative, leans into the few years she spent in the restaurant business before being elected to office. Nothing she does today feels like "working class," making her so-called solidarity with workers feel more like words from a condescending elitist.

It is the same for other DSA members. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (DSA-NY) age 36, was a bartender for five minutes—working class, just like you—before trading up to a $174,000 per year, do-nothing job as a member of Congress.

New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, age 34, attended Bowden College and majored in Africana studies. After graduation he worked for his mom's film company for a short time, then with the support of his mom, tried and failed to launch a career as a rapper called Young Cardamom, before being elected to the state assembly. Working class, just like you.

I’m ranking Young Cardamom number one on my ballot https://t.co/H2eWo5HSOa

— Eric Hovagim (@EricHovagim) June 13, 2025

Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson describes herself as a socialist democrat. She studied physics and philosophy at Oxford and used that education to start the democratic Seattle Transit Riders Union. The pay as a community organizer was not great, so instead of finding a job that met her expenses, Wilson had her parents pay some of her expenses. Now that she is mayor, at 43, she is earning enough to pay her own way. Working class, just like you.

None of these people know what it is really like to hold a real job long term and to be personally responsible for paying all the bills in a household.

They feel sorry for workers because they look down on work, totally missing how rewarding it is to earn a living or to build a fulfilling career. Most people want a job so they can take care of themselves and contribute to society.

Patronizing socialists want you to believe employment is an unworthy struggle, and that risk-takers who start businesses and become successful are always out to harm the worker. But in capitalism, any worker has the freedom to follow their creativity and build their own success story with no limits.

Real working-class people are not lowly and downtrodden, and they don't want free government services. Real working people just want to keep the money they earned, cover their bills, and spend any excess as they wish. Dignity is not found in government handouts, but in earning a paycheck that hasn't been so pilfered by the government that it takes multiple jobs to get by.

The struggle socialists want to save everyone from is the motivation to build a better life. Those who took elected office before building anything in their own lives are not qualified to manage ours and have no right to a slice of our honestly earned pay.

FROM THE FRONTLINES:

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GEN Z: Why Are Recent Grads Underprepared for the Workplace, and How to Reverse the Crisis?

BETH BRELJE: Comrades for the Cause: DSA Fills the Loneliness Void that Churches Vacated

COURTS: Supreme Court Clears the Way for Trump to Put American Workers First