Messaging Guide: Let's Talk Affordability
“Affordability” has become a catch-all term for inflation, cost of living challenges, and how all of us experience the economy in our daily lives. Although the term can be abstract, the challenges of living in an increasingly unaffordable country are very real. Not acknowledging that reality — and the real pain it’s causing people across races, places, and backgrounds — threatens our credibility and weakens our ability to build winning movements.
But naming the problem is only the beginning. Families struggling to make ends meet want to understand the sources for and solutions to rising prices. We have to tell a clear story about affordability by exposing the many ways greedy corporations and the politicians they buy keep us strapped, stressed, and separated — all to concentrate money and power in the hands of the wealthy few.
After we explain who is behind the crisis, we must provide a positive vision for a people-centered economy that works for all of us. Our primary narrative goal should be naming and demanding the long term solutions we know will make our lives better. And we have to move quickly for our people: It’s on us to define, repeat, and deliver that vision before our opposition does. This resource includes messaging guidance, calls to action, and tested sample narratives to do exactly that.
The core principles of We Make The Future’s affordability guidance include:
Lead with human impact, not abstractions.
Ground your message in shared values.
Reframe the problem by naming the villains who are responsible.
Build calls to action that have long term impact, not just meet immediate needs.
Avoid “The Contrast Trap” (example: “Fund Schools, Not Bombs”).
