# 2016 Bernie Sanders (D-VT) campaign for POTUS thread **URL:** \ **Category:** Politics & Elections\ **Created:** [April 28, 2015, 10:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/2016-bernie-sanders-d-vt-campaign-for-potus-thread/718754 "2015-04-28T22:40:28Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 45
**Author:** ![foolsguinea](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/foolsguinea/32/14751_2.png) [@foolsguinea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/foolsguinea)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2016, 11:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/2016-bernie-sanders-d-vt-campaign-for-potus-thread/718754/881 "2016-02-19T23:02:22Z")
You are a deeply weird and cognitively strange man. ---
**Author:** ![foolsguinea](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/foolsguinea/32/14751_2.png) [@foolsguinea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/foolsguinea)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2016, 11:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/2016-bernie-sanders-d-vt-campaign-for-potus-thread/718754/882 "2016-02-19T23:13:06Z")
I should make this its own post, but a quick note here: Apparently Gerald Friedman’s much-derided growth projections for the whole Sanders framework are, well, entirely consistent with current economic science. James K. Galbraith called Drs. Krueger, Goolsbee, Romer, & Tyson to task for not actually running the numbers on Friedman’s analysis. > [@Jamie Galbraith](#): > > [http://big.assets.huffingtonpost.com/ResponsetoCEA.pdf](http://big.assets.huffingtonpost.com/ResponsetoCEA.pdf) (PDF) > > In the specific case of this paper, one can quibble with the out-year multipliers, or with the productivity > assumptions, or with the presumed impact of a higher minimum wage. One can invoke the trade deficit > or the exchange rate. Professor Friedman makes all of these points himself. But those issues are well > within mainstream norms. > > There is no “magic asterisk,” no strange theory involved here. And the main effect of adjusting the > assumptions, which would be a perfectly reasonable thing to do, would be to curtail the growth rate > after a few years – not at the beginning, when it would matter most. > > It is not fair or honest to claim that Professor Friedman’s methods are extreme. On the contrary, with > respect to forecasting method, they are largely mainstream. Nor is it fair or honest to imply that you > have given Professor Friedman’s paper a rigorous review. You have not. > > What you have done, is to light a fire under Paul Krugman, who is now using his high perch to airily > dismiss the Friedman paper as “nonsense.” Paul is an immensely powerful figure, and many people > rely on him for careful assessments. It seems clear that he has made no such assessment in this case. > > Instead, Paul relies on you to impugn an economist with far less reach, whose work is far more careful, > in point of fact, than your casual dismissal of it. He and you also imply that Professor Friedman did his > work for an unprofessional motive. But let me point out, in case you missed it, that Professor Friedman > is a political supporter of Secretary Clinton. His motives are, on the face of it, not political. So we have a handful of high-profile wonks who dismissed the work out of hand because it _sounded_ implausible. And Paul R. Krugman is repeating it as if they’d done the work to refute it–work he hasn’t done either. Oh, it’s a short PDF, & I don’t want to quote too much of it, but this is a good line: > [@](#): > > What the Friedman paper shows, is that under conventional assumptions, _the projected impact of > Senator Sanders’ proposals stems from their scale and ambition._ When you dare to do big things, big > results should be expected. The Sanders program is big, and when you run it through a standard model, > you get a big result. > > That, by the way, is the lesson of the Reagan era – like it or not. It is a lesson that, among today’s > political leaders, only Senator Sanders has learned. Mentioned as part of a larger context of PRK’s bias toward HRC here: [The Fight Between Bernie Sanders And Hillary Clinton Is Officially Super Ugly | HuffPost Latest News](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/bernie-sanders-hillary-clinton-fight_us_56c74dade4b0ec6725e25f49) ---
**Author:** ![Measure\_for\_Measure](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/measure_for_measure/32/557_2.png) [@Measure\_for\_Measure](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Measure_for_Measure)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2016, 12:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/2016-bernie-sanders-d-vt-campaign-for-potus-thread/718754/883 "2016-02-20T00:59:37Z")
James K. Galbraith’s letter is rather disappointing. Sure, you can get a burst of growth following a deep downturn if you apply sufficient fiscal stimulus. But Friedman posited a 5.3% real growth rates _over 10 years_. That’s ludicrous: at some point stimulus feeds into prices after you hit short term capacity limits. Galbraith’s treatment of the subject is misleading and embarrassing. There’s nothing standard about Friedman’s methodology. I repeat that the 5.3% figure was Gerald Friedman’s creation and has not been explicitly showcased by the Sanders campaign to my knowledge. The policy director of the Sanders campaign has however correctly portrayed Friedman as supporting their plan. ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2016, 2:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/2016-bernie-sanders-d-vt-campaign-for-potus-thread/718754/884 "2016-02-20T02:41:53Z")
> [@foolsguinea](#): > > You are a deeply weird and cognitively strange man. You are representing the “cross of gold” wing and saying I’m the oddball? Political machines have a long and illustrious history with countless participants beyond just elected officials. Quixotic protest movements, those are the oddballs–not to mention almost always literal losers. ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2016, 3:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/2016-bernie-sanders-d-vt-campaign-for-potus-thread/718754/885 "2016-02-22T15:49:41Z")
Sanders himself now concedes the point I’ve been making: that he is failing by his own yardstick of bringing in new voters. From yesterday’s _Meet the Press:_ > [@](#): > > CHUCK TODD: > Let me start with something you said on Friday. You said on Friday, “It could be that 10, 20, 30 years from now, people will look back at what happened in Nevada and say, ‘This was the beginning of the political revolution.’” Obviously the results didn’t turn out the way you thought. What happened, sir? > > SEN. BERNIE SANDERS: > Well, what happened is over the last five weeks, Chuck, we came from 25 points down to five points down. As I understand it, we actually won the Latino vote yesterday, which is a big breakthrough for us. But the voter turnout was not as high as I had wanted. And what I’ve said over and over again, we will do well when young people, when working-class people come out. We do not do well when the voter turnout is not large. We did not do as good a job as I had wanted to bring out a large turnout. ---
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2016, 4:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/2016-bernie-sanders-d-vt-campaign-for-potus-thread/718754/886 "2016-02-22T16:20:37Z")
It’s going to take someone younger and more charismatic to actually bring out new voters. Sanders just isn’t the guy to do it. I still say that Sanders=Dennis Kucinich. Kucinich just picked the wrong years to run. If Kucinich had run for the first time in 2016 he’d be in the Sanders role now. ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2016, 4:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/2016-bernie-sanders-d-vt-campaign-for-potus-thread/718754/887 "2016-02-22T16:40:22Z")
Maybe. My mom and my friend who are super into Bernie were into Kucinich when he ran before. And Dennis better fits their super pacifistic outlook on the world. But he is super weird looking and he claims he has been in a flying saucer, so… ---
**Author:** ![Jonathan\_Chance](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jonathan_chance/32/701_2.png) [@Jonathan\_Chance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jonathan_Chance)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2016, 5:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/2016-bernie-sanders-d-vt-campaign-for-potus-thread/718754/888 "2016-02-22T17:13:20Z")
> [@foolsguinea](#): > > You are a deeply weird and cognitively strange man. Let’s not make this personal, please. Anymore of this and warnings will commence. ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2016, 5:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/2016-bernie-sanders-d-vt-campaign-for-potus-thread/718754/889 "2016-02-22T17:17:06Z")
I wasn’t really offended, FWIW. I actually kind of agree with that description, although I would add “…in a good way.” 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Jonathan\_Chance](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jonathan_chance/32/701_2.png) [@Jonathan\_Chance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jonathan_Chance)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2016, 5:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/2016-bernie-sanders-d-vt-campaign-for-potus-thread/718754/890 "2016-02-22T17:29:13Z")
I appreciate that. Nonetheless, that way lies madness for moderation. Much better to stick with ‘attack the post, not the poster’ as our general rule. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2016, 5:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/2016-bernie-sanders-d-vt-campaign-for-potus-thread/718754/891 "2016-02-22T17:57:06Z")
> [@Measure\_for\_Measure](#): > > Let’s consider the socialist hell-holes of Singapore, New Zealand, and Denmark. Singapore has universal health care and spends 3% of GDP on that sector, as compared with 18% for the US. I’ve been advocating a health care system similar to Singapore’s for years, but any time it’s mentioned here the usual suspects scream that it’s a free market solution and therefore won’t work. You need to be careful calling Singapore’s system ‘universal health care’. Singapore’s system provides catastrophic care, and expects citizens to pay for everything else. What it does do is mandate a health savings account for everyone, and you are forced to contribute to it. To get around the 3rd party problem that is blowing up health care costs in both private insurer and public health care systems, Singapore has designed its subsidies in a way that the consumer always pays something out of pocket for their health care. Mandated savings accounts ensures that they have the money to pay. So sure, adopt a Singapore-style health care system. Tell everyone, including the poor, that their payrolls will be cut by x%, with said money to go into a mandatory health account. And until that account is depleted, the system is completely private - no insurers involved - you get medical treatment, you pay for it out of your own account. Only when this account is depleted will you be given subsidies for your health care, but even then you will be expected to pay part of every treatment out of pocket. If you’re destitute we might help you with this, but otherwise - pony up. Also, once you’ve used up the money that you can spend in the private healthcare system, you will be moved to the public system - one where the costs are controlled essentially through rationing. So be prepared to wait in line. Think that will fly with your friends on the left? [quote] Singapore ranks number 1 worldwide in ease of doing business and number 10 in terms of starting a business.[/'quote] Yeah. But guess why it’s so hard to do this in the United States? Which side of the political aisle do you suppose has made it harder to start and run a business? If you’re worried about this, perhaps we can finally have a real debate about regulatory reform. In the past, any suggestion of lightening the regulatory burden has been met with screams from the left that without said regulations there will be a race to the bottom, the rivers will be polluted, the poor will be exploited, racism will rise, women will be oppressed, the disabled won’t find work, yada yada. So we keep passing more and more regulations, never get rid of the old ones, and businesses get buried under the increasing cruft of the regulatory state. The sad thing is that usually these regulations have the effect of reinforcing the status quo and of keeping small businessmen down while rewarding the large crony capitalists who had the lobbying clout to twist the regulations to their benefit. > [@](#): > > Eh. That’s a city-state. Let’s move on. New Zealand is ranked #2 in terms of doing business and #1 in terms of starting a business. Denmark is 3 and 29. > The US is (drumroll), ranked 7 in terms of doing business and… 49 in terms of starting a business. Oh well. > [Business Ready (B-READY)](http://www.doingbusiness.org/rankings) > > Once again, facts trump ideological preconceptions. I’ve been talking about this on the SDMB for a decade. I’ve been bringing up the economic freedom ranking and showing how the U.S. has been falling on it for a long time. That’s been mostly received by the left on this board with guffaws, claims of my being a neo-con or a supply-sider or some such, and utter derision because the source is a right-wing think tank. Glad to see you on the right side of this. ---
**Author:** ![Richard\_Parker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/35a633/32.png) [@Richard\_Parker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Richard_Parker)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2016, 6:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/2016-bernie-sanders-d-vt-campaign-for-potus-thread/718754/892 "2016-02-22T18:09:58Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > In the past, any suggestion of lightening the regulatory burden has been met with screams from the left that without said regulations there will be a race to the bottom, the rivers will be polluted, the poor will be exploited, racism will rise, women will be oppressed, the disabled won’t find work, yada yada. So we keep passing more and more regulations, never get rid of the old ones, and businesses get buried under the increasing cruft of the regulatory state. This overstates the extent of partisan difference here. Lightening regulatory burdens is as entrenched a political cliche as fighting “waste, fraud, and abuse.” Obama has dedicated full paragraphs to reviewing and eliminating regulations in multiple State of the Union speeches–probably more than he has had to say about, say, Syria. Both parties talk about it, constantly. Neither party, when in power, does much. Obama appointed Cass Sunstein to help develop executive policies to reduce regulations. They did [some](https://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2011/07/11/president-s-executive-order-improving-and-streamlining-regulation-independent-regula) of that. Part of this is because incumbent businesses exercise a huge amount of control over the regulatory process. They benefit from it, at the expense of smaller or insurgent firms. And they’re also the ones who exercise a great deal of influence in all parts of the political process–something the GOP actively encourages and something that Sanders voters have focused on almost to the exclusion of all else. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2016, 6:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/2016-bernie-sanders-d-vt-campaign-for-potus-thread/718754/893 "2016-02-22T18:34:55Z")
> [@Measure\_for\_Measure](#): > > One of the distinguishing features of modern conservatism is an attachment to [ideology](http://www.bradford-delong.com/2016/02/concrete-economics-the-hamilton-approach-to-economic-growth-and-policy.html), or the elevation of a fact-resistant conceptual framework. In the guise of neoconservatism it delivered us [the quagmire in Iraq](http://www.vox.com/2016/2/16/11022104/iraq-war-neoconservatives). In economics it gives us supply side economics, a monocausal interpretation of history that puts tax rates front, center and implicated in basically everything [including the rise of Hilter](https://newrepublic.com/article/64873/feast-the-wingnuts). To be clear, there are many mainstream conservative faculties in the US. There really aren’t any supply side schools, because supplysidism is crackpot stuff. It has no econometric grounding. Tell that to Christina and Paul Romer, who found that increases in taxes directly resulted in decreases in GDP growth. And… The rise in Hitler? Really? You mean the National Social Democrats, who promised universal health care, universal education, an increase in welfare benefits, and an ideology that elevated the needs of the state over the rights of the individual? THAT’s now the fault of the neo-cons and supply-siders? Wow. Who knew those Jewish neo-cons were fans of Hitler. > [@](#): > > There’s a lot in modern conservatism that reminds me of the hard left, the ideological left, the Marxist left. So… it reminds you of about 40% of the Democratic party then? The millennial Democrats, a majority of which supports outright socialism? The ones who supported Marxist/socialist regimes around the world, including the recently departed Hugo Chavez, whose socialist policies transformed Venezuela from being a wealthy, resource-rich country into a basket case that can’t even feed its own people? > [@](#): > > Which brings me to Bernie Sanders. He’s a smart guy and a practical guy: his days as mayor of Burlington revealed that. Really? As I recall, back then the ever-so-practical Sanders was extolling the virtues of the Soviet Union. He wrote approvingly of Marxist regimes around the world, liked Castro, supported the Sandinistas, set up a sister city project with the Soviet Union and then honeymooned there as part of his sister city project. In college he was affiliated with Marxist groups. When he graduated, he became head of the “American People’s History Society”, a Marxist propaganda media outlet. There, he produced a hagiography of Eugene Debs, a socialist revolutionary jailed for espionage against the United States. There is no doubt that Bernie Sanders is an unreconstructed radical, a hard-left socialist who has/had sympathies towards Marxist totalitarian governments. In his youth he was just another useful idiot parroting totalitarian propaganda. > [@](#): > > But some of his fellow travelers leave a little to be desired. Recently an economic analysis of his plan was offered by a guy from U Mass, Amherst. (U Mass has had a number of radical economists in their faculty for a while.) The analysis is [quackery](http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2016/02/sanders-campaign-has-crossed-neverland) positing real _per person_ GDP growth rates of 4.5% over a 10 year period. That’s just nuts. Even 2.5% is very optimistic. Agreed. Even from a Keynesian perspective it makes no sense. There is no ‘multiplier’ if you are growing at 5% and have 3.8% unemployment. Government ‘stimulus’ projects will then simply crowd out the private sector. If rampant spending was a panacea for growth, Japan should be on fire. > [@](#): > > There are leftie crackpots and rightie crackpots. The difference is lefties nutters receive serious pushback. Really? Then why is Bernie doing so well? It’s hard to think of a lefty-er, crackpotting-er politician, and he’s capturing the hearts of the Democratic party. > [@](#): > > Conservatives lack a similar capacity. So leftie nutters get marginalized and rightie nutters get consulting gigs, sinecures and amplification in the conservative echo-chamber. Really? If you believe this, I think it just speaks to confirmation bias. You probably don’t read a lot of what the calmer pundits on the right put out, but you do read the center-left. In other words, all you hear from the right are the voices of the nuttiest people who scream loud enough to be heard, whereas on the left you spend a lot of time reading the more serious people. Did you happen to notice that the entire editorial review board of National Review came out against Trump? That simplistic supply-siders get trashed routinely in their pages and in other outlets? How about serious Republican economists like Greg Mankiw, John Taylor, Gary Becker, etc? I suggest listening a little less to Mark Levin, Rush Limbaugh and Sarah Palin, and listening a little more to some of the serious people. You think the left is self-reflective and self-correcting? Then why the sudden fascination by large swaths of the left with hard-core socialism, despite a century of failure and misery caused whenever it’s tried? How do you explain the never-ending support for Marxism/Leninism in left-wing academia and left-wing students? How can a leftist with an ounce of self-reflection sport a Che Guevera T-shirt or a Mao cap without slinking away in shame? Why is the campus left these days veering so hard into lunacy? Look, there are nutters on both sides. There are smart thinkers on both sides. You gain nothing when you define your own side only in terms of the smart thinkers, and the other side only in terms of the nutcases. That might help you feel good, but it will do nothing to improve your understanding of the world. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2016, 7:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/2016-bernie-sanders-d-vt-campaign-for-potus-thread/718754/894 "2016-02-22T19:26:25Z")
> [@Richard\_Parker](#): > > This overstates the extent of partisan difference here. Lightening regulatory burdens is as entrenched a political cliche as fighting “waste, fraud, and abuse.” Obama has dedicated full paragraphs to reviewing and eliminating regulations in multiple State of the Union speeches–probably more than he has had to say about, say, Syria. Are you suggesting that the grassroots of the left and right have significant overlap when it comes to wanting to lower regulations, but we’re just thwarted by corruption on both sides? If so, I don’t buy it. I’ve spent too many years on this board and elsewhere making sensible suggestions for easing regulations on the margins, only to have them laughed at as right-wing foolishness. And the whole point to the progressive project is to impose more regulations and restrictions on society for the good of all. Here in Alberta, we just foolishly elected a left-wing government. One of their first acts was a new bill to impose a whole bunch of commercial business regulations on the farming sector including family farms, followed by a raft of new taxes to pay for, among other things, a new government cabinet department devoted to imposing new regulations on business. TransAlta just announced a complete moratorium on investment in Alberta because the regulatory landscape is getting rapidly worse. The new government here has also mandated that our entire coal infrastructure be eliminated by 2030, despite having no plan whatsoever for how that is supposed to happen. I would have thought that ‘reasonable’ leftists who believe in Keynesianism would understand that when a province is undergoing the worst financial downturn in 50 years, it might be smart to hold off on major new regulations and tax increases. And our NDP was supposed to be a special moderate ‘Alberta’ NDP, just barely center left. That’s what they promised - reasonable, common-sense center-left governance. What we got instead was a steamroller of left-wing ‘change’. They killed the pipeline projects that would move our oil out of province, raised business taxes, personal taxes, ‘sin’ taxes, announced an upcoming carbon tax, announced a royalty review to increase royalties on an oil and gas sector already reeling under the consequences of the collapse of oil prices, created a new cabinet position for ‘women’s issues’, a new regulatory board to oversee business, and they put a bunch of know-nothing partisan hacks in charge of health care, commerce, trade, and other serious cabinet positions. And by ‘know-nothing’, I mean it. Our new deputy minister of health has a degree in journalism and her ‘health care’ experience is a five years running a small family owned yoga studio. The minister of energy, the lifeblood of Alberta, is a small town teacher and school administrator. And so it goes. In the meantime, even though our deficit is spiralling out of control they’ve announced billions in new ‘stimulus’ spending - consisting mostly of building more schools and government buildings. This is not stimulus - it’s simple permanent expansion of the public sector. But it sure pays off the people who got them to the party - the public sector unions. I’m getting a little tired of hearing how reasonable the left is, when I’m sitting here watching them destroy our province. > [@](#): > > Both parties talk about it, constantly. Neither party, when in power, does much. There we can agree. The problem is that the regulatory state is out of control. There’s too much money involved, too much corruption, and too many vested interests. Change is nearly impossible. Of course, on the right that’s one of our arguments against the expansion of government - it’s a one-way ratchet. Business mistakes correct themselves. Bad businesses go under. Unprofitable lines of research and development are abandoned. But this never happens in government. If you make a big mistake, such as supporting ethanol subsidies, it’s unlikely you’ll ever get the change to undo it, because once the subsidies are in place the economy will adapt to them, and then removing the subsidy will cause huge dislocations. Therefore, they become perpetual, and the economy takes on another parasite it gets to carry forever. Since you can’t get rid of them once you impose them, you’d better be extremely bloody careful with what you propose. > [@](#): > > Part of this is because incumbent businesses exercise a huge amount of control over the regulatory process. They benefit from it, at the expense of smaller or insurgent firms. And they’re also the ones who exercise a great deal of influence in all parts of the political process–something the GOP actively encourages and something that Sanders voters have focused on almost to the exclusion of all else. Oh, let’s not focus on business - there’s plenty of blame to go around. For example, the Teacher’s unions OWN the Democratic party, so despite the fact that the education system is a disaster and hugely expensive, even the smallest of reforms receive huge push-back. Pressure from union lobbying has created regulations that drive up the cost of construction and prevent innovations that would have the effect of reducing the need for union labor. Pressure from the environmental lobby prevents the Democrats from seeking even modest environmental reforms where the current costs are large and benefits small. The truth is, power corrupts. Centralized power means centralized corruption. It exists on both sides of the aisle, and the only way to get rid of it is to reduce the amount of power in Washington DC by scaling back the size and scope of government. No amount of ‘good government’ reforms will change the fact that when a small group of people have the power to direct the flow of trillions of dollars, or to cost businesses and individuals billions of dollars with the stroke of a pen, that process will be corrupted. One area where I think Conservatives are right and Democrats are wrong is that Democrats seem much more willing to trust this power to individuals. No matter how much corruption there is, they think it can all be turned to the good if they only elect the right guy. Conservatives, on the other hand, assume that individuals will behave badly when they are heavily incentivized to do so, and therefore seek to put constitutional restrictions on just how much power they are granted. Conservatives distrust centralized power structures and want to push power down - to the states, the communities, the family, the individual. Liberals want to push power to the top, because they believe that a small bunch of really smart, really dedicated technocrats running things would be much better than a more distributed power structure. They’d put their faith in someone like Cass Sunnstein being smart enough to know where society should be ‘nudged’ in order to improve it. I’d rather let people be free to make their own choices. ---
**Author:** ![Richard\_Parker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/35a633/32.png) [@Richard\_Parker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Richard_Parker)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2016, 9:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/2016-bernie-sanders-d-vt-campaign-for-potus-thread/718754/895 "2016-02-22T21:35:20Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > Are you suggesting that the grassroots of the left and right have significant overlap when it comes to wanting to lower regulations, but we’re just thwarted by corruption on both sides? Yes, I think there is signifiant overlap, or at least more than you let on. But no, I don’t think corruption is what prevents any large-scale efforts to repeal regulations. It’s just public choice theory. For any given regulation, it is almost always the case that some powerful, narrow incumbent interest benefits from the regulation and is more powerful or organized than the small or disparate interests that would be served by cutting it–even when an objective cost-benefit analysis would call for the regulation to go. And then you add things like the ability of big firms to give plum jobs to former and future regulators, their ability to spend much more on think tanks and lawyers, and other such factors, and what you get is a regulatory environment that is relatively insulated from changes that would substantially reduce regulations that are bad ideas or don’t work based on some neutral measure. Bad regulations without powerful benefactors get strangled in the crib. What remains of the bad regulations, therefore, are the ones with powerful benefactors. Additionally, while I think the leadership in parties could probably agree to cut 30% of business regulations, they would not agree on _which_ 30%. And since the political cost of axing any given regulation tends to be high (see above), this results in a kind of detente in which neither side goes aggressively after any significant number of regulations. > [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > Oh, let’s not focus on business - there’s plenty of blame to go around. For example, the Teacher’s unions OWN the Democratic party, so despite the fact that the education system is a disaster and hugely expensive, even the smallest of reforms receive huge push-back. Pressure from union lobbying has created regulations that drive up the cost of construction and prevent innovations that would have the effect of reducing the need for union labor. Pressure from the environmental lobby prevents the Democrats from seeking even modest environmental reforms where the current costs are large and benefits small. Yes, unions and non-profit special interest groups are players in the regulatory state. But they are players there in the way that the WNBA is part of the professional sports industry in the US. The NRDC does not have oil money. Oil does. The vast majority of regulations affecting small and medium-sized businesses are never on the public radar and, for most such regulations, the only organized group offering putting pressure as to their contents are incumbent business interests. * * * Overall, I think you conflate to some extent conservatives with libertarians and liberals with pro-government-expansion progressives. At least in the US, the libertarian streak of the GOP is much more limited than many libertarians would like to believe, and the expand-the-government streak of the Democrats is much more limited than many progressives would like to believe. The SDMB right is far more libertarian than typical, and the SDMB left is far more progressive than typical. Enough Democrats are skeptical of government regulation of business that our politicians are routinely forced to pay lip service to cutting regulations, just like the GOP politicians are. But neither party does so in huge numbers. ---
**Author:** ![bengangmo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/50afbb/32.png) [@bengangmo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bengangmo)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2016, 9:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/2016-bernie-sanders-d-vt-campaign-for-potus-thread/718754/896 "2016-02-22T21:42:04Z")
> [@Hank\_Beecher](#): > > Maybe in theory. In reality, are there any countries with universal health coverage in which it is easier to start a business than it is in America? As far as I understand it, the opposite is true, due to all of the extra taxes, licenses, insurance, regulation, bureaucracy, ect that goes hand in hand with those types of governments. Straight off the top of my head I can cite New Zealand - 3rd most friendly place in the world to start a business, and has universal health care ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2016, 11:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/2016-bernie-sanders-d-vt-campaign-for-potus-thread/718754/897 "2016-02-22T23:32:50Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > You are representing the “cross of gold” wing . . . That is an extremely silly and fatuous characterization of the left-progressive wing. ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2016, 11:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/2016-bernie-sanders-d-vt-campaign-for-potus-thread/718754/898 "2016-02-22T23:53:51Z")
Sam, you are right there are nutters on both sides and smart people on both sides; but I happen to like sensible smart people’s ideas on the left much better than those from the non-nutter right, with some exceptions. You are way off, though, to call our education system a “disaster”. I am not sure whether you meant the US or Canada, but both countries have educational systems that are among the best in the world. As with most things, Singapore is clearly too draconian in their health care policy; but a kinder gentler version I would favor for the US. A universal catastrophic benefit, plus a health savings account that is subsidized by tax credits on a sliding scale. ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2016, 11:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/2016-bernie-sanders-d-vt-campaign-for-potus-thread/718754/899 "2016-02-22T23:55:10Z")
> [@Jonathan\_Chance](#): > > I appreciate that. Nonetheless, that way lies madness for moderation. Much better to stick with ‘attack the post, not the poster’ as our general rule. Fair enough. ---
**Author:** ![foolsguinea](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/foolsguinea/32/14751_2.png) [@foolsguinea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/foolsguinea)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2016, 2:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/2016-bernie-sanders-d-vt-campaign-for-potus-thread/718754/900 "2016-02-23T02:49:13Z")
**Sam Stone** , Bernie may have started out as a Trostskyist, but what he’s pitching now is basically “slightly imaginary Sweden.” He’s not an “unreconstructed radical” but a practical-minded social democrat. I find it interesting that you insist on fine differences within Reaganism while treating an advocacy for Nordic social democracy as somehow indistinguishable from Brezhnev. Oh, well, you can continue to enjoy your zero-deductible Canadian Medicare while insisting that Americans are too good for the same benefit. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/2016-bernie-sanders-d-vt-campaign-for-potus-thread/718754.md?page=44) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/2016-bernie-sanders-d-vt-campaign-for-potus-thread/718754.md?page=46)