The upshot is that increased funding for infrastructure, education and social security will lead to growth not seen since the '60s when the US was the only game in town.
Other economists scoffed at the idea that Sanders could bring us >5% GDP growth, according to the article. The economist is, I gather, while not a shill, certainly a fellow traveller.
Sure, if that were the only elements of his plan that could affect the economy.
He has also proposed top marginal tax rates of 90%, which is high enough that it would affect incentives.
He supports a carbon tax that is intended to keep most coal and oil in the ground as well as supporting slowing the growth of the nuclear energy industry. (I guess we will all run our electric cars on solar power or something:confused:).
Infrastructure spending like the sort that Bernie is proposing is basically stimulus spending unless we increase taxes to pay for it. So yes, it should goose economic growth.
The plan wouldn’t get passed. Presidents have limited power. Socialist Presidents who need the cooperation of mainstream Democrats with a House controlled by the GOP have no power at all.
There was one time when he was asked “When you think about something like 90 percent, you don’t think that’s obviously too high?” to which Sanders replied, “No.”
That was, of course, not a proposal to change the current marginal tax rate. Would you please supply a cite for when he made such a proposal with the 90% number as you claim?
From what I’ve seen Bernie’s plan is the most well thought out and intelligent on presented in the US I’ve ever seen. Sounds like a hyperbole perhaps, but only because every other politician in the US seems completely addicted to neo-liberal nonsense and voodoo economics. Bernie brings sensible Social Democratic polices, but the culture he is working is is so indoctrinated into voodoo stuff that it looks crazy to them.
His claims are patently ludicrous. He’s saying 25 million jobs will be created in a country that does not have 25 million people available to do them, proposing a level of GDP growth completely impossible in an advanced economy, and a level of income growth that would cause massive inflation. It’s stupid fanboyism, not economics.
Why doesn’t it? There are 8 million unemployed, plus 6.5 million who haven’t looked for a job recently enough to qualify as unemployed but who say they want a job, plus 6.5 million who want full-time work but only have a part-time job. Right there you’ve got 21 million, and there’s another 20 million or so adults aged 25 to 64 who are not institutionalized and not working. They’re not all disabled, and differing economic situations may well attract into the workforce people who are currently sitting it out for various reasons (schooling, stay-at-home parents, early retirees, etc.).
Why is it impossible? Advanced economies typically don’t grow that fast because of a lack of excess inputs to fuel growth, but Bernie is planning on pumping a lot of extra resources into the economy. It’s the same theory as stimulus spending: the 2009 stimulus, e.g., is credited as having added perhaps two points to GDP. Why would a similar but larger stimulus not add several points to existing positive growth?
Income growth, by itself, doesn’t necessarily cause inflation. It depends on what goods and services are available for sale, and surging productivity would make a lot more stuff available.
Maybe Sanders’ ideas would not work, but what you just posted is nonsense. Income growth does not cause inflation; income growth for its own sake causes inflation. That is not what Sanders is proposing: income growth and GDP growth created by identifying an area in which the economy can profitably expand - such as by improving infrastructure - does not cause inflation, because the bigger numbers are backed up by having more stuff of value.
Who credits the 2009 stimulus with two points of GDP growth - which is essentially all of it - and why on earth would you think you’d get the same return on more?
I mean, I do like Bernie Sanders, but there’s a difference between “he would be a good President” and “Bernie Sanders is a super Jedi wizard who can fix everything.” The link in the OP is the latter.
I was going to ask this question too, but on second thoughts decided against it. Im sure plenty of economists credit the 2009 stimulus with a few % points of economic growth. However, what we have to remember is that economists are bloody idiots. Barely any of them predicted the earlier housing and financial crisis. A bigger bunch of shysters you could not meet.
Quite a number of reasonably respectable economists attribute substantial amounts of GDP growth to the 2009 stimulus. See for example Alan Blinder and Mark Zandi’s How the Great Recession was brought to an end :
(Zandi is chief economist at Moody’s and was one of John McCain’s advisers in 2008; Blinder was appointed to the Fed by Bill Clinton.)
I don’t say that you necessarily WOULD get the same return on more, but I don’t see why it would be impossible to do so.
I’m like 98% feel the Bern, but I can’t be too excited about this. Like, economists do good work, but a single study (especially in a relatively soft/chaotic field) doesn’t amount to much. It’s tempting to pump my fist, throw this in doubters’ faces, and call it a day, but just because it plays to my biases doesn’t mean it’s a good idea. I consider this a data point, a very good data point in my favor, but I’m sure there are plenty of conservative economists who have made models under different assumptions where Bernie’s plan causes total global annihilation or something.
I clicked on the same preposterous post, ready to write “Cite?” but you beat me to it. Send me a PM please, if Damuri Ajashi has an answer; I’m not holding my breath.