Posted on 02/27/2020 10:54:09 AM PST by karpov
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A Bernie Sanders presidency could begin modestly with a roughly $300 billion federal jobs guarantee before pushing for trillions of dollars in new spending on health care, the environment and infrastructure, says a key adviser to the U.S. Democratic front-runner.
Sanders, a U.S. senator from Vermont and self-described democratic socialist, has promised a sweeping transformation of the U.S. economy if he wrests the keys to the White House from President Donald Trump in the November 2020 election.
A jobs guarantee, which would see the federal government ensure employment for anyone who wanted to work, would be a logical first step for the would-be president, said Stephanie Kelton, who has been Sanders senior economic adviser since his unsuccessful 2016 presidential campaign.
I like very much the idea of getting a safeguard in place right away because, like most people, I worry about what happens when the next downturn comes, Kelton, an economics professor at Stony Brook University in New York state, said to journalists this week on the sidelines of a National Association for Business Economics meeting.
Kelton estimates the jobs guarantee would increase the federal deficit by about 1.5% of gross domestic product while ensuring the elusive goal of full employment. The U.S. deficit currently stands at 4.5% of GDP.
Such a proposal is not a novel idea in U.S. history or even the current presidential race. Government employment programs were used to ease the sting of the Great Depression, and have been more recently proposed by Democratic presidential candidates including Senator Elizabeth Warren.
But Sanders has made it a centerpiece of his agenda.
It would, Kelton said, form an ultimate economic backstop that ensured full employment even in a recession and expanded federal spending just as private sector incomes ebbed.
(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...
Some a$$holes think that is a good idea. The government does not create jobs. It can issue a lot of money, which deflates its purchasing power. Initially, it looks good, since the public is too stupid to understand that the rising cost of goods is due to the government issuing money from nothing.
The idiots at royters are stupid as a rock.
$1,000 from every man woman and child to play for this redistribution
If Sanders gets elected he’s not going to do anything. All he’s going to care about is lining his pockets like all leftists. He might throw the proletariat a single bone like Obama did with Obamacare, but like Obamacare it’s going to be completely useless. The indoctrinated need to wake up to the fact that Trump is getting things done for the people, and liberals never EVER do anything for the people, ever. All they do is make things worse and line their pockets.
Bernie is thinking small. He should start with a $300 TRILLION jobs program in the first year.
I don't see a thing wrong with this plan.
It won’t be 3.6% for long if Bernie gets elected with a DemocRat Congress and starts greatly raising taxes to pay for the “free” goodies.
Since Al Gore's Global Warming
Lemme guess, we all have to walk to the fields to work in agriculture, everyone with glasses gets shot, and we call it year one?
So - MMT relies on the fact that everyone is too scared of the repercussions of realizing that the money eventually isn’t worth the ink that was used to print it?
That is pretty scary on its own.
Oh he77 no! We don’t need no stinking jobs program, damn fool! The jobs problem has been taken care of. Figure out how to straighten out the dysfunctional Democratic states and start with California!
Well I suppose there’s no problem spending a few hundred trillion dollars can’t solve...
Not actually true outside the major metropolitan area’s.
And too many of those “Jobs” are crap wage part-time “Service” jobs.
Some of us are not suited to paring toe-nails, massaging the obese, UBER driving, or flipping burgers.
In the rural area’s jobs that can support a decent life are still hard to find.
Too many are taken by illegals who depress wages across the area, others are really only suitable for the young and strong.
Add in the current trend of only taking applications on-line, a great way to block those over fifty or so without active age discrimination.
None of which makes Sanders any less of an idiot*.
*My apology for any offense to idiots this observation may cause.
Words never uttered by a liberal during the obummer years. Now they're screaming it from the rooftops...
That is GOP propaganda. There are 60 million working age people not working.
Entice a few industries back from overseas = Very high import tariff, which would be a great thing!
300 Billion to hire more parasites. Just what we need.
You can give a lazy hood rat a job, but you can never make him work!
We’re overemployed.
Fast food counter service often sucks. Anyone can get a job these days if they want one, and another one right away afterwards.
I notice it’s been a while since we’ve read of cops being denied service.
Have a feeling Big Media’s under pressure to stop reporting those incidents.
What about people who don't want to work? Will they get more than what the Sandersnistas want to pay for federal busywork?
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