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 ...
This is practically a given, and has always been true, since the turn of the 20th century. People flocked to the big cities for jobs and good wages.
Nobody kept track of 4,000 stimulus recipients that received $24 billion in Recovery Act funds —
(while owing more than $750 million in unpaid corporate, payroll and other taxes). Not to mention:
<><> $6B in Homeowners' stimulus energy credits showered on nearly 1/3 of credit-claimers who had no record of homeownership, including minors and prisoners.
<><> $530 million dumped into profligate Detroit public schools for laptops and other electronics that had little, if any, measurable academic benefits.
<><> the whopping $6.7 million cost per job under the $50 billion stimulus-funded green energy loan program
<><> politically connected Green companies are now bankrupt---they took the money then went belly-up
<><> remember? Solyndra ($535M), Abound Solar ($400M), Beacon Power ($43M), A123 ($250M) and Ener1 ($119M).
<><> $1 million stimulus went to Big Bird and Sesame Street “to promote healthy eating,” for a theoretical 1.47 jobs ($726,000 per job created.)
<><> hundreds of stimulus millions to govt GSA junkets in Las Vegas and Hawaii,
<><> hundreds of millions to ghost congressional districts, dead people,
<><> hundreds of millions for infrastructures to nowhere and ubiquitous stimulus propaganda road signs stamped with the shovel-ready logo.
Of course, there’s no example of unfettered stimulus squandering more fitting than the one named after Keystone Fiscal Kop Joe Biden himself. Govt-funded Amtrak’s Wilmington, Del, station raked in $20 mill in “recovery” money after heavy personal lobbying by cheerleader Joe. In return, the station (which came in $6 million over budget, according to The Wash/Times) renamed its facility after Biden.
THE LEGACY Bloated costs. Crony political narcissism. Glaring conflicts of interest. Monumental waste.
Obama/Biden/Democrat stimulus legacy bequeathed to our children and their grandchildren.
These plunderers and looters need to be run out of town on a rail.
SOURCE http://dyn.realclearpolitics.com/topic/v/Vice_President_/
“Kelton estimates the jobs guarantee would increase the federal deficit by about 1.5% of gross domestic product...”
Assuming that number is right, she’s only considering if the currently unemployed take advantage of this jobs program. She’s neglected to consider that tens of millions of people in crappy jobs they don’t like might quit and instead get a “guaranteed” federal job that probably pays them more and from which they can’t get fired, no matter how poorly they perform.
Modestly???
$300 billion = $3600 tax increase for an average family of four that is already fully employed.
How is that "modest" ?
This is an example of the cover that the MSM will give to Sanders.
Vermont recently voted in a 13-year-old city Mayor!
Mexico will be pleased...
They really take the voting franchise seriously don’t they!
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