Everyone’s favorite loony old socialist from Vermont is at it again, this time promising Imperial jobs for all, to be paid for by… something. Excerpts, with my comments:
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) is set to announce a federal jobs proposal that would guarantee a job with at least a $15-per-hour wage and health benefits to every adult American “who wants or needs one,” The Washington Post reports.
Senator Sanders, it should be noted, ascribes to the Underwear Gnomes Theory of Economics:
Promise Free Shit- Raise Taxes
- ???
- Profit!
The senator is still in the early stages of crafting the plan, according to the Post, which would provide a job or required training for any American.
Sanders’s office has yet to release the details of the plan’s funding, but previous large-scale projects proposed by the Vermont progressive have involved ending tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans and large corporations.
Which won’t pay for even ten percent of this lunatic idea. What utter horseshit.
The Vermont senator joins two other possible 2020 contenders, Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) and Cory Booker (D-N.J.), who have also expressed support for similar proposals in recent weeks.
And this could present a problem for the GOP; all the Dems have to do is continually promise more Free Shit. It’s hard to run against Santa Claus.
“The goal is to eliminate working poverty and involuntary unemployment altogether,” Darrick Hamilton, an economist at The New School, told the Post.
It won’t. It will just cripple private enterprise and balloon government wildly beyond the most fevered dreams of statists currently extant.
Fortunately:
The proposal would have trouble gaining enough Democratic support to get real traction and conservatives have long said a jobs promise is unsustainable and unaffordable, citing costs, the effects on the private sector and the possibility of inflation.
Honestly, this idea is probably not going anywhere. (A few years ago would have left out the qualifier, but I’ve lost faith in the wisdom of the American electorate of late.) But if a state, say, California, wanted to try such a nutcake idea, well, that’s the whole idea of Federalism, isn’t it?
California wouldn’t even have to secede to try some similar nutballery. And since California has already abandoned any pretense of fiscal responsibility – just look at their state employees pension fund, or the state of their high-speed rail project – they wouldn’t even have to overcome that mental hurdle.
Let the laboratory of liberty experiment in California – and leave the Imperial government the hell out of it.
