WSJ: Bernie Sanders' Policies Would Cost $18 Trillion Over 10 Years

[Domingo Halliburton]

I was just coming in here to point out that spread over 10 years that $18 trillion isn't really the huge problem that the WSJ is trying to paint it as especially not when you compare it to some of the yearly costs of other things that this country has wasted money on.
Still will be used to paint Sanders as some wild-eyed, tax and spend, Socialist maniac though.

A 10% increase in spending as a share of GDP would be a pretty big deal

 

[Jello Biafra]

A 10% increase in spending as a share of GDP would be a pretty big deal

But Sanders is positing that any of his programs would be paid for by an increase in taxes and cuts on things like military spending. Plus the $18 trillion number isn't even something that came from Bernie's camp...that number is based on his stating he wants single payer healthcare and there being a proposed single payer healthcare bill in Congress that is estimated at $15 trillion.
Its not like he is just planning on taking current GDP and just dropping another nearly $20 trillion on it from out of nowhere.

 

[ADevilYouKhow]

That makes going back into Iraq and invading Iran sound cheap.

 

[¢apitali$t Migraine]

Jesus, remember the last nikka who said his bullshyt would be paid for? Mfers just stop it. Kick this old b*stard down a well so we can get down to fukking business. Like I said, mfers ain't paid not one damn dollar back on they student loans, nikkas not even returning to the workforce, just sittin back chillin, n we supposed to incentivize these cocksuckers with even more fukking handouts?

nikka, health care expensive as fukk cuz life ain't cheap. It's made that way to keep ur pampered ass on the hamster wheel, lest u get anywhere near a focus group and attempt to run for public office with that batshyt insane ideology of free risotto and beef wellington for all and decriminalize all drug activity near school zones.

Newsflash, muthafukka: If ur mad as fukk about the cost of ur health care n ur not trying to do something to make more money, that's the System telling ur ass Hurry up and die. U ain't fit for the lifestyle u tryna maintain n if u can't convince another muthafukka to pay for ur shyt, much less ur job, then ur contributions and value to the system ain't matchin up to what u demand from it. Hurry the fukk up and die, u sonofafukkingbytch, jesus.

 

[JahFocus CS]

Nah. No reason to spend money on the poor, we need more money for the war

 

[Domingo Halliburton]

Newsflash, muthafukka: If ur mad as fukk about the cost of ur health care n ur not trying to do something to make more money, that's the System telling ur ass Hurry up and die. U ain't fit for the lifestyle u tryna maintain n if u can't convince another muthafukka to pay for ur shyt, much less ur job, then ur contributions and value to the system ain't matchin up to what u demand from it. Hurry the fukk up and die, u sonofafukkingbytch, jesus.

 

[Broke Wave]

Ive never read a more bullshyt article in my
Entire life

 

[JahFocus CS]

In what world would the WSJ, the preeminent bourgeois periodical along with the Economist, say anything not designed to try to scuttle Sanders' chances at the nomination?

 

[Broke Wave]

Something this dishonest infuriates me. The total cost of healthcare in canada per year is 135 billion for about 35 plus million canadians. The costs are inflated because the remote populations are very expensive to serviice. America already spends 2.5 trillion dollars of government money per year for 330 million people. If single payer is predicated on eliminating the previous programs, why is it projected to increase 1.5 trillion a year? Who made these projections? The heritage foundation? Total hit job.

 

[Domingo Halliburton]

In what world would the WSJ, the preeminent bourgeois periodical along with the Economist, say anything not designed to try to scuttle Sanders' chances at the nomination?

you don't think Rupert Murdoch has good intentions with this article? he's just trying to inform the public.

 

[Domingo Halliburton]

Something this dishonest infuriates me. The total cost of healthcare in canada per year is 135 billion for about 35 plus million canadians. The costs are inflated because the remote populations are very expensive to serviice. America already spends 2.5 trillion dollars of government money per year for 330 million people. If single payer is predicated on eliminating the previous programs, why is it projected to increase 1.5 trillion a year? Who made these projections? The heritage foundation? Total hit job.

the number is based on a plan in congress proposed by John Conyers (I believe)

 

[88m3]

 

[Futuristic Eskimo]

Many he can bring Trump and his team in as negotiators to bring that number down a fair amount. Hes an expert at getting better deals with China, why not try him out domestically?

 

[Colilluminati]

I don't see the problem

 

[BaggerofTea]

Actually this is a massive lie by WSJ- No, Bernie Sanders is not going to bankrupt America to the tune of $18 trillion

The big policy headline today comes from the Wall Street Journal, which delivers this alarming message:

Price Tag of Bernie Sanders’ Proposals: $18 Trillion

Holy cow! He must be advocating for some crazy stuff that will bankrupt America! But is that really an accurate picture of what Sanders is proposing? And is this the kind of number we should be frightened of?

The answer isn’t quite so dramatic: while Sanders does want to spend significant amounts of money, almost all of it is on things we’re already paying for; he just wants to change how we pay for them. In some ways it’s by spreading out a cost currently borne by a limited number of people to all taxpayers. His plan for free public college would do this: right now, it’s paid for by students and their families, while under Sanders’ plan we’d all pay for it in the same way we all pay for parks or the military or food safety.

But the bulk of what Sanders wants to do is in the first category: to have us pay through taxes for things we’re already paying for in other ways. Depending on your perspective on government, you may think that’s a bad idea. But we shouldn’t treat his proposals as though they’re going to cost us $18 trillion on top of what we’re already paying.

And there’s another problem with that scary $18 trillion figure, which is what the Journal says is the 10-year cost of Sanders’ ideas: fully $15 trillion of it comes not from an analysis of anything Sanders has proposed, but from the fact that Sanders has said he’d like to see a single-payer health insurance system, and there’s a single-payer plan in Congress that has been estimated to cost $15 trillion. Sanders hasn’t actually released any health care plan, so we have no idea what his might cost.

But health care is nevertheless a good place to examine why these big numbers can be so misleading. At the moment, total health care spending in the United States runs over $3 trillion a year; according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, over the next decade (from 2015-2024), America will spend a total of $42 trillion on health care. This is money that you and I and everyone else spends. We spend it in a variety of ways: through our health-insurance premiums, through the reduced salaries we get if our employers pick up part or all of the cost of those premiums, through our co-pays and deductibles, and through our taxes that fund Medicare, Medicaid, ACA subsidies, and the VA health care system. We’re already paying about $10,000 a year per capita for health care.

So let’s say that Bernie Sanders became president and passed a single-payer health care system of some sort. And let’s say that it did indeed cost $15 trillion over 10 years. Would that be $15 trillion in new money we’d be spending? No, it would be money that we’re already spending on health care, but now it would go through government. If I told you I could cut your health insurance premiums by $1,000 and increase your taxes by $1,000, you wouldn’t have lost $1,000. You’d be in the same place you are now.

By the logic of the scary $18 trillion number, you could take a candidate who has proposed nothing on health care, and say, “So-and-so proposes spending $42 trillion on health care!” It would be accurate, but not particularly informative.

There’s something else to keep in mind: every single-payer system in the world, and there are many of them of varying flavors, is cheaper than the American health care system. Every single one. So whatever you might say about Sanders’ advocacy for a single-payer system, you can’t say it represents some kind of profligate, free-spending idea that would cost us all terrible amounts of money.

Since Sanders hasn’t released a health care plan yet, we can’t make any assessment of the true cost of his plan, because there is no plan. Maybe what he wants to do would cost more than $15 trillion, or maybe it would cost less. But given the experience of the rest of the world, there’s a strong likelihood that over the long run, a single-payer plan would save America money. Again, you may think single-payer is a bad idea for any number of reasons, but “It’ll be too expensive!” is probably the least valid objection you could make.

There are some proposals that involve spending new money that we never would have spent otherwise, like starting a war that ends up costing $2 trillion. But in every case, whether we’re doing something new or doing something we’re already doing but in a new way, the question isn’t what the price tag is, the question is whether we think what we’d get for that money makes spending it worthwhile.

For instance, Sanders wants to spend $1 trillion over 10 years on infrastructure. That’s a lot of money, but it’s significantly less than experts say we need to repair all of our crumbling roads, bridges, water systems, and so on. And infrastructure spending creates immediate jobs and has economic benefits that persist over time, which we’d also have to take into account in deciding whether it’s a good idea. But just saying, “$1 trillion is a lot of money!” doesn’t tell you whether or not we should do it.

The conservatives who are acting appalled at the number the Journal came up with are also the same people who never seem to care what a tax cut costs, because they think cutting taxes is a moral and practical good, in the same way that liberals think providing people with health coverage is a moral and practical good. For instance, Jeb Bush recently proposed a tax cut plan whose 10-year cost could be as high as $3.4 trillion. That’s a lot of money that the government wouldn’t be able to spend on the things it’s doing right now, although the campaign argues that we’d get much of that money back in increased revenues because of the spectacular growth the tax cuts would create. If you remember the claims that George W. Bush’s tax cuts would create stunning growth and prosperity for all, you might be just a bit skeptical of the Jeb campaign’s similar assertions. But in any case, we can’t evaluate the value of Jeb’s plan just by saying that $3.4 trillion is a big number. If you knew that the average family in the middle of the income distribution would get less than $1,000 from Jeb’s plan, while the average family in the top one percent would get a tax cut of over $80,000, then you’d have a better sense of whether it’s a good or bad idea.

As a general matter, when you see a headline with an unimaginably large number, chances are it’s going to confuse you more than it will enlighten you. The question when it comes to government should always be not what we’re spending, but what we’re getting for what we spend.