Bernie’s plan would do a job on U.S.
This week we learned that America’s favorite Bolshevik, U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, is putting together a plan for Washington to guarantee every American a government job. What could possibly go wrong?
According to a report in The Washington Post, Sanders’ plan is to give a federal gig paying $15 an hour and health-care benefits to every American worker “who wants or needs one.” The Department of Labor reports there are about 14 million adult, working-age Americans who want a full-time job and can’t find one. Since my Vermont comrade has always struggled with math, let’s roll through the numbers:
Fourteen million x 40 hours a week x $15 an hour x 52 weeks a year = “The smoking, scattered rubble of the former Soviet Union.”
I’m kidding: It’s worse. It’s $436.8 billion a year — not counting what it would cost to pay those hardworking, reliable federal employees to run the program. An interesting note about the “guaranteed jobs” program from BusinessInsider.com:
“Sanders’ plan would create 12 districts within the U.S. that would approve jobs plans from municipalities, states and American Indian tribal governments and then pass those plans along to the Labor Department for final approval.”
Did he say “12 districts”? Like in — “The Hunger Games”? Well, I’m grabbing Katniss Everdeen and heading to the Capitol ASAP.
Because, as in “The Hunger Games,” that’s how the socialist “Giveaway Games” work. All the wealth and power pour into the political center and everyone else is left fighting for scraps in District 12. The track record of government-run economies from Vietnam to Venezuela could be turned into their own movie: “The Everybody’s Hungry Games.”
Well, except for the politically connected, of course. Kim Jong Un looks like the “before” photo in a Nutrisystem ad, while millions of his subjects look like extras from “Mockingjay — Part 2.” That’s the “game” Sen. Sanders wants all of us to play.
I would dismiss Sanders’ plan as a flashback from some mushrooms he stumbled over in the 1960s, except that other American lefties are taking it seriously. “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,” The Hill reports.
Liberal economists like Darrick Hamilton of the New School agree. “This is an opportunity for something transformative, beyond the tinkering we’ve been doing for the last 40 years, where all the productivity gains have gone to the elite of society.”
Not to pick on Mr. Hamilton, but does anybody think about what the word “transformative” means when they use it? Stop for a moment and recall all the societies across the arc of human history, from Mesopotamia to modern China. Name one you’d like to “transform” America into. I can’t.
I like the free-market capitalism world. It has already transformed human existence from poverty to luxury. Before capitalism, 99 percent of the planet spent 200,000 years in extreme poverty. In less than 200 years, that number is down to 10 percent — the lowest ever. And it’s only going to go lower, assuming we ignore Bernie and his 12 districts.
In America right now — without any Sanders “job guarantees” or Obama “stimulus plans” — eight states just hit record-low unemployment. In Massachusetts, unemployment is a minuscule 3.6 percent ... and that’s higher than in three other New England states (Vermont, Maine and New Hampshire).
This is the America Sen. Sanders wants to “transform”? And what are the chances his socialist transformation would make things better?
“May the odds be ever in your favor,” but in Bernie’s America, I wouldn’t bet on it.