Monday, May 7, 2018

The Washington Post Smashes the Bernie Sanders' Jobs For Everyone Guarantee Proposal


How nutty is the Bernie Sanders proposal to guarantee everyone in America a job?

So nutty that the economic columnist for the interventionist supporting Washington Post, Robert J. Samuelson, is attacking the idea.

Samuelson writes:
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) wants the federal government to guarantee a job for every American willing and able to work. The proposal sounds compassionate and enlightened, but in practice, it would almost certainly be a disaster. The fact that it’s taken seriously is evidence that many Democrats, like Republicans before them, embrace loony economic agendas that are more public-relations gestures than sensible policy...
Even when reported unemployment is low — as now, at 3.9 percent — “millions of Americans remain unemployed or underemployed.” They often have poor skills, wrestle with drug or alcohol problems, or are so discouraged that they’ve dropped out of the labor force. The job guarantee’s appeal is obvious...
The trouble is that there is a vast gap between rhetoric and reality. Indeed, some leftish commentators recognize this. Here’s Kevin Drum, a blogger for Mother Jones:
“Even our lefty comrades in social democratic Europe don’t guarantee jobs for everyone. It would cost a fortune; it would massively disrupt the private labor market; it would almost certainly tank productivity; and it’s unlikely in the extreme that the millions of workers in this program could ever be made fully competent at their jobs.”
Samuelson also has some faulty technocratic and Keynesian aggregate demand objections to the proposal. But overall it is good to see the general strong objection to the notion to the paper that serves the rulers in the belly of the national beast.

Anti-interventionists need the help. The masses are all for Bernie's proposal. According to Samuelson,  a recent Civis Analytics poll for the Nation magazine found 52 percent of respondents in favor.

-Robert Wenzel  

4 comments:

  1. The Nation is a hard left publication. Ony 52% of respondants to a poll conducted for a hard left publication agree with Sanders? That's a plus for the free market.

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  2. Didn’t Kevin Kline try something like this in the movie Dave?

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  3. The poll asked:

    “Democrats in congress are proposing a bill which would guarantee a job to every American adult, with the government providing jobs for people who can’t find employment in the private sector. This would be paid for by a 5 percent income tax increase on those making over $200,000 per year. Would you be for or against this policy?”

    So the program was regarded as costless by almost every respondent. Why wouldn't it get 52% approval?

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  4. A broken (analog) watch is right twice a day.

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