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AEIdeas

The New York Times, quoting “left-leaning economists,” offers a pretty tough take-down of the Bernie Sanders economic plan. I almost don’t know where to begin:

The reviews of some of these economists, especially on Mr. Sanders’s health care plans, suggest that Mrs. Clinton could have been too conservative in their debate last week when she said his agenda in total would increase the size of the federal government by 40 percent. That level would surpass any government expansion since the buildup in World War II. The increase could exceed 50 percent, some experts suggest, based on an analysis by a respected health economist that Mr. Sanders’s single­-payer health plan could cost twice what the senator, who represents Vermont, asserts, and on critics’ belief that his economic assumptions are overly optimistic. … By the reckoning of the left­-of-­center economists, none of whom are working for Mrs. Clinton, the proposals would add $2 trillion to $3 trillion a year on average to federal spending; by comparison, total federal spending is projected to be above $4 trillion in the next president’s first year. …

It is not just Mr. Sanders’s assumptions for health savings that critics contest. Jared Bernstein, the former economic adviser to Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. who is now at the liberal Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, examined a paper by the economist advising Mr. Sanders, Gerald Friedman of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, that is circulating on the left. While calling Mr. Friedman’s work a good effort, Mr. Bernstein cited several assumptions as “wishful thinking.” Among them were minimal health-cost inflation, economic growth reaching 5.3 percent and, in that heated­-up economy, no action from the Federal Reserve to apply brakes. … On his campaign website, Mr. Sanders proposes more than $18 trillion in new spending over 10 years; he does not account for some ideas he favors, like universal prekindergarten and child care, that could put the total above $20 trillion. About $14 trillion of the total is for health care; the rest is chiefly for infrastructure, free college, Social Security, paid family leave and clean­-energy initiatives. Adding $20 trillion to projected federal spending would mean about a 37 percent increase in spending through the 2026 fiscal year — close to the 40 percent that Mrs. Clinton suggested. But Kenneth E. Thorpe, a prominent health policy economist at Emory University who advised the Clintons in the 1990s, recently concluded that Mr. Sanders’s health plan would cost $27 trillion, not $14 trillion, which would put total spending for all of his initiatives above $30 trillion through 2026. Mr. Thorpe and Sanders aides and allies have been battling online. Their trillion-­dollar disputes involve the amount of savings that would be achieved by reducing red tape and bargaining for lower­-cost brand-­name drugs, and whether states would pay what they currently do toward programs that would cease in a single­-payer system. Mr. Thorpe in recent years helped Gov. Peter Shumlin in Mr. Sanders’s home state of Vermont design a single­-payer plan there. It was unsuccessful. “The problem was that the price tag and the amount of disruption and redistribution was just so enormous,” Mr. Thorpe said of Mr. Shumlin’s efforts, “that he just had to drop it.”

In other words, progressive Dems who mock the big price tag of GOP tax plans need to come to grips with the fantastical elements of Bernie-onomics. So $30 trillion in new taxes to pay for the new spending, yes? Any idea how that would affect US economic growth? Sure seems like it might.

Certainly Trump-onomics is no less untethered than what Sanders is proposing. But maybe like Trump is perhaps doing, Sanders is merely staking out an extreme position for future negotiations with Congress. Then again, this agenda might be his actual endgame. Free stuff is so expensive.