Bernie Sanders Wants the Government to Give Everyone a Job
“they had not yet done a cost estimate for the plan or decided how it would be funded”
Bernie Sanders has a plan to put every American to work – for the United States government. Once again, Sanders thinks big government is the answer to a problem.
Jeff Stein writes at the Washington Post:
Bernie Sanders to announce plan to guarantee every American a job
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) will announce a plan for the federal government to guarantee a job paying $15 an hour and health-care benefits to every American worker “who wants or needs one,” embracing the kind of large-scale government works project that Democrats have shied away from in recent decades.
Sanders’s jobs guarantee would fund hundreds of projects throughout the United States aimed at addressing priorities such as infrastructure, care giving, the environment, education and other goals. Under the job guarantee, every American would be entitled to a job under one of these projects or receive job training to be able to do so, according to an early draft of the proposal.
Reality sets in quickly:
A representative from Sanders’s office said they had not yet done a cost estimate for the plan or decided how it would be funded, saying they were still crafting the proposal.
This passage ignores the fact that businesses can’t compete with the government:
Job guarantee advocates say their plan would drive up wages by significantly increasing competition for workers, ensuring that corporations have to offer more generous salaries and benefits if they want to keep their employees from working for the government. Supporters say it also would reduce racial inequality, because black workers face unemployment at about twice the rates of white workers, as well as gender inequality, because many iterations of the plan call for the expansion of federal child-care work.
Here are a few predictions of what would follow such a program. These workers would eventually insist on unionizing. Then they would strike and protest demanding a government pension which they would get.
The union would also raise money and campaign exclusively for Democrats, the party of bigger government. In turn, Democrats would pander to them in every election.
Emily Zanotti of the Daily Wire reminds us that we’ve seen this movie before:
Weirdly, the plan also includes dividing the country into 12 separate “districts” within the United States, each with a specialized area of industry, that would develop service projects and major infrastructure job plans, which they would then forward to the Department of Labor for approval.
Sanders and his staff, weirdly, did not seem to notice that their draft “guarantee” program was pulled straight from the dystopian “Hunger Games” novels.
I’ve seen this movie before. pic.twitter.com/YaXqew4KkE
— Andrew Kugle (@AndrewJKugle) April 23, 2018
“We’ll create 12 districts, and then dole out . . .”
“Great marketing, chaps.” pic.twitter.com/wd0DhpmLsv— Charles C. W. Cooke (@charlescwcooke) April 23, 2018
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Comments
Bern baby Bern, stuck on stupid.
Isn’t this what Communist countries tried, where everyone had a government sanctioned job, and everyone except the top were miserable?
Bernie, the man who failed for so long, only to get into politics, the government dole, and now has three houses. Including his pay off house. Yet he is advocating a problem to answer a solution as these dolts usually do. And there are idiots who would think this is great.
Let’s only ask Old Bern for 5 Mansions in the highest real estate areas (with armed guards and WALLS naturally) just like Old Bern got given to him.
Evil Old Bern!
Sanders does not seem to understand that there are people who are not suitable for any job. Many people in inner cities are examples of this. They are truly good for nothing.
When you speak of people not suitable for any job, I assume you are referring to Bernie.
At first I thought “Might make a good replacement for welfare,” then I went though what incentives were needed for such a thing and realized I was describing the workhouse system which was rife with abuses. Then I lookat at what Bern was proposing and realized he was just being the same economic illiterate he’s always been.
This is democrat to the bone. Pelosi wants to
raise taxes because the tax eaters outnumber the
taxpayers. Bernie? sounds a lot like”mad cow disease”.
It is scary that they do it openly, suggesting that
they already have the numbers, if they can get them
to vote.
A solution to tax eaters is work for food programs. I grew up in Flint, Mi. Today the city has lost nearly all productive citizens. Those who are left elect dull witted crooked politicians.
Flint has been in the news because Flint residents and their deficient politicians have squandered virtually all of the water system maintenance funds on other things. Water line breaks are weekly occurrences, many of which they cannot find. half of the water they pump into Flint is stolen or simply lost.
They also hire incompetent water plant staff.
Whole city blocks are totally vacant or only have one or two families. Pretty much solely due to the nature of residents, most of Flint is varying degrees of ghetto, and they have managed to use false claims that their problems are a result of racism to con the state into pumping many hundreds of millions of dollars of state taxpayers money to fix their self inflicted problems.
Flint is full of multigenerational welfare parasites.
In any event, they could be productive and earn their food by using picks, sledge hammers, and shovels to turn now deserted streets into road gravel, and then they could raise community food on land recovered from former ghettos.
When you hear about Flint’s so called water crisis, understand that it took Flint residents 60 years of neglect to create their water problems.
The old Soviet Union called, they want their economic policy back
Reminds me of the Soviet era Russian joke about working I go to the factory and pretend to work. And they pretend to pay me.
“everyone who wants one or needs one”. Why bother to work, Uncle Sugar will pay you money to set on your butt and impregnate or get impregnated, free housing, smart phones, cable, food, just don’t get married or show any ambition.
A representative from Sanders’s office said they had not yet done a cost estimate for the plan or decided how it would be funded…
How about selling unicorn farts to power plants to generate electricity?
People with a guaranteed job no matter how they perform will be such great workers…
Yes, just look how great public schools work – administrators and educators(?)!!!!!
Like at the post office. smh
I wonder if Bernie’s plan will provide jobs for the faculty and staff who lost theirs at Burlington College . . .
Let’s see what kind of reception it gets from the democrats if Bernie changes it so that everyone will have a job, whether you want one or not. Whole lot of folks content to sit at the house and do absolutely nothing except vote for a living.
Leftists are economic illiterates.
The best cure for unemployment in a booming economy is to stop all money transfer of wealth to the unemployed. It is amazing what kind of a job a person will do if they are hungry. This is the opposite of what Bernie is proposing where the unemployed will never work if they know they don’t have to. Can you imagine being an employer and having these people who didn’t want to work to begin with now on your staff? Talk about no productivity!
Sorry to give a link to just a video, but the flash of the current unemployment numbers is telling. We are significantly below 4% unemployment. That is, we are in the full-employment range.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TWO6ylVEDmM&feature=youtu.be
Trump said these numbers would turn around “quickly” if he was elected, and while I thought his policies were well worth a try, I honestly did not expect such wonderful results, nor so soon.
This is probably why Burnie wants to do this now. Pretty much everyone who “who wants or needs one” already has a job, so he can virtue signal without having to actually deliver anything substantial.
While Trump has had a very positive impact on the economy and employment, I’m afraid that like all government figures, the unemployment numbers are fraudulent.
With the calculations currently used, it is theoretically possible for one person with a job to be seen as full employment. If they started counting people who don’t have and don’t want jobs as unemployed, the numbers would skyrocket.
If we deported all the illegals, then everyone would have a job. But there are a lot of people who don’t want to work in lieu of getting a check, and they are happy to have the illegals here.
All great societies fail when the masses realize that their numbers are sufficient to vote themselves entitlements.
Valerie: Trump said these numbers would turn around “quickly” if he was elected, and while I thought his policies were well worth a try, I honestly did not expect such wonderful results, nor so soon.
Yeah, the trend really did make a radical change soon after the new president took office — in 2009.
And look what Trump did to LFPR.
Yeah, Obama, did a great job incentivizing people right out of the work force and on the welfare dime.
Trump has stabilized it and kept unemployment down.
https://d3fy651gv2fhd3.cloudfront.net/charts/united-states-labor-force-participation-rate.png?s=unitedstalabforparra&v=201804061230v&d1=20080101&d2=20181231
healthguyfsu: And look what Trump did to LFPR.
Labor force participation has been declining since 2000, partly for structural reasons, partly due to cyclical causes aggravated by the aftermath of the recession. In any case, the claim concerned the unemployment rate, and that has been steadily declining since 2009.
Don’t forget to include NAFTA in your calculations. American jobs outsourced to Mexico so that some Mexicans don’t even have to go to the risk and effort of crossing the border illegally to take American jobs.
Hey Bernie, I got a better idea: Make all those on welfare EARN their free checks.
I don’t see how they can live on $1.67/week. That’s about
what they are worth.
“I’ll take ‘President’ for $400,000, Bernie.”
At least they aren’t hiding what they call themselves:
Democrat(ic) Socialist
Maybe their next iteration will be more clear:
Democrat(ic) Communist
Well what do you do with all the excess people in the country who are not needed to produced the economic goods that we want? Unrestrained capitalism and technology finally do away with the need for old fashioned jobs. (Do you know anyone who has been displaced by technology or by a chinese factory worker?) So if you don’t need the people for work then what do you do with them. Let them starve in the streets? Go on welfare (a type of basic income – see Finland)? Or propose that the government “employ” them? You can argued all you like but dear Bernie has moved beyond the “capitalism is great” and “pull yourself up by your own bootstraps” or “let them be waiters and bartenders” ideology.
“Well what do you do with all the excess people in the country who are not needed to produced the economic goods that we want?”
We call them “customers”
For “them” to be “customers” they have to have…”money”.
Well, sure, but Senator Sanders means well, and isn’t that what really counts?
Giving someone a job is one thing… keeping the job and being productive is another. Keeping a job and being productive means tolerating problems, dealing with interactions and stresses. Compared to sitting around and drawing welfare, just enduring the day a work is … work.
One out of five households in UK have generations of not working.
“they had not yet done a cost estimate for the plan or decided how it would be funded”
I’m not a financial analyst but my guess is it will cost U.S. out the ass and the taxpayers will pay for it as always.
Bernie is an Underpants Gnome:
Phase 1: Federal Government gives everyone a job.
Phase 2: ?
Phase 3: Profit