I just finished reading this article and I felt that it was important to pass on to our “family” I say this because I believe that it is critical that we completely understand what the “other side” has in mind regard the “civil war” or extreme divisiveness that exists in our country.<\/p>\n
ETE
\nMAROVICH NYT file<\/p>\n
Rep.
\nAlexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., at a news conference about the Green New Deal
\nin Washington on Thursday.<\/p>\n
Skeptics
\nof Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez\u2019s promise of a Green New Deal were worried
\nthat the plan would be a Trojan Horse for unrealistic and ruinously expensive
\neconomic proposals that have little to do with stopping climate change. The
\nunveiling of the plan gives them more reason for worry. Ocasio-Cortez\u2019s Green
\nNew Deal appears to take every big spending idea that has emerged on the
\npolitical left in recent years and combine them into one large package deal,
\nwith little notion of how to pay for them all.<\/p>\n
The
\nGreen New Deal as introduced to Congress is in the form of a non-binding
\nresolution laying out a series of goals. The wording of the resolution is
\nambitious, but vague. More concerning are the details of an online FAQ that
\nappeared on Ocasio-Cortez\u2019s website but was later taken down. The FAQ contained
\nimportant details that are not included in the resolution itself. On Twitter,
\nOcasio-Cortez\u2019s chief of staff, Saikat Chakrabarti, referred to the FAQ as a
\n\u201cbad copy,\u201d and promised to release a revised version.<\/p>\n
But
\nthe original FAQ may give insight into the Ocasio-Cortez camp\u2019s true goals. And
\nit shows that although the Green New Deal bills itself primarily as an
\nenvironmental policy and jobs program, the most expensive items are enormous
\nnew entitlements paid for by unlimited deficit spending.<\/p>\n
First,
\nto be fair, it\u2019s important to discuss the good ideas in the plan. The Green New
\nDeal would retrofit all American buildings and factories to be carbon-neutral,
\nelectrify all transportation, and switch the entire electrical grid to
\ncarbon-neutral energy sources. These goals are highly ambitious, but they\u2019re
\ngood targets. Ocasio-Cortez\u2019s plan correctly recognizes that carbon taxes
\nwouldn\u2019t be enough to prompt private companies to do all these things on their
\nown, and that large-scale government-funded infrastructure is required.
\nFurthermore, a focus on scaling up clean energy would push the technology
\nforward. That would help other countries \u2013 where most of the world\u2019s carbon
\nemissions are produced \u2013 to follow in the U.S\u2019s footsteps.<\/p>\n
But
\nthese environmental policies, as sweeping as they would be, wouldn\u2019t be the
\nmost costly items on the list. Among other things, the now-removed FAQ
\nstipulates that every American would be guaranteed the following:<\/p>\n
1.
\n\u201ca job with family-sustaining wages, family and medical leave, vacations, and
\nretirement security\u201d<\/p>\n
2.
\n\u201chigh-quality education, including higher education and trade schools\u201d<\/p>\n
3.
\n\u201chigh-quality health care\u201d<\/p>\n
4.
\n\u201csafe, affordable, adequate housing\u201d<\/p>\n
5.
\n\u201ceconomic security to all who are unable or unwilling to work\u201d<\/p>\n
The
\nplan thus appears to combine a federal job guarantee, free college and
\nsingle-payer health care. Depending on how one interprets the guarantee of
\n\u201ceconomic security\u201d to all those who are \u201cunwilling to work,\u201d it might also
\ninclude a universal basic income \u2013 something that was mentioned in an earlier
\nGreen New Deal proposal. The guarantee of universal affordable housing is, to
\nmy knowledge, new.<\/p>\n
How
\nmuch would these proposals cost? It\u2019s hard to know. Senator Bernie Sanders\u2019
\nMedicare for All proposal was predicted to cost about $3.2 trillion a year.
\nSwitching to renewable energy would conservatively cost more than $400 billion
\nannually. Even though the cost is coming down as technology improves, net-zero
\nemissions retrofits of every building in the country would be expensive \u2013
\noptimistically, perhaps $88,000 for a townhouse, and presumably much more for
\nfree-standing homes. Assuming $100,000 per home, that comes to about $1.4
\ntrillion a year over a decade. Factories, office buildings, stores, etc. would
\ncost much more per building, but there are far fewer of them \u2013 about 5.6
\nmillion. If each one costs $500,000 to retrofit, that\u2019s about $300 billion more
\nper year.<\/p>\n
For
\nuniversal basic income, the cost has been estimated at $3.8 trillion a year. A
\nnarrower program that only covered, say, out of three Americans who are \u201cunable
\nor unwilling\u201d to work, it would cost about $1.3 trillion. By comparison, free
\ncollege would be cheap at about $47 billion a year. Affordable housing for the
\nentire nation could cost a lot, depending on that means, but let\u2019s ignore that
\nfor now.<\/p>\n
So
\nthis quick, rough cost estimate \u2013 which doesn\u2019t include all of the promises
\nlisted in the FAQ \u2013 adds up to about $6.6 trillion a year. That\u2019s more than
\nthree times as much as the federal government collects in tax revenue, and
\nequal to about 34 percent of the U.S.\u2019s entire gross domestic product. And
\nthat\u2019s assuming no cost overruns \u2013 infrastructure projects, especially in the
\nU.S., are subject to cost bloat. Total government spending already accounts for
\nabout 38 percent of the economy, so if no other programs were cut to pay for
\nthe Green New Deal, it could mean that almost three-quarters of the economy
\nwould be spent via the government.<\/p>\n
And
\nall this is assuming that repurposing essentially all of the nation\u2019s economic
\nresources doesn\u2019t cause any loss in economic efficiency. History and the
\nexperiences of other countries suggest that this wouldn\u2019t be the case.<\/p>\n
Most
\ntroubling, the Green New Deal\u2019s FAQ sidesteps the question of how to pay for
\nthe plan. It simply links to two op-eds explaining so-called modern monetary
\ntheory, or MMT, which posits that deficits don\u2019t matter all the much in the
\nabsence of inflation for those countries that issue their own currency.This
\nsuggests that the Green New Deal will be paid for with soaring deficits, which
\ncould be quite dangerous. The plan\u2019s environmental spending proposals would be
\ntemporary, but the new entitlement programs would be permanent. If MMT is
\nwrong, and if ever-expanding deficits cause runaway inflation, the result would
\nbe a devastating collapse of the nation\u2019s economy. Hyperinflation has never
\nhappened in the U.S., but then again, neither has anything like the Green New
\nDeal. A wholesale breakdown of the U.S. economy wouldn\u2019t do much to arrest
\nclimate change, nor would it provide an enviable example to the rest of the
\nworld, upon whose emissions reductions the planet\u2019s future actually depends.<\/p>\n
So
\nalthough a big push for renewable energy is needed, the Green New Deal\u2019s vast
\nprogram for economic egalitarianism could make it unworkable. Let\u2019s hope the
\nFAQ doesn\u2019t represent the final version of the plan, and the sweeping proposals
\nfor economic restructuring \u2013 especially basic income \u2013 can be dropped in favor
\nof a tighter focus on reducing carbon emissions. But if the now-deleted FAQ
\nrepresents Ocasio-Cortez\u2019s true plans, the answer to the question of \u201cDo you
\nsupport the Green New Deal?\u201d will have to be \u201cNo.\u201d<\/p>\n
Noah Smith is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. He was an assistant I just finished reading this article and I felt that it was important to pass on to our “family” I…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[362],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/juniorminingnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1099286"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/juniorminingnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/juniorminingnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/juniorminingnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/21"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/juniorminingnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1099286"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/juniorminingnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1099286\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1099297,"href":"https:\/\/juniorminingnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1099286\/revisions\/1099297"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/juniorminingnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1099286"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/juniorminingnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1099286"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/juniorminingnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1099286"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nprofessor of finance at Stony Brook University, and he blogs at Noahpinion.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"