Jeffrey Sachs: Bernie Sanders easily wins the policy debate

[n2doc]

By Jeffrey D. Sachs May 25 at 7:22 PM
Jeffrey D. Sachs is director of the Earth Institute and a professor at Columbia University.

Mainstream U.S. economists have criticized Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders’s proposals as unworkable, but these economists betray the status quo bias of their economic models and professional experience. It’s been decades since the United States had a progressive economic strategy, and mainstream economists have forgotten what one can deliver. In fact, Sanders’s recipes are supported by overwhelming evidence — notably from countries that already follow the policies he advocates. On health care, growth and income inequality, Sanders wins the policy debate hands down.

On health care, Sanders’s proposal for a single-payer system has been roundly attacked as too expensive. His campaign (for which I briefly served as a foreign policy adviser) is told that his plan will raise taxes and burst the budget. But this attack misses the whole point of his health proposals. While health spending would go up in the Sanders health plan, private insurance payments would disappear, generating huge net savings for the American people.

Countries such as Canada, Germany, Sweden and Britain all follow something like a single-payer approach and pay much less for health care than the United States does. While the United States spent 16.4 percent of gross domestic product on health care in 2013, Canada paid only 10.2 percent; Germany, 11 percent; Sweden, 11 percent; and Britain, 8.5 percent. U.S. overspending is about 5 percent of GDP, or nearly $1 trillion as of 2016, mainly because of the excessive market power of private health insurers and big drug companies. An authoritative study by the U.S. Institute of Medicine confirms this extent of excess costs, finding losses of about 5 percent of GDP in 2009. Critics of Sanders’s health plan have failed to recognize or acknowledge the huge savings and cost reductions that would accompany a single-payer system.

On economic growth, Sanders also easily wins the debate. While President Obama opted for a short-term stimulus that peaked after two years and disappeared by the end of his first term, and Hillary Clinton has proposed a modest infrastructure program over five years, Sanders calls for a much bolder public investment program directed at the skills of young people (through free college tuition) and at modernizing and upgrading America’s infrastructure, with a focus on renewable energy, high-speed rail, safe drinking water and urban public transport. Sanders’s growth strategy would get back to fundamentals: a long-overdue increase in productive investments to underpin good jobs and rising worker productivity.

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/jeffrey-sachs-bernie-sanders-easily-wins-the-policy-debate/2016/05/25/224209a0-21ac-11e6-8690-f14ca9de2972_story.html

[elleng]

1. 'Mainstream U.S. economists have criticized Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders’s

proposals as unworkable, but these economists betray the status quo bias of their economic models and professional experience.'

[Doctor_J]

3. this has been obvious since day one of the campaign. conservatives and and the cult of personality

just refuse to see it

[eridani]

4. Issues are the thing n/t

[hopemountain]

5. bernie has the focus of an eagle -

he always directs the conversation back to the issues - and makes the point while doing so.

[Cooley Hurd]

6. He talks about issues and, more importantly, DETAILS MUCH more than HRC or Drumpf...