I was reading through this and noticed several similarities to ideas proposed by Clinton and Sanders and started to mark it up with additional notes.

However, I would end up being here all day responding to this overwhelming collective of flawed ideas and overwhelming failures. so, let’s make this quick.

• “70 months of job growth” — Unemployment is a misleading stat (used by politicians in general) and does not paint a complete picture. You do not mention that the number of people not working is at its highest point since the Carter Administration. What about the underemployment rate?
• “provide equal pay for equal work” — Didn’t Obama already address this? Why is it still being discussed? Because it is a myth. There are too many factors that go into determining an individual’s salary making it virtually impossible for any two people to have the exact same qualifications. But it’s a good sound bite — with nothing substantive to actually come from it.
• “access to affordable healthcare” — Seriously?? The people who pay for healthcare themselves — like me — have seen their out of pocket costs rise considerably each year since this disaster has been enacted. As a middle class worker, I do not qualify for subsidies because I make too much money but not enough to actually afford my healthcare. Then there is NO example of any country currently with “universal healthcare” that has been successful in maintaining costs controls. They continually look for additional sources of revenue to simply keep a failing system afloat.
• “debt-free college” — Students need to have “skin” in the game in order to make it meaningful. Also, the lack of costs will water down the quality of the education being offered reducing it to the point of being absolutely worthless to the student. Finally, not everyone is college material — that is another one of the liberal fallacies that do not have any connection with reality.
• “expand Social Security” — Social Security is an entitlement within the federal budgeting process. It is already expanded each and every year and it is STILL going bankrupt. Your idea to expand an already failing entity is a textbook example fitting Einstein’s definition of insanity. It will not work and we cannot afford what we already do.

Then we get into the standard liberal talking points of minimum wage, labor unions, and childcare.

Arbitrarily raising the minimum wage across the board to $15 an hour will have a corresponding increase in the costs of living for everyone rendering the increase a moot point. It will simply become the new poverty line — to paraphrase liberal politicians. Then there is another impact no one discusses —What is the worker’s motivation to improve their skills? They have none. They can simply vote for the politician promising to raise their wages to $30 an hour and so on.

Labor unions once served an important purpose — now they work to serve the interests of labor leaders who make exponentially more money than the workers they represent. Compare the salaries of union presidents to the median income of the union members then decide — are they really looking out for you? (You may want to do that before you pay your union dues again.) Then there are numerous federal agencies that are now tasked with the positive things unions once did. They have now become moot and need to be retired.

Childcare is a choice parents make. The concept of “It takes a village” actually exposes children to things parents may not want while they’re children are young. The idea that you can have your cake and eat it too is so prevalent in today’s society that children are suffering because their parents are not interested in actually being parents. As a former teacher, these parents treated their children like trophies and were only interested when they can show them off. Other than that — not so much.

Bottom line — liberalism is a fundamentally flawed philosophy that in no way can succeed much less be sustainable over the long run. People need to remember that before they vote in the primaries — and the general election.