Clinton era economists are wrong. Sanders policies are sensible and feasible.
I’ve been having fun mocking economist Paul Krugman’s epic meltdowns over Bernie Sanders. Krugman has decided that his past positions notwithstanding, his #1 goal in life is to now trash Bernie and his supporters at every opportunity.
Witness this glorious post:
Krugman demands that Bernie immediately bow down to Hillary because any more campaigning would be “at the expense of any future credibility and goodwill.” Neither of which, by the way, Krugman has ever had the decency of according Bernie.
However, I wasn’t quite prepared for what can only be charitably described as a vitriol-filled diatribe by Prof. Brad DeLong . He was a key member of the original Clinton economic team that gave us that gem called NAFTA and now teaches over at UC Berkley in California.
The professor wrote the post in response to a blogger who, after the April 27th Primaries, was concerned that Team Clinton would continue talking about Berniebros till September. Brad said that actually, the word was to lay off the Berniebros. After which he unleashed this piece of utter deliciousness.
Read below and judge for yourself:
After reading the post in question I was so concerned for my safety I was beginning to think about seeking asylum in Sweden come November. Would I “be named later”? For the crime of agreeing that we needed to move to a single payer healthcare program, like Canada?
Che is #bae
Lets begin with the red-baiting which is vicious and almost hysterical in its attempts. He seems stuck on his Cold War tropes that have been so effective at shutting down debate in the past. Unfortunately, it seems the good Professor didn’t get the memo. Its 2016, the kids have no clue what Comintern is(is that like, an intern?), Che is a cultural figurehead and 50% of millennials now reject capitalism. So, there’s that.
“What their policies are likely to do”
So now Brad — who has admitted being surprised at the deleterious consequences of the financial deregulation he advocated for in the 90s — would like to convince us of the error of our ways. He’s flaming angry at the Sanders campaign and supporters for advocating bad policy decisions. He never mentions which policies are these which are being misrepresented, so I can only guess by looking at the Sanders platform.
The supposedly bad policy decisions include moving to a single payer healthcare system similar to Canada. This is a well-studied policy that has broad support among the general population and has the advantage of having been tried and tested.
Was it free tuition at public colleges, which was common in New York and California a few decades back? Was it a $15 min wage which has passed in New York, California, Seattle and Portland? Was it the $1 trillion infrastructure bill? I searched high and low for anything that was “bad” or even hinted at being radical and came up short. Nada. Zilch.
I took to the twitters, to ponder how advocating for any of these policies was basically placing us on the road to communism.
Free college conundrum
Surprisingly, Prof. DeLong replied to my long litany of twitter inquiries.
I pointed out that UC Berkeley, a public college in California where he teaches, was tuition-free right up to the 1970s and even after then remained largely affordable. Why not now? How was going back to what worked very well back then tantamount to “Comintern-style lying”?
He then admitted that Gov. Pat Brown’s and Clark Kerr’s vision was basically the right one. That vision was to enable anyone from California who wanted to get higher education, to do so for essentially no cost.
But, the good professor reminded me that the problem was funding. There just ain’t no money in the US of A.
And yet.
The United States GDP per capita was roughly $21,000 in 1966 (2009 chained dollars). In 2016, it hit $51,000. We’re producing close to two and half times more output per person than 50 years ago. California could then provide tuition-free public college education. How can we not have the money now to do the same?
So, instead of tuition free college, Brad advises us to aim for income-contingent grants.
I was excited that at least he was arguing for some form of means tested grants. Until I read his post explaining the concept and sighed. The name is a misnomer. Its not a “grant”, its a loan that will be repaid. Its basically a promise to forgo a fraction of your future earnings for an undefined period of time. Which, even the author of the post admits, sounds perilously close to the definition of indentured servanthood.
So here we have evidence of that liberal wonk penchant for complex, usually means-tested policies when a simple workable universal one would do. Why, exactly , was free tuition good policy in 1966, but in 2016 we have to go for “income-contingent grants” ? Reminds me of Hillary’s “debt-free” college plan, which is so complicated no one quite knows what it will do.
Now mind you, Bernie is not even talking about what, say Denmark does, where you get a stipend. Yeah, they pay you $900 a month, for up to 6 years to go to college. We are simply aiming for the low bar of setting the clock back 50 years.
Overpromising
Prof. Brad then charged in his post and on Twitter, that the Sanders people are overpromising which leads to bad policy and bad politics.
This is the new liberalism: Nothing can be done so don’t even try. In fact trying is bad.
At this point, its quite obvious that he is firmly in the camp of those have deliberately refused to hear what Bernie campaign’s theory of political change is. The “political revolution” loosely defined would entail engaging the mass of the population in not only filling Congress with enough votes to pass the legislation required but also in sustaining grassroots organizations/social movements. We can’t really get anything done until then and I’ve yet to meet a Bernie supporter who thinks single payer will arrive next year. This is a long-term political struggle and its the Brad DeLong’s of this world who seem to not understand this crucial point.
Pragmatic Hillary
Furthermore, Prof. De Long wants us to believe that the Republicans — who can’t string together a sentence on Hillary without including “Benghazi” will be so inclined to compromise on Hillary’s “pragmatic” legislation. The same Republicans who have voted to repeal the ACA as an every day morning ritual. As Carl Beijer points out, so who, exactly is overpromising?
Grown up conversations
But never mind Berniebros, November will be the time to have a “serious conversation”. We won’t be “ gleefully and comprehensively trashed”, thank goodness, I was reassured. We can almost imagine what this “conversation” will look like. Democrats will opine on how, as they’ve been telling us along, nothing can be achieved, so thanks for the votes, go home and the grown ups will take over. We’ll get another grand bargain or two and Paul Krugman will breathlessly tell us how its much better than the certain disaster Trump would have wrought.
Conclusion
The truth is the Prof. Brad Delong and Paul Krugmans of this world are misguided in their attacks on Sanders’ modest proposals. They are not unrealistic: they have been implemented in different countries and proven to work. Unlike say, “income contingent grants”, of which Brad is a huge fan. In fact, the Sanders platform is mostly made up of boilerplate “liberal” policies. Which is precisely why Sanders and his supporters will not go quietly into that night.
