The economic impact of the Bernie Sanders agenda
If fully implemented, but otherwise implemented wisely, Senator Sanders’ agenda for the economy would reduce real GDP and consumption by 24 percent. Real wages would fall more than 50 percent after taxes. Employment and hours would fall 16 percent combined. There would be less total healthcare, less childcare, less energy available to households, and less value added in the university sector. Although it is more difficult to forecast, the stock market would likely fall more than 50 percent…
Even if without any productivity loss or increased utilization in healthcare, college, and daycare, this means that the Sanders agenda would be expanding the Federal budget by 13.25 percent of baseline consumption. Including 19 percent additional utilization of these “free” goods and services, tax rates on labor income must increase by 23.5 percentage points (it would be more but the Sanders agenda does expand the tax base by eliminating the exclusion for employer-sponsored health insurance). GDP falls by 16 percent (this does not yet consider productivity losses — that comes below).
You can quibble with some of the numbers on productivity decline, but that such estimates are even possible from fairly standard parameters should give a number of you some pause. Here is my earlier post on the economic policy ideas of Bernie Sanders.