Vermont senator and Democratic Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders has been stirring up a lot of excitement with his plans for reforms that would redistribute wealth in order to alleviate the burden on the poorest Americans. While many find his ideas refreshing and invigorating, others doubt that they could be implemented without enormous cost to the economy. Indeed, a Wall Street Journal article recently charged that within a decade, his policies would increase American debt by 18 trillion dollars. This contention has given many Americans pause, even those who enthusiastically support Sanders’ idealistic vision. However, popular economist Robert Reich drew up a response to the article that paints a very different picture.
Reich criticized the Wall Street Journal for irresponsible reporting because the article focuses only on the initial costs and not on all of the savings that would stem from the initial investment. He stated that the biggest expenditure indicated in the article is for sweeping reform that would put every person in America on Medicare. Over a ten-year period, this would save as much as 42 trillion dollars as Americans stop pouring all of their money into expensive insurance plans in which huge amounts of cash go toward administrative costs, advertising and other overhead that is not directly related to medical care.
He noted that the savings that would result from implementing Medicare across the board would more than make up for the costs of the other programs. Moreover, many of these programs would benefit not only the very poor but also the middle class. For instance, parents could send their kids to public colleges for free, thus saving thousands of dollars on tuition. What’s more, when Americans have more money to spare, they tend to spend it, so these policies would help give the economy a boost.
Reich, who is the author of the upcoming book “Saving Capitalism,” contends that the real reason for the article is that the one percent of Americans who are fabulously wealthy are terrified that the other 99 percent will begin to fight back. He believes that this country has been under the grip of greedy millionaires and billionaires for far too long and that it is time for ordinary Americans to step up and reclaim their country from this rampant inequity.
While the vast disparity between the richest Americans and the general population is disturbing, he believes that it can be turned around and that Sanders may just be the one to do it. Even if he does not receive the Democratic nomination next year, Sanders is in the process of galvanizing the public and kicking off a revolution. Poor and middle-class Americans are ready to reclaim their right to the American dream, and economic policies like Sanders’ are just the investment in the future that is needed to ensure that everyday Americans of future generations will be able to live prosperous lives.