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How will Bernie do with so much national debt?
4 Answers
- EntropyLv 75 years agoFavorite Answer
I presume you are asking how he would pay for the massive entitlement expansion he is calling for.
Sanders is proposing exactly what the left always proposes in these spots: "soak the rich". There's this myth out there that if you just raise taxes on the wealthy you can pay for anything. It just isn't true. The rich have alot of money and alot of income, but taxing it has a couple problems.
1) That money is being used. The rich don't stuff money in their mattresses. They invest it. They use it to create more economic activity that in turn benefits everyone. If you take that capital and redistribute it (after losing a bunch to pay for bureaucracy and fraud) you end up with a smaller economy, hurting the very people you are trying to help.
2) The rich are better positioned to evade taxes. Remember a couple years ago when the new socialist French president proposed a wealth tax? French wealth fled the country. The rich have the resources to legally evade taxes. And they will because they're not stupid. This, combined with #1, is why as you raise tax rates you actually raise LESS money per rate point. But these evasion techniques often have the effect of moving money to a part of the economy where it does less good. Where it is less able to be invested.
3) There aren't that many rich people. The fact is that most of the money governments raise tends to come from the middle class. That's because there's ALOT of us. Sure you raise more money from one rich person than from ten middle class people, but there's ALOT more middle class people. And we tend to be less equipped to hide money in tax shelters.
So this delusion that Sanders can just tax his way out of this by just going after the rich is a delusion. But it's a POPULAR delusion. Because it sounds AWESOME.
- Anonymous5 years ago
Nothing its a sham. Everything he's proposing would add 18 to 20 national debt no counting interest over 10 year's.
- Anonymous5 years ago
His plans for the country will raise the national debt to over 30 trillion and he will have to raise taxes by a huge amount, socialism always leads to failure and his being President will make this country fail.
- 5 years ago
Liberals have no concept of the consequences of runaway debt and inflation.