People Love Big Spending Packages. Until They Have to Pay for Them.

In progressive politics, popularity is determined by what people are willing to have other people pay for.

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Here is a very basic fact: People tend to like getting stuff for free. Ask most people, “Do you want a fancy new Mercedes?” and they’ll likely respond, “Yes.” But ask them to pay full price for it and demand drops dramatically.

Hold that thought.

Sen. Bernie Sanders is very upset that the Democrats’ “Build Back Better” package is stalled. “Poll after poll shows overwhelming support for the $3.5 trillion Build Back Better legislation,” Sanders said in a statement, “and the need to lower prescription drug costs, expand Medicare to cover dental, hearing and vision …” and so on.

But as National Review’s Charles Cooke wrote, Sanders’ statement refutes itself. In the next paragraph, the Vermont senator says, “polling also shows that despite President Biden having introduced this proposal five months ago, a majority of Americans have very little knowledge as to what is in this bill.” Sanders adds, “It is hard to ask people to have faith in their government when they have little understanding of what their government is trying to do.”

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  1. Avatar photo
    Ray Salemi

    Sort of like if a party had promised to appeal Obamacare with Obama In office for six years and then didn't do that. Imagine the demagogue that could get elected in that case!

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    Ben Connelly

    Sounds about right. Title and subtitle about sum it up.

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  3. Avatar photo
    Bel

    All true. Maybe someone already said this, there is a corollary on the right. In Republican politics, and conservative infotainment, popularity is determined by what people are willing to have other people sacrifice to balance the budget.

    Hence all the proclamations against “waste, fraud, and abuse” but no serious movement to increase the retirement age, or raise taxes/cut benefits to keep Medicare afloat, or eliminate tax write offs…

    This long standing phenomenon was somewhat muted by Trump, who made no promises regarding spending. But the undercurrent remains and also shows up in Trumpy ideas, like being opposed to legal immigration as well as illegal, with no regard for the economic implications.

    Everyone wants to eat their own proverbial cake and have someone else pay for it, and it’s all polarizing and destructive. Both sides are doomed to disappoint their own partisans, creating ever more angry partisans.

    Just as revealing as the Bernie Bros unwilling to pay for universal healthcare are the Republican Obamacare beneficiaries who hate the program not because it’s big government but because they think their subsidies should be bigger.

    It’s a math and maturity problem as much as it is a political one.

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    Mulecanter

    What Bernie wants is a simple wealth transfer from the rich to the less rich. The human infrastructure rhetoric is just sheep's clothing for this socialist goal. The envy gene is dominant in the progressive community. They spout benevolence to the downtrodden but are driven by the need to punish those with more. Personal responsibility and self-reliance are just cruelty to those less fortunate [re: lower IQ]. Condescension is the progressive's modus operandi.

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    Octávio Lima

    This actually points to the issue that the "new right" and their nationalism are also progressives. Some o their policies, such as protectionism and government support for their preferred policies, also seem popular. But will also have other people paying for these things.

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    Narwhal

    Jonah you claimed, “You could confiscate all of the wealth of the top 1 percent and it wouldn’t come close to covering the bill for, say, the Green New Deal or Medicare for All.”

    As of this past June the top 1% of Americans hold around $41.5 trillion. https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/23/how-much-wealth-top-1percent-of-americans-have.html

    Sen. Sanders claims that the Green New Deal would cost around $16.3 trillion over ten years and that MFA would require an additional $17.5 trillion in additional federal spending on healthcare over ten years. https://berniesanders.com/issues/how-does-bernie-pay-his-major-plans/

    Let’s be generous and grant that Bernie’s numbers are correct. If they are then that is $33.8 trillion over ten years.

    $41.5 -$33.8 = $7.7 trillion of wealth left over for the top 1%.

    So, yes it is theoretically possible that if all the wealth of the top 1% were confiscated it would pay for the Green New Deal and MFA, and wouldn’t need to all be confiscated at once.

    That said, in practice such a massive amount of taxation/confiscation over ten years wouldn’t yield the amount of wealth the top 1% is currently estimated to have for a number of reasons. See: proscriptions of Sulla.

    Then there are the matters of whether those two proposals are partly or fully with merit and whether they are worth the trade-offs associated with the costs which could theoretically be paid entirely by confiscating most of the wealth of the top 1% over ten years.

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    1. The BFJ

      Not even theoretically possible. The total M3 money supply is just under $21t. If the top 1% had it all they would be unable to liquidate the remaining $13t to pay Uncle Sam.

      https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MABMM301USM189S

      I agree with your final 2 paragraphs.

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        Narwhal

        If all of the assets of the top 1% were confiscated then they would include more than M3 and potential buyers of the proscriptied assets wouldn’t be limited to the US. Also, the feds can always print more money. Not a great idea necessarily.

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        1. The BFJ

          Who would buy assets in the US when the federal govt is confiscating wealth wholesale? Potential buyers would disappear devaluing the assets. Printing more money to that degree would devalue the currency significantly, as you allude. Plus would the govt give me money to the 1% to pay the govt back? That shell game would be pointless even if they helicoptered the money to third party purchasers.

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            Narwhal

            The assets of the top 1% include more than M3. And the feds can create create a larger pool of M3. Again, doing so isn’t always the best idea and really isn’t a good idea in an unconstrained way with no concern for the consequences of doing so.

            The US doesn’t exist in a vacuum. I don’t think I need to list examples of foreign entities and individuals buying US assets, but if you’d like I can. Also, the assets of the top 1% of Americans don’t all exist in the US.

            So, in theory (on a napkin) the accumulated wealth of the top 1% could pay for MFA and the Green New Deal and it wouldn’t need to all be confiscated/proscribed/taxed all at once. However, in practice it wouldn’t work how some think it might and there are historical examples to prove that it wouldn’t.

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    Ed P

    You’re telling as little of the story as Sanders is, Mr Goldberg.

    How do Sanders voters feel about paying about the same for healthcare, but paying the government instead of a private provider, and having the very wealthy subsidize the very poor? Because that is the actual proposal Sanders is making.

    And as a very wealthy person, ai can say personally I far prefer that to a system that bankrupts poor people for getting treatment for their illnesses

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      Kmregan7

      I know a lot of Sanders voters. They feel that paying a private provider, one who profits more if health care claims are denied, or so confusing re: payments/coverage that people give up, is both immoral - and inefficient. They'd rather pay slightly higher taxes, with the very wealthy paying the most, and know that all people will get healthcare that is needed. With the added benefits that it might increase things like small businesses (because people are free to take that risk, knowing they won't lose health insurance for themselves or their family), and will definitely increase a society's health in general. They don't like seeing go-fund-mes or lemonade stands set up by kids with cancer who should be focused on actually beating cancer and not whether they might die because their private, for-profit insurance company doesn't cover the best treatment they need, etc.

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    AnnaA

    You could take exactly the same arguments and turn them around against Republican spending/corporate welfare/tax cuts, all the way to the very last sentence about extreme demagogues promising to deliver what the corrupt establishment cannot, except the blame would be on the "sinister and corrupt" forces of the deep state/immigrants/lazy welfare recipients or worse.

    That does not make the Democrats right, that only shows that the less people understand about government revenue and spending, the worse the demagoguery and the outcomes. The average Republican voter is not any more versed in the budgetary details than the average Democrat voter, and there is good evidence that both sides often support policies that are to their own detriment.

    My worry is that if everyone operates under the assumption that all government is inept, and all government spending is by definition wasteful, that removes, de facto, any responsibility from elected officials to actually govern and instead turns the job to full-time pandering to their base and trolling the opposition. In other words, a self-fulfilling prophecy.

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    Bill Nelson

    “ People tend to like getting stuff for free.”
    Not I. When you are given “free”
    things, you become dependent upon them, and that dependency has a cost. And that cost is individual liberty. And when the government is the provider of the free, then the government is inserted into your life. And the government does not understand your problems and cannot solve your problems.

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      Johntadian

      And that’s why you read the Dispatch. You do know you’re not the person this question is posed to, don’t you.

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        Bill Nelson

        The Dispatch cannot cancel me! I have rights! I’ll sue!

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    Brian Ruff

    So, thanks again for another excellent Wednesday column - one that scratched an itch bothering me this week. I read this immediately after reading the Matt Labash piece "Our Anger Problem is Making Me Angry" recommended by the Morning Dispatch (https://mattlabash.substack.com/p/our-anger-problem-is-making-me-angry). I appreciated both as a kind of package, as they re-grounded me after a nasty Twitter exchange with someone insisting that Joe Manchin is standing in the way of what WV wants - and per this person, they REALLY want the full $3.5T BBB legislation.

    My Twitter exchange was prompted by various blue checks sharing the Washington Post's column by Greg Sargent (https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/10/18/manchin-climate-reconciliation-child-allowance/) that begins: "Sen. Joe Manchin III is very worried about the cost of passing President Biden’s agenda. But what about the cost of not passing it?" Sargent then proceeds to explain how Manchin is practicing a form of "arbitrary centrism," or a means of backing into an acceptable dollar amount regardless of what programs need to be reduced. None of this, of course, addresses whether or not the government should be involved in establishing such programs, nor whether or not they're affordable. In my back-and-forth with folks sharing this piece, each attempt at discussion was met with vitriol in my "parroting more GOP lies" and "this program will pay for itself."

    I'm a big boy, and I've been around Twitter long enough to know it isn't exactly conversational Shangri-La. But it's still jarring sometimes to feel one-two punches of anger and misinformation (and irony, considering the accusation of my parroting GOP lies was coupled with parroting Democratic talking points).

    So thanks again, and I'll go share my free Dispatch trial memberships. Take back the internet with polite and fact-based discourse one user at a time, folks. You're doing God's work.

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