Thread by @ClaireBerlinski

Today we continue with Bernie Sanders. We're on the second half of Part II, in which he continues to advocate some perfectly reasonable, even good ideas--interwoven with nuthatch conspiracy theories and ravening class hatred.

He wants to make it easier to join unions.

"It is not a coincidence that the decline of the American middle class virtually mirrors the rapid decline in union membership."

"There is no question that one of the most significant reasons for the forty-year decline in the middle class is that the rights of workers to join together and bargain ... has been severely undermined."

He has cause and effect partly backward. The decline in unionization is the result of the changing composition of jobs: manufacturing was always an organized sector.

And the phrases "it is not a coincidence that" and "there is no question that" make him sound like a nutty old guy whose been perseverating on old, paper copies of Morning Star.

The decline in union membership is, he writes, attributable to corporate greed: "Half of all employees threaten to close or relocate their business if workers threaten to form a union."

"We must pass legislation that makes it clear that when a majority of workers in a bargaining unit sign valid authorization cards to join a union, they will have a union. Period."

"We will no longer tolerate CEOs who threaten to move plants to China if their workers are in favor of a union."

This might sound appealing to people who thought Trump could do this.

"We have got to substantially increase the number of union jobs in this country."

He doesn't acknowledge that there's a tradeoff involved. (If wages should be higher than market rates, you get more unemployment.)

Here's a relatively recent meta-analysis of what we know about unionization and its economic benefits: tuac.org/wp-content/upl…

Here's a survey of the literature on the relationship between unionization and income inequality: unige.ch/sciences-socie…

It's very hard to sort out the effects. I don't think more unionization would help as much as Bernie believes it will.

He says mothers should be able to spend time with their newborn babies without losing their jobs.

Strongly agree. If we want to have a next generation, we have to have a pro-natal economy. He wants paid family and sick leave and paid vacations.

I think these policies would make Americans slightly less miserable, yes. He acknowledges this would mean raising taxes. I agree with him that the tradeoff is worth it.

But I wonder again why this should be done on the federal level. As he says on the next page, California, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Washington, and New York have already done this.

Next we come to his idea for a "major federal jobs program that puts millions of Americans to work at decent wages."

I'm not averse to the idea that we should spend a lot of money to upgrade our infrastructure.

He brings up Flint, and a litany of other shameful stories. I'm absolutely with him that we should have First World infrastructure.

Whether we need quite as much of it, at that cost, I'm not sure. But I agree on the principle.

I agree that the Rural Electrification Act was a good thing. We should have rural broadband. I think everyone agrees.

The question I have is why all the money we've thrown at this problem so far hasn't made much of a difference?realclearpolicy.com/articles/2019/…

He then gets to climate change, which he proposes to combat with everything *but* nuclear power.

This tells me he's not serious. ucsusa.org/nuclear-power/…

"We have to build millions of units of affordable housing."

"Decent-quality housing should be a right of all Americans."

No. This is something governments are spectacularly bad at doing.

What we need is an economy that's not concentrated on a small handful of urban areas.

I'm not sure how to achieve that. But not like this.

We need high quality child care and pre-K.

Agree, but he's also proposing that the providers of this care must have a raft of expensive credentials and higher education. That's asinine.

We need to expand employee ownership. We need "worker-owned cooperatives."

He proposes government loans, grants, and technical assistance to this effect (as opposed to gulags).

(I note that there's no obstacle at present to forming a worker-owned cooperative in the US.)

He anticipates this: That's why we have to "educate workers" about the benefits of this.

His ideas seem very stale. To be continued.