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Bernie Sanders is proposing a huge spending increase, without a remotely comparable increase in taxes. Should we care, and if so why? 1/ edition.cnn.com/2020/01/14/pol…
No doubt some Sanders supporters will claim that Modern Monetary Theory says that deficits don't matter. But even aside from the problems with MMT, that's not what it says — it says that deficits matter only if they're inflationary 2/
And while I'm for more deficit spending, spending on this scale — I think we're talking sustained deficits of more than 10% of GDP — *would* be inflationary. But actually that's not what worries me about the Sanders plan, because it won't happen even if he becomes prez 3/
What the huge Sanders numbers really say is that he isn't thinking seriously about the details of policy; he's issuing what look like policy proposals but are actually statements of values and priorities, not meant to add up. And there's a case for doing that! 4/
To be OK with Sanders, however, you have to believe that he would be able to produce feasible policies once in office — that he would find advisers who can do the math and listen to them. 5/
My guess is that he would in fact do this; there's a deep pool of very progressive economists to draw on, and God knows he couldn't be worse than Trump. At the same time, however, it's only fair that he be scrutinized for what he's saying now 6/
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