This is essentially what Finland is going to try and I think it's a great experiment as this is where the world economy is heading in the very near future.

This is absolutely true also. I would assume the majority of people making this argument have never had to directly hire and oversee these low level employees.

This is absolutely correct and it's why the GOP establishment can't claim to be conservative in any meaningful sense (lol you have conserved nothing you corporate whores). Republicans don't represent the interests of their voters, which is one big reason Trump is popular - and I think it presages a major realignment of political parties (which the country is due for anyway).

What has he actually promised? How much would it cost? How much are we currently spending on "defense "?

I don't know where I stand on this. I tend to think no minimum wage would be better than a higher one. I don't know how the country could sustain a $15 minimum wage. There are a ton of employees in the 15-25/hour range that would rightfully be outraged if people at McDonald's started making similar money to them. How is this fair to them? Especially since most of them have significant college loan debt that they were told would be a golden egg.

Raising the minimum wage does piss those people off, and it offers them greater negotiating strength to ask for a higher salary. Rising tides, boats.

I'm skeptical about this. It might eventually happen but it would take a while and still doesn't seem fair to me. Also, a lot of those employers don't have the same margins as Wal-Mart and McDonald's and can't necessarily afford the proportional pay bump.

Seriously, the Political Class in America always talks about this problem like offering more social services is lunacy, because the ideas of "raising taxes on the wealthiest among us" and "cutting military spending, even on wasteful projects" are completely verboten to them.

Let's be real. The minimum wage isn't going to be $15 unless it's slowly phased in over a decade. But, if you want $10-11, and the other side of the table wants to keep it at $7, you don't start the negotiations at $11/hr.

Military and the like is essentially 20% of the budget and much more depending on how you define the discretionary budget.

Good point

He's promised a ton of ****. He's promised about 18T in spending over 10 years. Defense spending, depending on how you count it, varies from 400B-1T per year.

The 18T number comes from an economist. Bernie himself has not come out with a price tag for his plans.

So much this. For example, Congress bought the Army some Abrams Tanks THAT THE ARMY DID NOT EVEN WANT multiple times over the last few years.

I do agree with Thayer's larger point that the largest driver of income inequality (way more significant than our government's policies in the last 50 years) is the increasing automation of manufacturing and resource harvesting. As labor becomes less needed in a manufacturing process, the owners of the factory and the capital are able to cut costs and increase their profits without that money flowing to another person. My personal belief is that it is for the betterment of society for Government to correct this distribution of wealth in some way because increased inequality is harmful for everybody in society, even those that nominally benefit from having more wealth.

And a huge chunk of that is Medicare for all. Replacing your health care premiums with taxes makes it hardly a mystery on how to fund it.

Well that 18T number certainly seems dubious at best, but even if it's correct, it's not his promises that I care about as much as his overall philosophy on income inequality and the general trust that he has earned from me through seeming like an actual caring and compassionate guy.

And it's not like presidents can do whatever they want. They're basically just figureheads who can try to influence things as much as they can.

He's not perfect, but he is better than any other candidate to me.

It's not that dubious. Replacing the health insurance industry with Medicare is a huge change in what the government does, but it is not hard to figure out how to pay for it since we already are, approximately.

Then how is Bernie planning to fund it wookie?

Neither side is for "raising taxes on the wealthiest among us" and "cutting military spending". Seriously. It's all just a pandering game that keeps the elites' in power. A higher progressive income tax harms earners and producers the most, not the rich, and it actually further increases the elites power. You may think the causes behind the Left's actions are more noble, but they are doing nothing about economic disparity other than bringing middle and lower upper class down and increasing federal power. Their position on military spending is also sadly the same as Republicans.

The current political system is just a racket that protects the elite and connected.

Good to know. BERNIE.

He hasn't come out with specifics, but there are a lot of obvious options.

Yeah i mean all these people who blast about how unjust it is that wages have not grown fast enough / have not kept up with inflation / whatever the argument is - well when the supply of labor for low skilled jobs outpaces the demand of labor, what do you expect to happen?

as always the answer imo is education. it is as much of a silver bullet as you can get.

increase TFP enough and it is for real a possibility in the not so distant future that society becomes this utopia where very few people have to work but yet have all their basic needs met.

Let me first be clear that I'm all for it. But not sure anyone could've predicted TuT feeling the Bern this election season.

I don't think education is the answer to the wealth distribution issue. Education makes you more competitive within the economy but doesn't do a ton for the economy overall. There are a limited supply of jobs for each education level so if every person achieved one more educational level so to speak, there would be some jobs filled that don't have people to fill them currently, but it wouldn't be a massive boon to the overall economy. Obviously education has other intangible benefits (economically speaking, technological innovation is the main one) and is something to be encouraged, but it doesn't necessarily solve the wealth distribution issue.

You're talking about "education" as in bull**** your way through some essentially meaningless piece of paper that jobs require. Actual education would be a good thing. Not sure how to do it though.