What does the DSA stand for? The NY Times has a primer on that and, not surprisingly, most of it is about all of the free stuff DSA members thing the government should pay for.
Under their platform, child care, pre-K and public higher education amount to a collective good and should be completely free and funded by the government. They also support universal rent control, and want every worker to receive paid family leave.
All of that would be exceedingly expensive. Just the free child care part has been estimated at $140 billion per year. The free pre-K would be $35-$75 billion per year. Free college would be somewhere between $38 and $75 billion per year. Paid family leave between $25 and $50 billion per year. At a minimum that comes to around $225 billion per year. But we're not done spending money yet.
Democratic socialists believe in raising the minimum wage and instituting a 32-hour workweek with no reduction in pay or benefits.
The 32-hour week wouldn't be a cost to the government but it would to every business in the country, which would mean payroll would need to jump by more than 20%. Those costs would of course be passed on through higher prices. But those expenses would be dwarfed by another freebie on the DSA want list.
The D.S.A. wants to create a single, government-run national program providing essential health care for everyone...
Many democratic socialists want to see private insurance entirely eliminated. Others are open to giving people the option to keep their private insurance plans.
In short, single-payer or Medicare for All. How much would single-payer cost? Somewhere between $3.2 and $4.4 trillion per year. Where is all of this money going to come from?
There is no consensus about how much such a system would cost the federal government, nor exactly how it would be funded.
Proponents of democratic socialism say that higher income taxes on wealthy Americans and decreases in military spending would cover the costs.
This is, of course, a lie. Elon Musk is a trillionaire. Seizing all of his wealth wouldn't cover one year of Medicare 4 All. Seizing all the wealth of all the billionaires would, at best, cover a little over 2 1/2 years of M4A. Whose wealth would you seize after that to keep it going?
As for the defense budget, it's just over $1 trillion per year. If it were cut to zero, it would only cover 4 months of Medicare for All. And of course we'd have no military at all. But that's probably fine with the DSA because they also want to empty the jails and zero out the police budgets as well.
The organization wants to “defund the police by rejecting any expansion to police budgets” and calls for “freedom for all incarcerated people.”...
Members believe that improving quality of life and investing in public services would address the root causes of violence.
In short, these are idiots living in a fantasy world where they can seize wealth to pay for programs we can't afford and they can solve crime by eliminating the police and the prisons. It's pretty astounding that people are actually voting for people who've adopted these views. Sooner or later, the bill will come due.
Editor’s Note: New York City is now facing the consequences of Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s socialist takeover.
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