Bernie is so 20th century! His policies would have been great in the sixties

The sixties? When it was possible for a blue collar family to thrive on a single salary? When income inequality was at its lowest point in American history, and union membership was at its highest? When a teenager’s summer job could pay for a year of university? When productivity matched wage increases? When the minimum wage in 2019 dollars was about $20/hr? Is that the time you meant? Wow, yeah, it would be horrible if we could achieve Bernie’s policies to have such a wonderful conomy like that in 2020!

The Federal Jobs Guarantee has as much to do with Ceaușescu’s Romanian policies as it does to Socialist Czechoslovakian (where my wife is from) work policies — namely nothing. Comparing the right to a job if you want one with forced labor is horribly disingenous of you.

The Federal Jobs Guarantee is equivalent to FDR’s Civilian Conservation Corp of the 1930’s, where my grandfather worked as an engineer. He traveled the country doing water conversation projects that are still in use today. Other work from FDR’s “socialist” efforts are little things like the Hoover dam. The infrastructure from the 1930’s is one of the main reasons the US economy took off after the war. That same infrastructure now gets a rating of D+ from the ASCE (2017), and needs $4.59 trillion by 2025 to bring it into a good state of repair. Those could be good paying union construction jobs. The same kind of jobs we do here constantly in Europe, which is why our infrastructure is so much better than the US’.

You still have not grasped the concept of VAT. Businesses don’t pay it. Ever. What needs to be fixed is the corporate tax code. A consumption tax on end users will do nothing to offset automation job losses. It will add insult to injury by making those workers displaced by automation pay 10% more for goods produced by the machines that took their jobs, while the owners of those machines pay nothing more. VAT is not paid by businesses. Got that?