MAGICAL MATH --- Bernie Sanders Has Started Thinking Like a Republican.

[riversedge]

Only4RM
‏@Only4RM

MAGICAL MATH --- Bernie Sanders Has Started Thinking Like a Republican. http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/02/bernie-has-started-thinking-like-a-republican.html?mid=twitter-share-di … via @intelligencer



Daily Intelligencer

February 18, 2016 2:54 p.m.


Bernie Sanders Has Started Thinking Like a Republican
By Annie Lowrey

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Bernie Sanders Attends Forum On Race And Economic Opportunity In Minneapolis
Bernie Sanders's magical math. Photo: Stephen Maturen/Getty Images

This week, an internecine fight among left-of-center wonk technocrats erupted. If you were not one of the hundreds — perhaps scores — of people riveted, watching it unfold with popcorn in hand, it went down like this.

A while back, an economist named Gerald Friedman put out an analysis of Bernie Sanders’s economic plans, showing a bump in growth to 5.3 percent, a surge in productivity, the average monthly employment growth reaching nearly 300,000 over a ten-year period, and an employment-to-population ratio unseen since the bubble period of the late 1990s. This week, four Democratic big guns — Alan Krueger, Austan Goolsbee, Christina Romer, and Laura D’Andrea Tyson, all former chairs of the Council of Economic Advisers — called those claims fantastical.

This was not because they reran the numbers, to be fair, but because they seem far-fetched. Economists laughed at Jeb Bush for suggesting that he would hit 4 percent growth. Most believe we’ll be around 2 to 2.5 percent for the foreseeable future. As for the employment-to-population ratio surging, well, that seems unlikely given the aging of the population and the huge number of baby-boomer retirements we expect to see in the coming years. The productivity surge? That would be great! But again it seems unlikely. (Though, as others have noted, none of these things are impossible.)

But Krueger, Goolsbee, Romer, and Tyson did not just hit the Sanders campaign for its magic math — or, more precisely, for touting Friedman’s magic math. (Some economists, I should note, have also gone after the numbers coming straight from the Sanders campaign itself. Kenneth Thorpe of Emory University, for instance, has estimated that Bernie’s universal-health-care plan would cost about twice as much as Bernie said it would.) They hit the campaign for squandering Democrats’ wonk cred.............

[beam me up scottie]

1. This Annie Lowery?:

Hillary Clinton Is Still a Revolutionary Candidate, Even If Her Surrogates Keep Screwing Up Her Message

The attacks, taken together, boil down to something ugly. Young people — particularly young women — insufficiently appreciate Hillary and do not understand how radical it would be to have a female president of the United States. Bernie’s supporters are sexist and crazy to think that he would be the truly revolutionary candidate. How dare he paint her as an Establishment politician! She has a better chance of driving the country in a progressive direction than he does! Sexism is once again keeping a woman down! I suppose it is understandable that Clinton’s surrogates would harbor those kinds of sentiments. Younger women really do support Bernie over Clinton — by 20 percentage points, according to one USA Today and Rock the Vote poll. In Iowa, young voters supported Bernie by something like six to one.

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/02/hillary-clinton-versus-her-surrogates.html

[Billsmile]

2. No Politics Involved Here! Such Thoughts Unreasonable! Really???

http://fair.org/home/nyt-rounds-up-left-leaning-economists-for-a-unicorn-hunt/

[Chichiri]

6. Written by a guy whose book depicts Hillary pointing a gun at the reader.

Nope, nothing hysterical about that.

[merrily]

3. LOL! All the DLC/Clintonite economists? All the ones who didn't see the crash of 2008 coming?

Impressive!

[Human101948]

4. My reply to the post quoting the story she plagarized...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1251&pid=1263125

Simple logic and real world examples show that these objectives are very possible...

US Spends More on Health Care Than Other High-Income Nations But Has Lower Life Expectancy, Worse Health

New Report Finds Americans Have Fewer Doctor and Hospital Visits Than People in Other Nations; Outsized Spending Likely a Result of More Technology, Higher Prices For Care and Prescriptions Drugs

New York, N.Y., October 8, 2015— The U.S. spent more per person on health care than 12 other high-income nations in 2013, while seeing the lowest life expectancy and some of the worst health outcomes among this group, according to a Commonwealth Fund report out today. The analysis shows that in the U.S., which spent an average of $9,086 per person annually, life expectancy was 78.8 years. Switzerland, the second-highest-spending country, spent $6,325 per person and had a life expectancy of 82.9 years. Mortality rates for cancer were among the lowest in the U.S., but rates of chronic conditions, obesity, and infant mortality were higher than those abroad.

“Time and again, we see evidence that the amount of money we spend on health care in this country is not gaining us comparable health benefits,” said Commonwealth Fund President David Blumenthal, M.D. “We have to look at the root causes of this disconnect and invest our health care dollars in ways that will allow us to live longer while enjoying better health and greater productivity.”

http://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/press-releases/2015/oct/us-spends-more-on-health-care-than-other-nations

[KingFlorez]

5. Look at me, I'm Saint Bernie

Lousy with reality

[Admiral Loinpresser]

7. I'm shocked that toadies would attack Bernie:

http://cepr.net/blogs/beat-the-press/nyt-invents-left-leaning-economists-to-attack-bernie-sanders