I wrote this a while back and noticed that Jill Stein is still relevant so I figured I’d post this here. I’m sure some of you will have interesting thoughts on it.
One of the best parts is where they suggest government spending programs aimed at “paying you for raising your own children” and “capital intensive programs.” I’ll let you read the reasoning behind the “capital intensive projects.” You’ll either chuckle or drink a glass of bleach.
I remember reading parts of that paper a while ago. The first part is standard New Deal worship, the kind of thinking that’s prevalent right now and that’s killing any possibility of a recovery. It’s unbelievable people holding prestigious titles from prestigious universities, people who by all accounts should be the best and brightest, still hold such views in face of utter failure. As we were taught in General Chemistry laboratory, if it doesn’t work it doesn’t work. Try something different.
I had to read the second part twice because I saw no mention of how to finance a program whose cost, according to the author, would be over 660 billions, “excluding hourly wage”. However, this being a very Keynesian-oriented paper I take it would be financed through a combination of public debt and inflation. Again this begs the question: if didn’t work in the past four-five years, why would it work right now?