British historian Paul Johnson once noted that those in Mahatma Gandhi’s entourage used to quip that “it costs a lot of money to keep Gandhi in poverty.” It will likewise cost a lot of money to keep all of the young democratic socialists rolling in “free stuff.”
With that in mind, Adam N. Michel of the Cato Institute has provided a useful service by examining a list of the proposals advocated by the socialists who have recently become the voice of the Democratic Party. This includes providing health care, housing, college, energy, family leave and child care at no cost for most Americans. In addition, Mr. Michel explains, the socialists want jobs guaranteed by the government, fossil fuels eliminated and reparations paid to Black Americans.
This can be accomplished, the Democratic Socialists of America platform explains, by taxing the “richest individuals and corporations.”
Yet it appears their economic literacy deficiencies also reflect their mathematical prowess. “Totaling up nine of the largest proposals in the DSA platform would mean new federal spending equivalent to between 18 percent and 53 percent of GDP,” Mr. Michel calculates. He concludes that the total cost of all this “free” stuff “ballparks between $71 trillion and $212 trillion in new spending over the next decade.” Keep in mind that, since the pandemic, the federal government blows through about $7 trillion each fiscal year while running up deficits that now typically reach $2 trillion annually.
Mr. Michel acknowledges that the exercise is “inherently imperfect” and costs can vary wildly. Estimates “likely overstate the cost where programs overlap with each other or existing spending,” he wrote this month “They understate the cost by failing to fully capture behavioral responses, broader economic effects and the comprehensive scope contemplated by the DSA.”
But either way, the DSA agenda would require a massive government intervention in the U.S. economy. Using Mr. Michel’s low-end estimates would entail raising public spending from 40 percent to 57 percent of gross domestic product. Using the high-end projections would require government spending to reach 92 percent of GDP.
“No comparable country on Earth spends anywhere close to that amount,” Mr. Michel notes. “The DSA agenda’s spending could give the government a claim on national output much closer to estimates of state control under Soviet-style communism than to today’s European welfare states.”
The idea that taxing the rich will be sufficient to accomplish all this is balderdash. The 400 wealthiest Americans were worth $6.6 trillion in 2025, according to Forbes. Confiscating the entirety of their assets wouldn’t fund even a year of current federal spending, let alone the blowout the DSA envisions. Even throwing in all corporate profits over the next 10 years would pay for only half of the low-end estimate of the agenda, Mr. Michel reports — never mind how that would crater the economy, making the nation and most of its citizens poorer in the process.
That leaves everybody else — particularly the middle class — holding the bill. It will, after all, take a lot of your money to pay for all that “free” stuff.
