Green New Deal part 2: Cost Debunked

First this is the second part of the Green New Deal of three parts. I cannot do the Green New Deal benefits until I do the benefits without doing a video explaining Keynesian economics, middle out economics, and some historic aspects. Since I'm doing a debate the video will have to wait. So this will be a blog breaking down and debunking the figure of 93 trillion dollars.

First I'm going to quickly say where the figure comes from. The number comes from the American Action Forum, a self-described “center-right policy institute.” The report  says the cost would be 51 trillion to 93 trillion. Republicans have taken the figure of 93 trillion and says it over and over even though the American Action Forum that they shouldn't just take that figure. The figure is kinda extreme and isn't explained very well.

Also many economist have pointed out the fact that the Green New Deal is a set of ambitions which at the moment has no real plan. There is no real way of even giving estimates. They can give ballpark concepts but even then you should take it with a grain of salt. here are what a few experts says about the cost of the GND.

“I’d say that it is *way* too early to even pretend to put cost estimates on the ‘Green New Deal.’ It’s at this point a still-amorphous construct,” said Josh Bivens, director of research at the labor-funded Economic Policy Institute, in an email to FactCheck.org.

Noah Kaufman, a research scholar at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy, agreed. When asked what one can say about how much the Green New Deal would cost, he said, “basically nothing.”

The Green New Deal, he said, is a set of ambitions, not policies, and how much things cost will depend on what the policies are.

“You can’t use policy analysis if you don’t have policy,” said Kaufman, who previously served as President Barack Obama’s deputy associate director of energy and climate change. “It just seems definitely premature and a little misleading to try to claim we know how much.”

Here are the figure the report comes out with

So first on the Low carbon Electricity Grid estimate comes out as 5.4 trillion. Now this is a high estimate as some other estimates have said between 1 and 2 trillion. Now this is trying to add that wind and solar power are becoming cheaper and more efficient but this should also be taken with a grain of salt. While figures change from over 1 trillion to 5.4 trillion dollars.

Now Net Zero Emissions Transportation System says it would cost 1.3 trillion to 2.7 trillion dollars and this unlike the other figure has literally no vision. While the low carbon Electricity Grid has a good idea what it would look like, The transportation system has so many ways of changing that there is no way of actually showing the cost of this system. We know that there would be more electric vehicles and more electric public transportation but no idea to what extent and what city would have public transportation. 

On the federal job guarantee it says it would cause 6.8 to 44.6 trillion. I would like to point out the fact that this number of 44.6 trillion is a exaggerated number. To show you the exaggeration here is  some math. 44.6 trillion divided by 47,000 (average salary) divided by 10 the years according to this report equals 95 million people. There is about 160 million people in our workforce. The Green New Deal is not calling for more of our workforce to be employed by the federal government. It calls for those who are unemployed and need a job you can get one. There is about 6000 people unemployed people right now and about 160 thousand in oil and gas. That's about 166 thousand times 47000 equals about 7.8 trillion. There is no way of actually knowing how many people would get a job actually. Of Course take it with a grain of salt.

They say Universal Healthcare would cost 36 trillion. So if you look at that cost and add it to our government spending according to multiple right wing think tank this would cost our government 57.6 trillion over ten years. While over ten years our current system would cost us 59. 6 trillion. This would save us 2 trillion dollars. Now if you remember that all every other countries single payer systems eventually cost half what we spend. Eventually we would see that our health spending would be close to 30 trillion compared to 59.6 trillion. adding those savings would put the cost down to 13 trillion to 55 trillion. This is the only part of the cost that the estimates can actually be taken and trusted more closely but of course not 100% exact. 

They say the cost of transitioning every building to new green tech and standards would be 1.6 to 4.2 trillion dollars. Of course take it with a grain of salt especially no one knows what these green tech and standards actually are.

They say that food security would cost 1.5 billion dollars. There is no actual definition what food security means. So take it with a grain of salt.

So these numbers adding with the savings of universal healthcare would be 13 to 55 trillion dollars. If you dont exaggerate the cost of jobs guarantee and make it 7.8 trillion like that quick estimate and over estimate everything else the 55 trillion would turn to 18.2 trillion. So 13 to 18.2 trillion of course there should be taken with a grain of salt. All of this should be taken by grain of salt.