Price tag of Bernie Sanders’ proposals: $18 Trillion

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I assume the theory goes that if Americans are no longer paying insurance premiums, their pockets will become heavier and they will use that cash to grow the economy. The trouble is as Lief suggests, a lot of people are employed in that side of the healthcare business, to the extent that writing-them off would cause a lot of disruptment to employment especially in areas where the industry is a big employer.

I imagine the tax ememption for employmer-provided healthcare would no longer be needed and thus could be repealed to end some budget woes.

I'm often sceptical of "corporate welfare" attacks - not that I doubt it exists, but I feel it is much more pernicious and pervasive than to be quantified as a large sum and then eliminated. Also it should be considered that "fossil fuel welfare" includes externalities, so the info graphic that flo posted would come with a carbon/fuel tax.

Infrastructure is a good spend, although take a lot of those reports that go INFRASTRUCTURE MUST BE INVESTED NOW OR DOOM with a pinch of salt - consider their authors! I hope such spends would be on grids, Internet and trams rather than roads and (sadly) increasingly less likely high-speed rail boondoggles.

You know what I really would find cool? If sanders or trump or whatever used America's navy to encircle and blockade places like the Cayman Islands until they squeal. Sadly neither would do it - Trump probably uses such schemes unashamedly and Sanders would cite "international law" like a LOSER.

What about the cost of war? Not just in money but in lives.

Has sanders actually said he wants to make cuts to the pentagon? He seems very "business as usual" in terms of foreign affairs...

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Yes. Remember anything the any of the candidates say at this stage is pretty much in the realm of fantasy, it's more just to throw out their own particular favoured policies to drum up support for later lobbying. No candidate's economic plan will be implemented fully - both parties will sort of amalgamate their candidate's best polling policies to form a concrete policy, of which the winner will be cautiously presented and smashed up, distorted and altered by Congress till something vaguely resembling the initial plan is proposed.

In particular, single-payer would have to be passed with some sort of major right-wing concession. Perhaps it would be paid for via a national GST - a national sales tax being one of the right's wet dreams. (Other revenue raising ideas - Financial Transaction Tax, wealth tax, LVT - would be a bigger dream for lefties, but hardly feasible in the presumed congress the next POTUS would be saddled with.)

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I imagine the costs would go down if such preventative procedures as cholesterol checks, cancer screenings, jabs etc. were free, no?