Bernie's bad ideas: 10 things to hate about Sanders' economic policy.

• Author: Welch, Matt

THERE IS MUCH to cheer about the unlikely success of Bernie Sanders in the Democratic presidential primary. Starting with the fact that it has come at the direct expense of a joyless power politician, Hillary Clinton, who has bad policy ideas, worse constitutional instincts, and an above-it-all contempt for personal honesty and accountability. By the admittedly low standards of the 2016 race (and national politics in general), Sanders is decent, likable, and authentic.

Some of Sanders' policies, too, are among the best of those major-party candidates still in the hunt. He is the only one in the field who would repeal federal marijuana laws, junk the PATRIOT Act, and shut down the National Security Agency's domestic spying program. He was the only one to meaningfully come out against the Iraq War in real time (pending the discovery of as-yet-elusive evidence to back up Donald Trump's claims that he too was an early and prescient critic), and he's the most skeptical about both America's global policing and its wasteful military budget. Unlike Trump and Clinton (and waiting-in-the-wings independent Michael Bloomberg), Sanders was against the 2005 Kelo v. New London Supreme Court decision enshrining the practice of private-to-private eminent domain transfers. He has been a forceful if not totally consistent critic of government bailouts and corporate welfare.

In the interregnum between Sanders' convincing victory in the New Hampshire primary and his subsequent shellacking in South Carolina, a number of libertarian-leaning writers mused about whether, given much of the above, there was a libertarian "case" for Bernie Sanders. "With a Republican-controlled Congress--or one remotely close to its current makeup," Andrew Kirell wrote in a widely circulated column at The Daily Beast, "President Sanders would have a tough time getting his most radical economic policies passed, leaving him to fight for the civil liberties causes that matter to liberals and libertarians alike."

This article is not intended to answer the question about the candidate's libertarian bona fides one way or another. Rather, it is to point out, amid the distracting hullabaloo of a historically weird presidential campaign, that Bernie Sanders has at least 10 awful policy ideas that would materially damage the country if enacted.

At press time, the betting markets were not bullish on a Sanders presidency--the odds were just 2 percent according to the betting/polls aggregator PredictWise on March 1. But if Hillary Clinton's legal troubles with her private email server snowball to untenable proportions, it's not hard to imagine Sanders going toe-to-toe with the highly divisive Donald Trump and eking out a victory. In national head-to-head polls, the democratic socialist has topped the populist billionaire 17 out of 24 times through the end of February, including five out of six in 2016 (by an average of 8 percentage points).

Such a win may not usher in the "revolution" that Bernie calls for in every stump speech, but it would mean that a sizable chunk of the electorate was energized not just by the candidate's admirable comportment and sporadic civil libertarianism, but most of all by what has formed the core of his appeal: decidedly redistributivist and centralizing economic ideas. With any kind of coattails, some of those ideas could be translated into legislation on both the federal and local levels. And as the new boss of 4 million employees, a President Sanders would have wide latitude to convert his mandate into concrete regulatory actions, even if Congress is not quite ready to spend an additional $1.4 trillion on health care each year.

The following is not a ranking, and sadly is not definitive.

1. $15 MINIMUM WAGE

   In every campaign speech, Bernie Sanders vows to jack the federal minimum wage up to $17 an hour. This would double the prevailing minimum in about half of the 50 states.

   So the same one-size-fits-all wage floor would apply to booming Columbus, Ohio, and perpetually struggling Los Angeles, despite the screaming disparity in local prices. Columbus (unemployment rate: 4.6 percent) is the fourth most affordable city in the nation, according to the Money Crashers web site, with a median home price of $105,000 and median rent of $825 a month. Los Angeles (unemployment 6.8 percent) is the seventh most expensive city (according to the Expatistan cost of living index), with a median home price of $563,000 and rent of $2,655. California's minimum wage is $10, and the city of Los Angeles last year passed a gradual hike to $15 by 2020; Ohio's minimum wage is $8.25.

   Sanders would be pushing the federal government into territory no state has yet dared to tread. Seattle, which became the first big American city to pass a $15 minimum wage ordinance in 2014, has seen since the beginning of its implementation in April 2015 the worst nine-month period of job losses since the financial crisis. Besides the economic and employment effects, drastic minimum wage hikes also boost the cost of government--in New York, which is considering the nation's first statewide $15 requirement, estimates put the additional cost for workers just at local governments and state-funded nonprofits at $1 billion per year.

   Even Sanders admits that mandating higher wages will drive up prices for Americans ("Look, the truth is, yes, you may end up paying a few cents more for a hamburger at McDonald's," he said during a February town hall forum). But what the candidate consistently fails to grapple with is the argument set forth by Princeton economist Alan B. Krueger--who isn't some ax-grinding libertarian, but rather the former chairman of President Barack Obama's Council of Economic Advisers, and the most influential academic proponent of raising the minimum wage...