What Am I Bid? "Both the promised benefits and the enormity of the crisis are up for bid. Voters are promised Medicare for All, student debt forgiveness, free child care, free parental leave, and guaranteed income--for starters.".

• Author: Orient, Jane M.
• Position: POLLING PLACE

THE DEMOCRATS' debates look like an auction--or a poker game: "I'll see you and raise you 10 trillion dollars!"

Both the promised benefits and the enormity of the crisis are up for bid. Voters are promised Medicare for All, student debt forgiveness, free child care, free parental leave, and guaranteed income--for starters. The peril has escalated from global warming to climate change, then to climate crisis or climate emergency, an existential threat to life on the planet.

Details on financing are vague. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D.-Mass.) so far has evaded the question about increasing taxes on the middle class, but a clever Beatles parody song gives the answer: "All Bob's Money, I Will Give to You." Bob is a nerdy-looking guy who lived with his parents and commuted to college--no posh student digs with an Olympic-size swimming pool and a rock-climbing wall. Bob got a job and has paid off his loans. Now he gets to help pay off other people's debts. It's only fair.

The "rich" will pay, and pay again. Aftertax accumulation of wealth will be taxed each year. Like the property tax on your house, it amounts to rent on everything you thought you owned. In fact, "we all" own everyone's wealth, say the Democratic Socialists, since "we" built the roads, paid for police protection, provided public education, etc., which were necessary for your business.

The effects will trickle down. Rich people, unlike the king who is in the counting-house tabulating his riches, will have to take money out of their bank accounts, depleting funds that the bank could loan. They will have to sell stock, depressing the price of stocks that you own--or that your pension plan owns. They will not be able to purchase a yacht or a new car, or throw a lavish party, or vacation at a luxurious resort. Do you build or sell or service yachts or cars, or own a catering business, or do the landscaping at a resort? You just lost customers and likely your job or your business. Will unemployed college graduates be able to take up the slack with their $ 1,000/month free money? Chances are they will not even be able to pay rent, especially after all the expensive retrofitting for energy efficiency.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (D.-Vt.) and the others seem to forget that a trillion is a thousand billion. So, if they sucked all the wealth out of 1,000 billionaires, they only would be one-thirtieth or one-fortieth of the way to the estimated 10-year cost of BernieCare--and as with the goose that laid...