{"id":8135,"date":"2026-09-05T08:35:25","date_gmt":"2026-09-05T08:35:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/metrotransitreview.com\/?p=8135"},"modified":"2026-09-05T08:35:25","modified_gmt":"2026-09-05T08:35:25","slug":"the-dsas-socialist-plans-carry-a-212t-price-tag-and-every-one-of-us-will-pay","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/metrotransitreview.com\/?p=8135","title":{"rendered":"The DSA’s socialist plans carry a $212T price tag \u2014 and every one of us will pay"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

It started in New York, but now democratic socialism is on a winning streak around the country.<\/p>\n

Read more NYC broke record-keeping rules with Mamdani\u2019s secret influencer Signal chat, mayor\u2019s top attorney seemingly admits<\/a><\/p>\n

Months after Zohran Mamdani became mayor, candidates backed by the Democratic Socialists of America nearly swept the city\u2019s June Democratic primaries.<\/p>\n

In Florida, DSA member\u00a0Angie Nixon won\u00a0the Democratic Senate nomination over the establishment favorite.<\/p>\n

And it\u2019s not just the DSA\u2019s own candidates: Socialist ideas are being laundered into the mainstream Democratic Party.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In the upper Midwest,\u00a0Abdul El-Sayed\u00a0and\u00a0Peggy Flanagan\u00a0rode Sen. Bernie Sanders\u2019 endorsement to win Democratic Senate primaries, campaigning on Medicare for All and expansive Green New Deal-like policies.<\/p>\n

They insist these sweeping expansions of government shouldn\u2019t be called socialism, but both are key pieces of the agenda socialists are selling to America.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

So I took\u00a0the DSA platform \u2014 dubbed \u201cA Day Without Capitalism,\u201d it\u2019s long on rhetoric and thin on details \u2014 and tallied up the costs.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The bottom line: The DSA\u00a0wants somewhere between $71 trillion and $212 trillion\u00a0in new spending over the next decade.<\/p>\n

At the high end, total government spending could consume as much as 92% of America\u2019s entire economic output.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The DSA\u2019s \u201cno more bills\u201d pitch is clearly enticing to Americans frustrated with high and rising prices.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The socialists claim their plan will do away with rent.<\/p>\n

They\u2019ll make health care free and forgive student loans.<\/p>\n

Their system will provide utilities, college and food at no cost to the consumer.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

However, making something free at the point of use simply shifts the cost somewhere else \u2014 in this case, to taxpayers.<\/p>\n

Even with the government in charge, things still have to be paid for.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Medicare-for-All-style health care needs doctors, nurses, hospitals and medicines; universal health care alone could cost $40 trillion to $70 trillion over a decade.<\/p>\n

A federal jobs guarantee means paying as much as $60 trillion to cover 10 years of wages for millions of Americans, and eliminating rents and mortgages requires trillions more in subsidies.<\/p>\n

Replacing fossil fuels will take massive new infrastructure investments \u2014 and no-cost colleges still need professors.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Washington is currently projected to collect about $70 trillion in federal taxes over the next 10 years.<\/p>\n

To cover the costs of all those additional<\/em> services, the DSA agenda requires roughly doubling federal revenue at the low end and quadrupling it at the high end.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Read more Gatekeeper of Mamdani\u2019s influencer army attacks the rich \u2014 but is actually PR princess whose granny lives in $3M condo<\/a><\/p>\n

Socialists have a reassuring answer: Rich people and corporations will pay.<\/p>\n

But are there enough of them?\u00a0<\/p>\n

Start with the super-rich. The 400 wealthiest Americans were worth a combined $6.6 trillion last year.<\/p>\n

Imagine Washington could confiscate every dollar of that \u2014 liquidate their businesses, sell their homes, strip off their jewelry.<\/p>\n

All that covers less than one year of the low-end cost of the DSA\u2019s platform \u2014 or not quite four months of it at the high end.\u00a0<\/p>\n

What about corporations? Tax every dollar of corporate profits at 100% (assuming the businesses keep operating), and they\u2019ll fund between half and one-fifth of the DSA agenda.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Finally, jack up top income taxes to their revenue-maximizing rate on high-income earners: That covers less than 1% of what the DSA has proposed.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Add it all together \u2014 confiscate the wealth of the richest Americans, seize every dollar of corporate profit and maximize top income-tax rates \u2014 and the DSA is still between $29 trillion and $169 trillion short of covering the costs of its promises.<\/p>\n

Only one tax base is large enough to fill a gap tens of trillions of dollars wide: the middle class.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Large European welfare states don\u2019t fund themselves by soaking only billionaires and corporations; Europe\u2019s tax rates on corporate income and billionaires are often lower than in the United States.<\/p>\n

Instead, they\u2019re funded with broad-based taxes on workers and consumers \u2014 high income taxes, high payroll taxes and high consumption taxes.<\/p>\n

Middle-class Europeans pay tens of thousands of dollars more in taxes than Americans do.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

And even Europe\u2019s largest governments, with annual outlays at the low end of the DSA\u2019s spending estimates, stop well short of the DSA\u2019s anti-market vision.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In France and Finland, people still get bills.<\/p>\n

They pay rent, and they buy groceries and energy.<\/p>\n

They pay for transportation, their health care requires cost-sharing, and income limits and eligibility rules apply to other subsidies.<\/p>\n

\n<\/div>\n

This is the real role of a socialist government: Without prices, bureaucrats ration access through waiting lists, complex criteria, lower quality, lotteries, geographic restrictions or political favoritism.<\/p>\n

Expect to see such rationing in Mamdani\u2019s grocery stores, with\u00a0price discounts comparable to Aldi\u00a0\u2014 and a $70 million price tag.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The DSA promises a world of plenty, paid for by somebody else.<\/p>\n

Simple math says otherwise.<\/p>\n

There aren\u2019t enough resources at the top to pay for socialism \u2014 which is why the bill will eventually come due for the rest of us.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Adam Michel is the director of tax policy studies at the Cato Institute and author of the\u00a0Liberty Taxed\u00a0Substack.<\/em><\/p>\n

Read more Revoking NEA\u2019s charter is a good step toward holding teachers\u2019 unions accountable for failing kids<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Democratic Socialists of America\u2019s platform could cost up to $212 trillion over a decade, forcing massive tax hikes on the middle class.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8134,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8135","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-opinion"],"yoast_head":"\nThe DSA's socialist plans carry a $212T price tag \u2014 and every one of us will pay - Metro Transit Review<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/metrotransitreview.com\/?p=8135\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The DSA's socialist plans carry a $212T price tag \u2014 and every one of us will pay - 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