A couple of posts previously I tried to ballpark the costs of the entire Green New Deal.
I wrote, ” The (rough) annual cost estimates of implementing the Green New Deal to range from $2.65 trillion to $5.88 trillion. Almost all of the variance is due to the differences in estimates for healthcare.”
Today I would like to split out the costs, showing what the annual costs are for the environmental portion vs. the economic part. I’ll do it with the high end estimate of $5.88 trillion.
Medicare for All: $3.2 trillion
Affordable, safe, and adequate housing (solving homelessness): $9.3 billion
Upgrading schools and public housing: $6.8 billion
Economic security (universal basic income to those earning less than $61K/year): $768 billion
Providing resources, training, and high-quality education, including higher education, to all people of the United States: $32.5 billion
Total annual spend on non-environmental aspects of Green New Deal, high range estimates: $4.016 trillion.
68% of the annual cost of the Green New Deal is non-environmental.
The Green New Deal--How To Get There 
> 68% of the annual cost of the Green New Deal is non-environmental
So I think we’re back to “WTF are these people thinking?”. *Why* are they tying these totally disparate issues together? I mean, OK, I’m a SW engineer not a pol, and we’re taught modularity as discipline. It’s tempting to say SW does so much better than pols so we must be right but I guess we have a poor reputation for delivery too. Mainly though when we forget the discipline.
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Yes, it all seems like a ham and ice-cream combination. I support both sides of the equation, but am far more motivated to get moving on the economics. I want to do the green end too, but too many of my countrymen and women are suffering now.
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Mind you, AOC thinks everything is connected to everything else (https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/oct/23/mark-zuckerberg-alexandria-ocasio-cortez-facebook-cambridge-analytica), so there’s no real hope for her GND.
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I’m not sure I would nominate her to carry the banner for the GND. And I say that as someone possibly to the left of her and someone who thinks she can be a real force for good. I just don’t think she has studied the issue sufficiently.
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