What would the Green New Deal Cost? ... If you have to ask, then you can't afford it !

My September October 2019

"four page newsletter" 

ended up being eight pages, 

even after I deleted many 

paragraphs on the cost

estimate of the GND.

  

I wrote:

"Douglas Holtz-Eakin, president of the AAF, a former Congressional Budget Office director, did these cost evaluations for a living. The American Action Forum, a right-leaning think tank says the Green New Deal could cost $51 trillion to $93 trillion in costs (for the government and private sector over a decade). Based on Douglas Holtz-Eakin' history, when he was CBO director, I would increase the AAF estimate to a lifetime cost in the neighborhood of $100 trillion dollars! Democrats don’t provide any believable cost studies of their own."

Here are some cost estimate details

that I had deleted to fit the newsletter 

into eight pages:

2020-2029 

Goals and 

Estimated Costs

-- Low-carbon Electricity Grid 

$5.4 trillion

-- Net Zero Emissions Transportation System 

$1.3 trillion to $2.7 trillion

-- Guaranteed Jobs

$6.8 trillion to $44.6 trillion 

-- Universal Health Care 

$36 trillion

-- Guaranteed Green Housing 

$1.6 trillion to $4.2 trillion

-- Food Security 

$1.5 billion

The GND obviously 

contains many 

expensive policy 

proposals that are 

unrelated to CO2 

emissions.

ASSUMPTIONS  ARE  

TOO  CONSERVATIVE: 

-- The cost estimate assumes

 a low-carbon electricity grid 

is feasible with only 4 hours 

of storage available for 

renewable resources.

24 hours of battery storage, 

at a minimum, make more 

sense to me.

-- The estimate assumes no new 

construction of transmission 

lines.

But the best sites for 

wind turbines and solar panels 

would require significant new 

transmission  lines.

-- States without nuclear moratoriums 

are assumed to use nuclear power 

for 50% of their needed capacity, and

the remaining 50% would be 

wind, solar, hydro, geothermal 

electricity, and battery storage. 

States with nuclear moratoriums 

are assumed to replace fossil fuels 

with wind, solar, and battery storage. 

The GND dreams of enough 

high-speed rail to make 

air travel unnecessary. 

That won't happen.

Guaranteed employment 

assumes an average cost 

per job of $56,000.

It also assumes the U-6 

measure of unemployment 

would be reduced to 1.5%,

not zero.

The universal health care

estimate was based on 

the estimate by the 

Center for Health 

and Economy (H&E) 

of the Medicare for All 

proposal by 2016 

presidential candidate 

Bernie Sanders.