Bernie Sanders would be a better president than libertarian, Gary Johnson

Thanks, Pro.Libertarianism marries the best of both worlds: being socially liberal and fiscally conservative. As such Johnson can appeal to a wide range of voters across the aisle, whereas Bernie Sanders' progressive ideology is off-putting to many. Johnson consistently embraces the American value of individual liberty, whereas Bernie Sanders hypocritically dictates where the government has the right to exercise aggression against one's personal freedoms. In this debate, I will be arguing that Gary Johnson's platforms trump Bernie's where it matters most - on the economy (specifically trade; stimulus; taxes; debt and labor). Pro argues that Bernie's platform is better than Gary's insofar as addressing the wage gap, the environment and Social Security. My opponent must prove that these issues in particular are more important to American's general welfare than the ones I will be addressing. I believe that Gary's superior platform on the economy overall refutes Pro's contentions on wages and SS.--- The most stable economy is one where all groups improve. Wealth equality is not the ultimate goal. Wealth has to be created and when there is more wealth created, the poorest among us will tend to be better off. While the richest have increased their share of the national income, the rest of us have gotten richer as well. The income of the other quintiles aside from the top 1% have increased by 49, 37, 36 and 45 percent in the last ~35 years [1]. Our quality of life (including for the poor) has drastically improved over the years, and that is what is most significant - productivity despite wealth inequality. Profit driven capitalism inspires innovation and growth, which provides opportunity and lifts people out of poverty. It is based on voluntary trade, whereas socialism is rooted in hyper-authoritative control of policy, and markets that are dictated by corrupt politicians. Indeed Bernie Sanders acknowledges the cronyism in marrying money and politics, yet questionably advocates giving untrustworthy politicians even more power to rip off the tax payers. Gary Johnson is a capitalist, which is why his policies were so successful while in office. He ran for governor as a fiscal conservative in a blue state, won handily, cut taxes, vetoed hundreds of bills, presided over significant job growth, balanced the state budget and created a substantial reserve fund [2]. Right now the United States is in a substantial amount of debt. To balance the federal budget, Johnson wants to cut federal expenditures, get rid of pork, end federal subsidies, nix government bail outs, scale down social welfare and eliminate wasteful spending. We can assume he will be successful in these endeavors as his experience suggests. While the national debt per capita increases, "it reduces the amount of tax revenue available to spend on other governmental services. Over time this will cause people to experience a lower standard of living" [3]. Corporations will have to raise the prices of goods to accommodate lending margins. People will have to pay more for things, thereby resulting in inflation. Plus the cost of borrowing money (specifically for homes) will increase for Americans [3]. Increased government debt means productivity is stifled; the economy does not grow and people lose jobs [3]. Stagnation ensues. "Perhaps most importantly, as the risk of a country defaulting on its debt service obligation increases, the country loses its social, economic and political power. This in turn makes the national debt level a national security issue" [4].Yet Bernie's economic proposals will likely not improve our debt situation at all. Most recent analysis suggests that his plan would add $21 trillion to our debt [5]. Bernie advocates even more expenditures to our government payroll, i.e. subsidizing "free" college for all -- this despite the fact that increased access to college funds has a direct and proven relationship to increasing college's cost [6]. Bernie wants to apply the same poor logic that raises prices across various industries (like health care, etc.) while the debt piles on. Modest estimates curb Sanders' irresponsible spending at only 18 trillion [7]. But one thing is clear - we cannot afford the massive expense of Bernie's entitlement programs, and his oversimplified (arguably immoral) solution of raising taxes on the rich not only still leaves deficits according to economic fact checkers [8], but could hurt the economy by losing jobs and stifling growth. After all if rich people are accused of hiding their money and moving companies off-shore to avoid paying taxes NOW, why should we believe they will have an incentive to not do the same (or more) of that when taxes are even higher?! Gary Johnson wants to divert public jobs to the private sector. That way tax payers do not have to overpay and people in the private sector are taxed, which actually contributes to the tax pool whereas taxing public employees is redundant and does not alleviate our tax burden. The private sector is more efficient [9, 10, 11] which is one of many reasons Johnson's capitalism is superior to Bernie's socialism. Regarding Social Security, Johnson has said "The SS retirement age needs to be raised. A portion of Social Security ought to be privatized, if not all. And there probably needs to be some means testing. It's a Ponzi scheme that's not sustainable" [12]. In fact Johnson is probably right that SS is an unsustainable Ponzi scheme, which is a valid assertion according to many economists [13, 14]. But here we can see that while Johnson does favor the capitalist principle of privatization, he suggests that he would be okay with privatizing even just 50% of SS while making other changes to the status quo. This means the people who need it most will still benefit from this program (while it exists before it crushes under the weight of the Ponzi scheme), but his new policy will also encourage fiscal responsibility going forward. To combat environmental abuse, Libertarians support private regulatory agencies and prosecuting people who violate other people's property through pollution and otherwise. Bernie's plan is to tax carbon pollution and to get rid of the subsidies already in place for oil and gas companies. These are bad proposals. First, taxing companies for polluting doesn't stop them from polluting at all. It just means the burden of that tax will get shifted to consumers. Second, oil subsidies are actually liberal policy that intends to provide cheap energy and heating to low-income families. In fact this is the exact type of subsidies that Sanders supports [15]. My opponent presents a quote by Gary Johnson but does not post the ENTIRE quote. In full, Johnson says "The important question, however, is whether the government’s efforts to regulate, tax and manipulate the marketplace in order to impact that change are cost-effective — or effective at all. Given the realities of global energy and resource use, there is little evidence that the burden being placed on Americans is making a difference that justifies the cost.” This changes the argument entirely. Johnson correctly points out that most government efforts to improve the environment have failed, or not succeeded in a meaningful way that justifies the expense on a cost-benefit analysis. Here Pro is trying to use Johnson's pragmatism against him, when it is perfectly sensible to not want to waste money on costly endeavors with frivolous returns. Pro must prove Bernie's proposals will be useful in a way that justifies the cost. He must also prove that these proposals are better than Johnson's. Gary notes that the private sector has almost single-handedly led the world of technological innovation. --- In the upcoming rounds, I'll have more character space to expand on trade, stimulus and labor. SOURCES: http://tinyurl.com...