Worth the Investment

Future Investment

The price tag on Biden’s care infrastructure plan is around $3.5 trillion. As E. J. Dionne points out in the Washington Post, that number covers 10 years of spending, a period of time in which the U.S. gross domestic product (GDP), which measures the value of production, is expected to be $288 trillion. So that $3.5 trillion makes up around just 1.2 percent of the economy. It’s a big number, but not a large percentage for an investment in childcare, elder care, education, and energy.

Biden proposes to spend $400 billion over eight years on home and community-based services. The proposal also increases benefits to Medicare benefits including hearing aids, vision care, and dental services. Democratic lawmakers are working on plans both to add benefits to the health program for seniors and to lower its eligibility age from 65 to 60.

The Democrats propose to fund the bill by cutting spending elsewhere and by raising revenue from profitable corporations. As Dr. Gabriel Zucman, an economist at the University of California at Berkeley, told Washington Post reporter Jeff Stein, the wealth of the top 400 people in the U.S. has increased by $1.4 trillion since 2019.