Bernie Sanders intrigues me. I’m not going to vote for him. I wouldn’t consider it in a million years. Still, I find him and his candidacy interesting. I also find it incredibly disturbing, particularly in light of his stunning defeat of Hillary Clinton in Tuesday’s New Hampshire primary.
Sanders describes himself as a democratic socialist. That is not the same thing as a true socialist; however, it sheds light on an ominous side of Sanders’s political philosophy, a philosophy that poses a tremendous threat to the overall health and well-being of our nation.
A socialist in the classic sense of the word (and in the oversimplified sense of the word) is someone who calls for state-owned business and industry. That isn’t a part of Sanders’s vision for the United States. Given the at times unholy alliance between industry and government, that would be a hard sell for the U.S. anyway. That doesn’t, however, mean that Sanders’s objectives aren’t dangerous.
It was Winston Churchill who stated “The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings. The inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.” Sanders, who is obviously upset at the unequal sharing of blessings, is hell-bent on making all of us share equally in the miseries of his political platform.
He won’t say it that way. He doesn’t want you to know that’s what will happen. But rest assured, if Bernie Sanders has it his way, everyone – not just the rich that he so often maligns – will suffer.
Sanders does a good job of convincing the non-rich that he is concerned about them. On the surface, it seems as though he really is a champion of the working class. I, however, think there is something more insidious about what I believe is the false concern he so often displays.
For most of Sanders’s life, he’s never really had a job. He finally succeeded at getting himself elected to public office, first to the office of mayor in Burlington, Vermont. After three terms as mayor, he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives and, in 2006, to the U.S. Senate.
Nearly every paycheck Bernie Sanders has collected has come from the government in one way or another.
Sanders has little practical knowledge of what it means to work for a living. So how did he become such a champion of the working class? I don’t believe he is. I think Sanders harbors tremendous jealousy towards those who have been successful. Instead of using business or a career as a steppingstone into political office, Sanders went straight into politics. He never achieved anything outside of politics. And yet throughout his life, he has railed against the rich while extolling the virtues of his brand of socialism.
The America he wants is one where the wealthy and prosperous are punished for what they have achieved. And this, from someone who has achieved so little.
He promises to help the less fortunate, to build upon the Affordable Care Act, to provide free college for students, and raise minimum wage. The rest of his platform follows the standard leftist positions; he supports climate change, police reform, is soft on terror and immigration, and he supports abortion and gay marriage.
Sanders also has a flawed and potentially destructive economic plan that, if he were to somehow win the White House, could potentially ruin the country. Sanders promises to fund his initiatives through taxing the rich, to make them “pay their fair share.” Free college sounds nice. So does free healthcare. If you’ve worked a minimum wage job, you know how nice it would be to make more money.
The thing is, however, that under Sanders’s plan, nobody – not the rich, the middle class, or the poor – will make more money. The Tax Foundation has studied the economic plans of all the major candidates for president and Sanders’s ranks among the worst. If Sanders truly wanted to help American workers, he would propose a plan that left people with more money after taxes. The Tax Foundation has found that Sanders’s proposed plan would shrink the economy and reduce citizens’ paychecks by an average of 10 percent. By contrast, Ted Cruz’s plan would grow the economy by 14 percent. Jeb Bush’s plan would increase the economy and raise wages. The plans of Marco Rubio, Donald Trump, and Ben Carson would all increase everyone’s paychecks. Hillary Clinton’s, however, would decrease after-tax income for all brackets, with those at the top taking the biggest hit.
The take-home message here is that the leftist candidates both propose plans that would take money away from the citizenry, with Sanders’s plan taking the most. Does that sound like a champion of the working class? I take no solace in the fact that those at the top may get hit harder than those at the bottom. I don’t want to get hit at all, and I don’t want anyone else to receive less for their work.
Which brings me back to my fascination with Bernie Sanders. How does a man so out of touch with what this country needs, with a political philosophy that flies in the face of everything America stands for, with an economic plan destined to harm every working person in the United States, still find himself as one of the top candidates for the country’s highest office?
That is a question I cannot answer. In world where things are making less and less sense every day, this makes the least amount of sense of all.
Ralph Benko’s column, “The Bernie Sanders Philosophy: An Equal Share of Misery,” which appeared on Forbes.com, contributed to this story.