Questions to Bernie Sanders

Questions to Bernie Sanders

I like Charlie Rose's program very much; I watch it and learn from it, nearly every weekday.
On October 26, during an interview with Charlie Rose, Bernie Sanders agitated for tuition-free public universities, for raising minimum wage, etc. How can a moral person disagree with such proposals? But his agitation for social justice via a progressive socialist revolution against the top one percent of American private property owners scared me. It reminded me of Lenin's agitation agains injustice in Russia, and of a Polish revolutionary song "Burzhujow do pracy zagnamy." My father, a Polish communist, also believed that the only way to eliminate social injustice was to destroy capitalism. But he was arrested in Moscow, and sent to a Gulag camp, where he died, two years later, at the age of 36.

My questions to Sanders, if I had a chance of interviewing him, would be different from those asked by Charlie. I want to know what Sanders thinks about proletarian dictatorship, and and how he plans to avoid Gulag-like camps in America.

Ludwik Kowalski, Ph.D,

See "Diary of a Former Communist," at:

http://pages.csam.montclair.edu/~kowalski/life/intro.html and at:

http://pages.csam.montclair.edu/~kowalski/father/introduction.html

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"American Socialism" is a generic brand. It is non-violent. Bernie Sanders would never promote a violent uprising. He is a peaceful man. He is just mad about how many of the wealthy get so many tax loopholes whereby they don't have to pay their fair share in taxes.

 

wouldn't you consider the confiscation of private property a violent act? that's just what the government proposes should you decide not to avail yourself of one of the overpriced health insurance options available to you. you can sit there and say that these political leeches and ivory tower buffoons would never hurt a fly, but they don't have to. there is always someone standing behind them that is willing to do the dirty work, to impose harsh fines and even imprisonment for those who won't toe the party line. you can say that we are too "civilized" to allow the state to toss dissenters into prisons, but it doesn't have to. the state can simply confiscate all of your worldly possessions and toss you out on the street. no prisons to build or maintain that way and the upside for them is that you become a customer for life, a permanent member of the victim class dependent upon their largess for your very existence.

so ol' bernie is just pissed off about the wealthy, the folks who pay the lion's share of the taxes and keep our precious bureaucracy running, using the tax codes to their advantage and not paying their "fair share". how do you think the wealthy feel about the fact that half of our population pays nothing to keep our overblown government running and that they actually receive money from the government for using its services and the infrastructure that the productive members of our society provide? while folks like bernie make their living suckling at the public teat and inflaming the mob with their fancy rhetoric, the wealthy are paying his way along with all of those political animals, bureaucratic know nothings and ivory tower revolutionaries.

 

The Nordic nations do not have gulags. Read up on how the Nordic nations use capitalism, and you will not see the communism you speak of.

Sanders wants capitalism to be used so that the greatest number may prosper, by their work, instead of the current neoliberalism the GOP brought back, beginning with Reagan. He also wants our people to be able to get a higher education, as these nations in Europe do, and he wants to finance that by a tax on wall street transactions. But only in public, or state universities. Clinton says she doesn't want taxes to finance the kids of the rich, going to college. LOL. The rich people send their kids to private universities. like Harvard, Yale, those kinds.

Sanders wants a 15 buck min wage. Great idea, for if you adjusted up the 1968 min wage for just inflation, it would be 12 bucks today. How horrible! To pay people a min wage equal to 1968's. LOL

He wants to shore up and expand social security, by raising the cap, and at some point, a means test. So our millionaires and billionaires who do not need it, as most of America does, will not draw it. Afterall, it is social security insurance, right? Insurance against starvation. If a millionaire loses his fortune, then he has social security there, and can draw it.

He want single payer healthcare, like the rest of the civilized western world. How horrible!!! We will eventually have to go that route anyways, so why not go ahead and start it, and get the insurance profits out of the price of healthcare?

 

[video=youtube_share;zPpDvx_aZ-Y]http://youtu.be/zPpDvx_aZ-Y[/video]

 

LOL, Bernie is a social democrat, he is not advocating for the destruction of capitalism, he is arguing for regulation of capitalism and greater balance in the social stratum, as is done in some European nations. There are ways this can be accomplished, as it was in the US during the Depression and post WW II. The poor guy has no chance but his message, and influence, just might be felt. The problem of course is big money controls much and has incredible influence on both sides of the aisle - the chance of real change is remote.

 

Where are you getting the impression that he wants to abolish private property like communist revolutionary Vladimir Lenin?

He uses countries like Denmark as an example of his platform, which is a country that outranks the US in the free market index and property rights http://www.heritage.org/index/ranking

 

Nordic nations like Sweden that if it were a State in the US it would hardly be above Mississippi in after tax income? Don't you think that hurts economies when you drain it of capital to spend on politicians wet dreams?

 

Where is Andrew McCarthy?

 

Comparing the quality of life in Mississippi to that of Sweden is like comparing a Rembrandt to your child's crayon drawing held on the fridge with a magnet. Sweden's quality of life is so very superior to that of Mississippi........in all ways, unless of course one is extremely, extremely wealthy.

 

Because we concentrate on tax rates. We assume raising the tax rate from 35% to 39.6% will make the rich pay more. But because they are rich they can afford the best tax attorneys, CPA's and the like and manipulate their money so they always end up paying little. Closing loopholes, perhaps limiting deductions or doing away with them completely and taxing all money made as income would go a long way to ensure as you put it, their fair share.

A smart CPA can move money around from income 39.6 to capital gains 20% or from 35% to 15%. So should money earned, whether by wages or by investments be taxed the same?

 

Sweden is a mess right now and if you think having to suck in the government teat because so much is taken then good for you. Buy a bike because you can't afford a vehicle. Live with friends or family because you can't afford a place of your own. Become the top quintile because you make over 55k a year and get taxed at 60%. Still would rank in the bottom 5 if US States.

Do a search of this forum for Swedes that love what is happening there. You might be surprised.

 

The Democrats, led by the vicious old hag, Hillary are going to plant the knife firmly between the shoulder blades of Bernie Sanders and his idealistic and devoted followers. They do not need to take this. Bernie needs to mount a 3rd party run if he is denied the nomination, and run as a Democratic Socialist.

 

People don't prosper when everyone is reduced to the lowest common denominator. Which is the default result of the left's wealth hating.

Which of course will then cause businesses to have to compensate for these wage increases by either raising prices or laying off workers. Now you're right back where you started. What did that accomplish?

Ever notice that it's the people who have never run a business that think they have all the answers to how business should work?

 

The growth of wealth in the top 1% while the the lower classes wealth remains static is reflective of the exploitation of foreign labor. If the government is enacting policies that enable that exploitation, then the government should get its share of it or otherwise close the doors. It is not theft.

 

That they propose Australia to be the 4th most free nation on Earth is absolutely absurd. Just based on that place alone, they have no idea what they're on about. Australia is tied down in so much regulatory red tape that it can't get out of bed in the morning, we have a top marginal tax rate of 46.5%, our sin taxes/sin laws are pretty much the most anti-freedom of the developed world, we are only now implementing medical cannabis, we have some of the most oppressive gun laws in the world, we have house prices which are through the roof due to easy credit RBA policies and a negative gearing system which encourages malinvestment.

Travelling across Europe, I was constantly greeted with interactions I had never seen before: of people smoking while having a coffee without anyone caring, of people buying hard liquor at the supermarket for $10/bottle, of legal cannabis, of concealed carry permitting, etc. At every encounter I could not help but think how these things would be perceived in repressive Australia: as the end of the world.

 

1) Have you ever been to Sweden, or Europe? Or is you professed knowledge of the supposed low living quality there from second hand information?

2) The conditions you describe above are exactly what young families are facing in the US:
- Live with parents because they can't afford a home.
- Drive a cheap beater car because they can't afford a new one, even on a 6 year loan.

Maybe the top 1% would be better off in Mississippi than in Sweden. However, I assure you that the bottom 1% are infinitely better off in almost any European country than in the US.

 

At least they can afford a car.

 

It's not a freedom index, it is a free market index. Also, the marginal tax rates are not the same as effective rates, I assume you know this based on your use of the word. Well, then you should know that the combined marginal rate (state and federal) in the state of California is above 50%

The top marginal rate in the US's federal income tax is 39% and the top rates in California are 13%

 

I am not so concerned with effective taxation as I am with effective spending, as this necessarily is translated into taxation down the track. They just push it off to the next generation. Australia spends 35.3% of GDP on government. 1 in 3 Australians are on Centrelink benefits.

I'm not saying we're really bad on taxes (more the regulatory side of things), but we're certainly not some free market utopia.

 

well of course not, there are no free market utopia's, nobel prize winning economist Milton Friedman described Hong Kong as having the freest market in the world (which also ranks #1 on the 2015 free market index) but even he said that Hong Kong was far from being a free market utopia

As for Australia, as of 2007 they have outranked the US in their overall score on the free market index. Australia also ranks higher than the US in business freedom, monetary freedom, investment freedom, financial freedom, property freedom, and is ranked overall as less corrupt than the US. It is by no means a utopia, but the nations that rank higher than Australia in market freedom are few

 

Europeans could afford beater cars too. However, since public transport is often very good there, they don't HAVE to own a car to hold a job, unlike in the US.

That leads to the irony that, in the US, to even be able to work, you need to be able to drive, for which minimum wage jobs don't really pay enough to afford it. In Atlanta, for example, the average commute is 12.8 miles, or about 25 miles round trip. That means they work about 1.5 hours a day, or 20% of a regular work day, just to be able to get to their minimum wage job. Clearly, a cost that employers are not adequately reimbursing them for.

 

That has more to do with geographical demographics than economics. The distances are greater in the US and no RR ever made money transporting passengers. Freight pays their bills.

 

I wouldn't know how to search this forum for Swedes

The Swedish government says they are doing well, of course
How Sweden created a model economy

International Business Times agrees

Compare that gdppp to Mississippi- $28,944 (2012)

 

RR are owned by governments and subsidized by gasoline taxes, so people can afford not to own cars. Buses and trains run all night long, infrequently at night but they run. That way if one wants to go out at night, one can get a ride home. might have to wait an hour, but better than no option like here in San Diego.