Bernie Sanders is the quintessential populist candidate, admirable in his consistency and willingness to champion popular ideas. It's hard to argue that his presence in a modern presidential race is a bad thing, given the deep corruption of practically every other available candidate, and the stranglehold of the moneyed interests.
His campaign message is clear, no more billionaire corruption, no more poverty, egalitarianism, equality. It aims squarely in favor of minority groups and against the rich.
He is generally anti-war, voted against the Iraq war, and is against surveillance of U.S. Citizens by the U.S. government.
But he is, truly, and admittedly, a Socialist. Didn't America rail against Socialism? Isn't our country's unrivaled prosperity a direct result of a deeply ingrained sense of individualism, coupled with a complete rejection of Socialist ideals?
Sanders leans toward Nordic Socialism, which is underpinned by a free market capitalism that encourages and defends private property rights. On that the far right can agree. But Nordic Socialism embraces a much larger role for government than the pure free market laissez faire advocates such as the Austrian School will abide.
What's wrong with that?
The following statements are quoted from Bernie Sander's campaign website. I'll raise some questions about these statements, in the hope that the individual can more easily clarify his or her own view on the role of government.
I will assume his statements stem from genuine beliefs - a dangerous assumption for many politicians. But those who know Bernie understand that he's not the average politician, and has a history of defending beliefs that aren't necessarily politically expedient - and that he's been unusually consistent throughout his career for a politician.
From this first statement, we learn much about Bernie Sanders.AS PRESIDENT, SENATOR BERNIE SANDERS WILL REDUCE INCOME AND WEALTH INEQUALITY BY:
- Bernie believes that status quo income and wealth inequality is bad
- He believes something that a President can do will change income and wealth inequality for the better
- He believes it is within the justified power of the President to do those things.
Is the amount of income and wealth inequality in the United States bad?
Occupy Wall Street says yes. The vast majority of libertarians agree.
Staunch defenders of status quo are much more difficult to find now than a decade or two ago. Change wins elections. Tea Parties carry pitchforks. OWS protesters sit-in for awareness of existing problems. Elections are not made on resisting restructure but by promising reform.
Republican and Democrats alike who have been elected to maintain the status quo through massive corporate donations don't often defend the rich publicly anymore, opting to pander to the reformers, then hide when nothing changes or do damage control when exposed. Legislation has moved even further toward lumping disparate code change together so that support by individual politicians for newly itemized corporate advantages in law have become harder to identify. When the bills are ten miles wide, everyone has plausible deniability.
Most now understand that much power is concentrated at the top, as evidenced by unpopularity of 'too big to fail' bailouts, grassroots action against corporate tax avoidance, and wide agreement that 'money in politics' has become a problem.
Honest grassroots political opponents mostly disagree on the solutions.
So what is Bernies solution? We shall see:
It will become no secret to you as you read that Bernie and I disagree in many areas. The first of which is that there is such a thing as a 'fair share' of taxes.1. Demanding that the wealthy and large corporations pay their fair share in taxes.
The root of taxation is the presumption that the government owns wealth, rather than the property owner of it. Taxation flies in the face of property ownership. The Constitution and its founders support a small common government among the states to be paid through excise taxes and tariffs. Even these require a government maintained enforcement, and are therefore prone to the kind of favoritism and corruption that Bernie and I love to hate.
But lets get beyond that. I, who am right about the inherent immorality of taxes, have little hope of seeing even a 1% reduction in the taxes I pay short of cheating somehow. That, my progressive friends, I will not do. However, if taxes paid only for military adventurism and occupation of foreign lands within which we have no national security interests - if taxes paid only for protection of oil for the moneyed classes - would we then be talking about a 'fair share' of the taxes we pay?
From this we can see that a corporation is only immoral in 'evading' or 'avoiding' taxes to the extent that those taxes pay for moral endeavors. Surely we can't decide what individuals and corporations are sharing fairly, and which ones are abstaining as an act of heroism, based upon whomever happens to head government at the time. I hope I've shown that using government to determine 'fair shares' is hairy territory.
Lets move on to examine a bit more of Mr. Sander's issues.
This cannot be any more true than stating that a prohibition on alcohol will stop alcoholism. Those who can afford to move massive corporations across the earth will find a way to avoid taxes - you can bet on it. But if we can assume that a Sanders presidency can perfectly enforce a prohibition on moving profits and jobs overseas, can we endorse it? Only if we believe Americans, in their unprecedented wealth and standard of living - deserve jobs more than the poor in other countries who will receive them. How egalitarian is this plan, in practice, really?As president, Sen. Sanders will stop corporations from shifting their profits and jobs overseas to avoid paying U.S. income taxes.
In addition to the problematic assumption that prohibition works, and the problematic assumption that it is a problem that jobs are being created in poor countries around the world, is the problematic assumption that it is the best way to solve the problem. If you want to stop corporations from avoiding taxes by shipping jobs over seas, you might consider not taxing them anymore. And that is why Ron Paul uses phrases like 'we have to change our minds about what the role of government ought to be.' We certainly couldn't stop taxing and still afford to explode expensive bombs all over the world, and drive tanks everywhere.
The easiest way to see the problem with this sort of plan, is that no one can tell you why it shouldn't be the top 0.301 percent of Americans who inherit more than $3.497 million.He will create a progressive estate tax on the top 0.3 percent of Americans who inherit more than $3.5 million.
Beyond that, it assumes that when someone dies, it's perfectly alright for whomever happens to be in office to choose whatever random number to determine what wealth will be confiscated and where it will go. Allied forces would not need to stretch to demonize such a plan if it occurred in Nazi Germany. They would only need to describe it - and then tell us who was doing it. As much as I like Bernie Sanders, I don't want his people deciding arbitrary definitions of 'taxable' any more than I do any other.
But lets say we can get past that. Lets say Neil Tyson has the perfect number to define when to tax someone, and we all agree it makes the #1 society. What is the #1 society? Do we have to agree? Some might say that's less than freedom. What if we did the same thing with free speech? Everyone must agree whom decides when speech becomes not ok and manuscripts must be confiscated.... the principle does not make sense, it's unfair.
But lets drop even that annoying argument for a moment. Why are people who make a lot of money not entitled to it?
Common reason cited, perhaps: 'No one needs that much money, and taxing by a neutral third party ensures no one is tempted to cheat the charity needed to fund the common stuff.'
I can believe that a Sanders presidency might spend money a little better than the ones we've seen, on reasonable stuff like people getting well from sickness and out of poverty. I love that idea. But what about the administration after that? Good government policy ought to limit what the government itself can mess up. How well can government get water to hurricane victims so far? Another debacle like that is just one election away. The more power the government has to take money, and the more of it - the more damage it can do with that money. That's the problem we're in now!
I like this, because to hell with 'em! But we are looking at endorsing a policy of letting government decide who it's okay to take money from, based on who is most hated at the time. I think we need to look a bit further down the road than that.He will also enact a tax on Wall Street speculators who caused millions of Americans to lose their jobs, homes, and life savings.
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Maybe I'll take on a few more of Sanders' issues, there are a bunch I agree with too.
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I am genuinely curious of the Sanders presidency. He's an alluring candidate. He's a normal kind of guy with beliefs, instead of talking out of the side of his mouth. But moreso, his supporters are like me. I obviously disagree so much with how to do it, but really we're on the same side. This country is out of control, and it's time to do something about it.
So lets get together and do it. Help people instead of harm them. But remember it's not gonna be government that does it, no matter how we write the laws, it's going to be people.
Anybody like Sanders? Disagree with me? Something to add? Welcome here as far as I'm concerned - lets start a revolution or something.
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Originally Posted by Anti Federalist
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