Bernie Sanders just shouts out what the other Democrats think but are afraid to whisper:
“Our economic goals have to be redistributing a significant amount of [wealth] back from the top 1 percent,” Sanders said in a recent interview, even if that redistribution slows the economy overall.
“Unchecked growth – especially when 99 percent of all new income goes to the top 1 percent – is absurd,” he said. “Where we’ve got to move is not growth for the sake of growth, but we’ve got to move to a society that provides a high quality of life for all of our people. In other words, if people have health care as a right, as do the people of every other major country, then there’s less worry about growth. If people have educational opportunity and their kids can go to college and they have child care, then there’s less worry about growth for the sake of growth.”
Sanders’s position inverts decades of orthodoxy among liberal and conservative candidates alike, by prizing redistribution above all else.
But of course if you don't allow for the creation of wealth, you won't have the welath to spready around, will you?
It's interesting that Sanders, who taps into his base's resenment of Wall Street and the wealthy, is getting the biggest and most enthusiastic crowds. And on the Republican side, Donald Trump, who is tapping into his base's resentment of illegal immigration and the failure to deal with it, is No. 1 in the polls. The ugly two-sided coin of populism.
