Bernie Sanders Warns: Capitalism Doesn't Play Fair

 

 

 

It’s Ok to Be Angry About Capitalism (2023)

By Bernie Sanders (with John Nichols)

Crown Books, 293 pages.

★★★★ ½

 

With the election nearly upon us, I’m tempted to do what I’m always tempted do: write in Bernie Sanders for president of the United States. I’d do so again except Sanders reminds us that it’s game, set, match if Donald Trump returns to office. Even if Trump loses there are few reasons to like where the nation is heading. Sanders lays it out in It’s Okay to Angry About Capitalism.

 

This is the part where those weaned on cliches scream that Sanders is a “socialist,” a word they equate with communist. That’s nonsense on par with equating a waffle with a Belgian citizen. Sanders is a democratic socialist, the likes of which we see in Scandinavia and parts of Canada, not Putin’s Russia. Unless you have billions in assets, who’d not want to live in the America Sanders envisions: free health care, rebuilt infrastructure, workers making a living wage, housing rights, and affordable education!

 

Sanders has spoken of such things in the past, but have you heard him? He does not say that everyone should be forced to share a toothbrush. His “revolution" flips the logic of rapacious trickle-down capitalists who argue that the superrich funnel wealth to the lower ranks of society. That didn’t work under Reagan, George W. Bush, or Trump. That’s because an economic system is a we, not a me. Bernie takes aim at the top 1% of the wealthy. In his chapter “Billionaires Should Not Exist,” Sanders advocates a redistribution of obscene wealth. Anyone reading this want to defend the predatory practices of Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, the Koch family, or Mark Zuckerberg? Even Warren Buffett, himself a billionaire, agrees that the American social system is askew. But don’t stereotype; Sanders does not say that Americans should abrogate the right to get ahead–he admits that he has done well–he simply doesn’t think wealth and exploitation should go hand in hand. His is a doctrine of fairness. Why, for example, should the minimum wage be capped, but there is no cap at the top?

 

Sanders doesn’t hate capitalism per se, but he is angry about it. He asserts that health care should be a right, not a condition of golden care for the rich and catch as catch can for the poor. Need I tell you that you don’t even need to be poor to feel the pinch? How many middle-class families with lousy private health care plans are one misfortune away from insolvency? We live in a land in which 29% of Americans have no emergency savings, 100 million workers have no pension assets, and 18% say they rely on winning the lottery to retire! These numbers project to get worse as AI, robots, and outsourcing displace still more workers. 

 

Sanders’ commonsense approach is the reinstitute something that the uber rich abhor: government regulations. He sees no logic in laws that protect investors, but not the working class, nor can he defend unbridled freedom for the management class but not the right of workers to unionize. He calls this sort of system “class warfare” waged by the haves against the have-nots.

 

Those indoctrinated to the worst logic of capitalism too easily buy into nostrums used by the elites to keep unfair structures in place. They raise fears of rising taxes without saying it’s their taxes that’s in question. The T-word is made into an American swear that can only be countered by regulating media moguls. Sanders also asks us to consider what we pay that are de facto taxes: outrageous premiums for a broken health care system, high cable and internet bills, lost wages dues to climate change, high grocery prices, money siphoned into expensive election campaigns, expensive (and wasteful) decision-makers who don’t listen to workers who know better, output lost from illicit drug use, etc. In other words, American capitalism becomes a “race to the bottom,” not one that empowers or enriches ordinary Americans.

 

Can it be fixed? Not without taking down the “oligarchs” that hold all the power. Sanders has lots of numbers in his book that bespeak how unevenly the deck is stacked and what a fair future would look like. For the record, though Sanders caucuses with the Democrats, he isn’t one and is plenty critical of their blindness. Would his America work? Does this one?

 

Rob Weir