Universal Health Care.
Free College for All.
Paid Family Leave.
A Stronger Social Safety Net.
A Trillion Dollars in New Infrastructure.
As the crowds gather across the nation to hear the patron Saint of democratic socialism preach his gospel of redistribution it’s hard, as a liberal, not to be thrilled. After all, who among us doesn’t want to see a resurgence of the middle class built on a New Deal between our richest citizens and the many of us who are struggling to get by? Can anyone doubt that rising inequality, stagnant wages, and stubborn un- and underemployment evidences the abject failure of trickle down economics and the decades long mantra of “no new taxes” to provide for a general prosperity?
Senator Sanders is not wrong to point out that for too long the singular object of our government has been to encourage the creation and growth of wealth for the few, giant corporations, banks, and the executives thereof. He casts these beneficiaries of nearly a century of American economic dominance in the global capitalistic order as untouchables, possessed only of self-interest and as having captured the powers-that-be in order to multiply their already substantial treasures. Sanders angrily insists that he doesn’t fight for them, that his interests aren’t in line with theirs but rather with ‘ours.’ Except, if our well being is to be built on a set of policies paid for by taxing wealth… then generating that wealth in the first place must also be a priority. Indeed, for Senator Sanders to do any of what he promises, he’ll have to fight for policies that benefit the very people he claims he doesn’t fight for at all.
Senator Sanders is careful not to call himself merely a socialist, and his supporters are quick to establish that there is a difference between ‘democratic socialism’ and ‘socialism.’ And there is. Socialism, most simply, is an economic order where the people are the owners of the means of production and where government cooperatively manages the economy… Senator Sanders is not calling for an economic order that resembles any such thing. He is not suggesting we nationalize any industries or have government set prices on goods or determine the distribution of those goods. Instead he defines ‘democratic socialism’ as a set of policy outcomes enabled by a fairer distribution of the fruits of capitalism. So his positions do not fundamentally call into question global capitalism or its negative consequences (which may explain his awkward exchange with Vox’s Ezra Klein on immigration) but instead relies on it.
In order to pay for his proposed policies Senator Sanders calls for more sensible spending on the military… but the bulk of the revenue we’d need to provide his prescriptions to the people would necessarily derive from increased taxes on wealth, including wealth currently shielded from taxation offshore. But implicit in this arrangement is the proposition that such wealth exists to tax in the first place. So while Senator Sanders insists that he doesn’t care about billionaires or big corporations, without them (and policies that encourage their continued growth and wealth generation) the pool of dollars he proposes we draw upon to pay for his programs dries up.
To put it another way: imagine a machine that produces rubber duckies in a world where everything runs on rubber duckies. As it spits out these rubber duckies it distributes them across several chutes. Adjust some levers one way or another and you can make the machine spit out more and more duckies. But there’s a problem: the machine doesn’t distribute those duckies evenly across the chutes. Senator Sanders wants to fix the distribution of the duckies, but he doesn’t want the machine to stop producing the duckies we need. He isn’t calling for a fundamental redesign of the machine, merely a re-balancing of its distribution.
If that’s the case then a hypothetical President Sanders will have to make the maintenance of that machine a key part of his administration, which means making the interests of billionaires and big corporations priorities for his administration, since without their wealth (and without that wealth being maintained or made to grow year over year) he won’t be able to provide any of the many costly programs he calls for. It’s worth wondering whether his apparent disdain for such individuals and organizations makes achieving that balance impossible, whether his anger blinds him to the need to keep the reservoir full, whether his project will be doomed, even if he gets the necessary legislation, for a failure to prioritize the very policies that will enable the wealth needed to fund the project in the first place.
Someone needs to ask Senator Sanders how, as President, he would work to help corporations and the billionaires that own them generate the wealth he plans to tax in order to pay for the programs that will support those he claims to care most about.
I EM ME 2 