Here’s Don Feder:
What a young Ingrid Bergman was to feminine beauty Bernie Sanders is to muddled thinking.
One of his favorite catchphrases is “In a country as rich as ours…” fill in the blank. “In a country as rich as ours, there should be free tuition at public colleges and universities.” “In a country as rich as ours, the minimum wage should be $15 an hour.” “In a country as rich as ours, no child should go to bed hungry.” After all, we only spend $74 billion annually on food stamps.
All of this raises the obvious question: How does a country get as rich as ours? For socialists, wealth is just there — like rivers, mountains and wild flowers. Their focus isn’t on creation but redistribution.
Although he has no idea where wealth comes from, the Septuagenarian socialist is convinced the top 1% got theirs by exploiting the rest of us. “Democratic socialism means that we must create an economy that works for everyone,” Sanders explains as he denounces Wall Street greed, damns corporate campaign contributions and tells Americans we don’t need 23 brands of deodorant.
Bernie’s envy of the 1% is that of a man who never started a business, brought a product to market or gave a man a job.
Rather than working for everyone, the economies he admires don’t work for anyone. In a recent town hall meeting, he reminded us of what the Castro regime has bestowed on the Cuban people. It’s “educated their kids, gave them health care, (and) totally transformed their economy.”
Transformed is right. Pre-Castro, Cuba had the third highest per capita income in Latin America and more TV sets per capita than Italy. When I was there in 1997, the average worker earned $10 U.S. a month. Patients had to come to hospitals with their own sheets and pillowcases. I saw men on the street refilling disposable lighters for re-sale.
Read more: American Thinker
