I recently read a very interesting article from The Observer, by Pete Ross (a foreign political commentator) on the Sanders campaign and on today’s American policies. Here’s some particularly intriguing excerpts from it:
Around the rest of the world, Mr. Sanders represents a point on the political spectrum that is mildly left of centre.
His “wacky” ideas of free (and we’ll get to that term a bit later) education, free healthcare, regulating banks and corporations and so on are all actually staple ideas of many of the happiest and most prosperous countries in the world.
Don’t believe me? Take a look at the happiest countries in the world index for 2016. The U.S. doesn’t make the top 10—but almost every single country that does has the kind of policies Mr. Sanders is promoting at some level.
Looking at the other candidates, Hillary Clinton would in most countries be considered right of centre, not left. Donald and Ted? Man, those guys are so far right of centre you couldn’t plot where they exist—they’re pretty much off the spectrum.
But back to Bernie. Throughout the nomination process, Bernie’s critics always seem to be asking the wrong questions. The most common one I see is “how is he going to pay for all of this?” This question misses the point entirely.
Even if economists say that he can’t, does that really invalidate everything he’s aiming to achieve? If he can’t pay for all of it and the only thing that actually gets passed is universal college education and a reinstatement of Glass-Steagall, is that such a horrible thing? Why does it have to be so all or nothing? That’s why it also baffles me when people say that they don’t want the kind of revolution Mr. Sanders is pushing—the reality is that even if he is swept to victory, the amount of change he’ll actually be able to implement won’t be half of what he wants to do.
part 2 of the article...
America likes to brand itself as “the land of opportunity,” but from elsewhere in the world, the cost of that opportunity is shockingly high.
It looks more and more like the land of oligarchy,
where those with privilege move higher and higher up more and more easily, and those below have to scramble with all their might, sacrificing everything and never making a bad decision to even have a shot at being upper middle class. And if you don’t get there? Well you shouldn’t have made that bad decision that one time, it’s your fault.
…
The following section from this article backs up the author’s points in its entirety:
The United States has such an unequal distribution of wealth so that it’s in the league of corrupt underdeveloped countries, no longer in the league of the developed nations, according to the latest edition of the world’s most thorough study of wealth-distribution.
The most authoritative source comparing wealth-concentration in the various countries is the successor to the reports that used to be done for the United Nations, now performed as the Credit Suisse Global Wealth Databook.
The latest (2013) edition of it finds (p. 146) that in the U.S., 75.4% of all wealth is owned by the richest 10% of the people.
As for the remainder of the piece,
You guys have lost so much since Reagan came to power. We fight to keep all our benefits—you should have heard the uproar a couple of years ago when our government tried to institute a fee of $5 to go to the doctor instead of it being for free. The government scrapped that idea very quickly. All of your benefits have already been given away so those at the very top can take a little bit more. I could scarcely believe my ears when I heard that your government repealed estate tax not long ago—because God forbid people inheriting huge sums of money should have to give some of that up for the good of society.
And all of this ignores the massive, massive elephant in the room:
that your corporations, banks and politicians have no qualms about being socialist when it suits them.
They’ll happily put their hands out for subsidies that they don’t need to make billions more that won’t be taxed—or when they tank your economy and the rest of the world’s economy they’ll complain that they’re too big to fail before taking all your hard earned money.
None of them went to jail or even attracted regulation from the establishment politicians. Instead, they just got more money to continue as before.
And yet,
so many of you continue to engage in pointless arguments over why your taxes should pay for healthcare, university and other social goods, when
they are already paying for those at the top to continue polluting and disrupting the economy.
As Sanders said to Alan Greenspan in 2003:
As he said at his rally in Washington Square Park just weeks ago:
Verizon strikers, who were visited by Sanders in Brooklyn earlier Wednesday, lined the front of the stage, which was positioned under the arch on the north side of the park. Sanders had words for them that resonated with many supporters in attendance.
"They are standing up to a greedy corporation that wants to cut their healthcare benefits, send decent-paying jobs abroad and then provide $20 million a year to their CEO," Sanders said, as audience members yelled a collective "boo!" at the idea. "And Verizon is just the poster child for what so many of our corporations are doing today.
AND THIS CAMPAIGN IS SENDING A MESSAGE TO CORPORATE AMERICA:
'You cannot have it all!'"
He knows the system is rigged. He knows you can’t really change it by taking money from the people who are part of the problem. He knows that almost anyone outside of the Oprah class, especially those of color, are getting screwed and have for many, many decades. He is far from perfect, but it is about time the working people of this country got a taste of Democratic socialism instead of more austerity, half measures, and neoliberalism.
Democratic socialism.
A future to believe in.
#FeelTheBern