Sanders stumbles on Super Tuesday — Maybe Democrats finally woke up to truth about socialism
The Democratic Party may have just made the smartest and most strategic move…ever
After the Super Tuesday votes are all tallied, the Democratic Party may have just made the smartest and most strategic move…ever.
Before South Carolina voted on Saturday, frontrunner Sen, Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., seemed all but assured of the nomination. But former Vice President Joe Biden’s Carolina firewall held and Tuesday night was a Biden clean sweep of all but the most-left leaning of states.
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Even former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg was convinced by the Super Tuesday results. On Wednesday morning he decided he would rather not waste another half a billion dollars in his quest to win the nomination.
What the Democratic establishment has realized in the last week was a simple truth. Most of America is not ready to embrace Sanders’ platform of socialism. And whether they realized it or not, America could not afford a President Bernie Sanders.
It is often easy to get behind someone who runs a campaign focused on the little guy, the forgotten, the disadvantaged and marginalized.
The “champion” of such noble purposes then creates a ‘movement’, not just a campaign, centered around taking down the unfair and unequal ultra-wealthy and the bad corporations who do not pay their fair share.
Young voters hear the promises touted by this candidate of free health care as a right, free four-year college education and forgiveness of their student loan debt which has become a massive burden and they are ready to fight for the cause.
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Like others before him, throughout history, Sanders has made his plans sound fair by explaining that the wealthy and the greedy corporations will bear the costs of this ‘free’ expansion of government-provided and government-run programs.
But what are those costs, really?
During a recent interview on "60 Minutes," Sanders was specifically asked by Anderson Cooper if he knew what the total price tag was for all his proposals and he responded, “No, I don’t…. Well, I can’t – you know, I can’t rattle off to you every nickel and every dime.”
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Think about that for a moment. Sanders is a revolutionary candidate who proposes moving the country to a single-payer medical system, canceling the existence of private health insurance completely (something that would affect over 180 million Americans), wants to massively increase the corporate tax rate (along with his plan to increase taxes even more based on the wage differences between the corporate CEO and the lowest-paid worker), along with the nationalization of public college and universities through taxpayer-funded education – and he doesn’t know the total cost of his plans?
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Several different analyses have been performed looking at Sanders’ proposals and all conclude roughly the same thing: Sanders’ plan will cost America an additional $50 trillion in just the next 10 years alone (Yahoo Finance estimates $4.9 trillion per year, the Washington Post says $5.46 trillion per year, and the Progressive Policy Institute reports $5.3 trillion per year).
Sanders says that the wealthy and corporations will pay more to cover his programs but is there enough wealth in America to afford $50 trillion in additional spending every 10 years. No!
According to the Brookings Institute, total net worth (total assets minus total liabilities) of all Americans was just $98 trillion in 2018.
Let’s look at American incomes: In 2016, the top 1 percent of Americans, about 1.4 million taxpayers, earned over a combined $10.2 trillion before taxes. They paid more taxes than the bottom 90 percent of earners combined – paying 37.3 percent of all federal taxes versus 30.5 percent paid by the bottom 90 percent of the entire country.
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In 2019, the federal government spent $4.45 trillion. Add in the cost of Sanders’ programs, at an additional $5 trillion per year, and you have a projected budget of $9.45 trillion, or 92.6 percent of what the top 1 percent of Americans earned.
U.S. corporate net income (after current taxes) was just over $2 trillion in 2018.
This means that, if you add the net corporate income to the incomes of the top 1 percent of Americans, you will have a total income pool of $12.25 trillion against a budget of $9.45 trillion or 77 percent of total taxable income from the evil corporations and top 1 percenters.
But, as we saw with the exodus of the wealthy out of France due to the country’s wealth tax (since canceled) and with Apple’s decision to move their international headquarters from Ireland to the Channel Island of Jersey to avoid the EU/Irish tax crackdown, when you tax job creators at anything approaching these levels, they will simply leave America.
Obstructive tax policies never deliver the tons of new tax revenue projected, as people and corporations always will adjust where and how they earn money.
This ultimately leads to a total government takeover of industries, resulting in an overall downward decline in the quality provided to the masses of such industries – just ask the Canadians why they come to America for medical treatment – a country just over 10 percent the size of our population.
Throughout history, overzealous tax policy/seizures on corporations and the wealthy have always led to the failure of those regimes who promised to make everything fair and equal for those left behind.
And really, it is simply a matter of common sense. When you take away a person or a business’s financial incentive to earn money… they won’t.
Rebecca Walser is a tax attorney, a certified financial planner, and the author of “Wealth Unbroken,” who specializes in the strategic planning of maximizing lifetime wealth while minimizing tax through her practice, Walser Wealth Management.