At the risk of offending his supporters, I’d like to share why I think Bernie Sanders SHOULD NOT be the Democratic nominee.
As I’ve done more research on Bernie, I’ve been surprised that there’s not more awareness/discussion of the Democratic frontrunner. Frankly, I was deeply surprised by what I’ve learned.
I’ve done my best to fact check any claims I make about Bernie, and I include a source for each claim. Obviously, my analysis represents my point of view. You are welcome to disagree.
I’ve organized my concerns into three areas: his (1) Background, (2) Current Positions on the Issues, and (3) Approach and Ideology.
1–Background
- Almost no private sector experience: I don’t think this is a negative per se. But it would be helpful for him to acknowledge how this might limit his perspective. I haven’t seen this from Bernie. I’ve now spent an hour reading what Bernie has said, and his central motif of the private sector is greed.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernie_Sanders - Lower-than-average “legislative effectiveness:” The WaPo based this assessment on his time in Congress and the number of sponsored bills passed and successful amendments made.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernie_Sanders - Writing that women fantasize about being “raped by three men simultaneously:” Totally mind-blowing, and I was skeptical that he wrote this. But he did.
Source: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/bernie-sanders-essay/ - Allegations of creating a harsh culture that’s particularly negative toward women: This is subjective and hard to prove, but I’ve found accounts of it.
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/…/bernie-sanders-campaign-sexism.ht… - Being very anti-military: Sanders was twice an elector for an SWP candidate for president who once said that American soldiers should “take up their guns and shoot their officers.” In the 1970s, Sanders chaired the left-libertarian Liberty Union Party that essentially called for the dissolution of America’s standing military.
Sources: https://www.thirdway.org/…/stand-up-to-bernie-or-you-and-we… & https://slate.com/…/bernie-sanders-radical-past-would-haunt…
2–Positions on the Issues
- Creating a federally mandated minimum wage of $15/hour: America is wealthy enough to give all our citizens a decent standard of living. And there are too many Americans living in grinding financial stress. But, in general, I don’t think government action should “tax” the inputs to production. The CBO projects that an immediate $15 Minimum Wage Would Boost 17 Million Workers but would put 1.3 million people out of a job. I think this projection may be conservative because it does not take into account the rapidly changing capabilities of AI and robotics to displace low-income workers. I think you could get the same positives without the negatives by taking an approach like Andrew Yang suggests with the Freedom Dividend.
Source: https://www.cbo.gov/…/files/2…/CBO-55410-MinimumWage2019.pdf) - Making climate change a national emergency: I 100% believe that climate change is a significant problem that needs urgent action. However, when I hear people start saying with absolute certainty that it is an “existential threat to humanity,” my skepticism turns up. Crises are often used by governments to erode liberties. So I look for leaders that acknowledge these difficult tradeoffs candidly. You don’t get that with Bernie. You get proposals like this: (1) making $16.3 trillion public investment to curb carbon emissions. (2) Declaring climate change a national emergency (“We will do whatever it takes to defeat the threat of climate change.”). (3) “Ending the greed in our energy system” (not sure how you get massive innovation in green energy without profit incentives).
Source: https://berniesanders.com/issues/green-new-deal/ - Giving free college tuition and forgiving existing student loans: Americans are entitled to “the right to a complete education.” – Bernie Sanders. OK, but what is a complete education? What happens when we declare something a right, but the cost to give it keeps increasing, and we enable that increasing cost through government subsidy? I’m not saying that Sanders’ goal isn’t worthy; it just has a few glaring problems: (1) It completely ignores the cost side of the equation. (2) It’s not income-based. If I’m a multi-millionaire, why should the government subsidize my child’s college education? (3) It presupposes that the current college model is the right one at a time when we have and need a lot of innovation happening in higher-education.
Source: https://www.vox.com/…/bernie-sanders-free-college-for-all-2… - Creating an aggressive wealth tax: Bernie Sanders has explicitly made it his goal to eliminate billionaires. He does this by taxing people’s wealth at a progressive rate. He plans to levy this tax every year. So if you make $32.5M per year, you owe the government $5,000 per year in addition to his desired much higher marginal income tax rates. I can’t find any official communication about how his plan would address its two most significant challenges: (1) liquidity issues and (2) negative after-tax returns. Both these problems challenge the long-term validity of this tax income source. However, he plans to use estimated revenue from this plan to pay for his extremely costly programs. Furthermore, there are philosophical problems with this tax as it expands government power to take what you already own without remuneration. Doing so is fundamentally different than taxing income. With income tax, the government is taxing the transaction of economic activity.
Source: https://berniesanders.com/issues/tax-extreme-wealth/ - Breaking up big agribusiness: Bernie wants to “place a moratorium on future mergers of large agribusiness corporations and break-up existing massive agribusinesses.” He also wants to “place a moratorium on vertical integration of large agribusiness corporations.” I’m not an expert on this, so I can’t say that this is a bad idea. Still, again, he presents sweeping changes without addressing significant risks. For example, large agribusiness creates cost and environmental efficiencies from economies of scale. We have billions of more people to feed than when we were a society of family farms, and industry has helped us adapt to this reality. I’m not sure how you would have got GMOs without big agribusiness. No matter how you feel about GMOs, the fact is that they save millions of people from starvation.
- Linking abortion to population control as a means to address climate change: I don’t think I need to say anything more about this. Though I’m sure some agree with this view, it’s tremendously problematic.
Source: https://twitter.com/secupp/status/1169431501924196352 - Dramatically increasing capital gains tax: For everyone making $250,000, Bernie wants to tax capital gains at the same rate as income (47.8%). Doing so would have tremendous implications on innovation and growth because people now have the same incentive to spend the marginal dollar as investing it.
Source: https://www.sanders.senate.gov/…/options-to-finance-medicar… - Breaking up big tech companies: “We should definitely take a look at’ breaking up Google, Amazon, Apple.” There’s a populist appeal to this point of view. Still, it’s not clear how doing so would solve the problems this move is trying to address: privacy and increased diversity of firms. The anti-trust framework is from the 20th century to address monopolistic practices that increased costs, protected access to scarce resources, and limited public access to products. But these are not the problems of the tech industry: privacy, incredible economies of scale, network effects, data. We probably need a different regulatory framework to address these issues. Furthermore, you might just hand our structural competitive advantages in tech to the Chinese.
Source: https://www.politico.com/…/bernie-sanders-break-up-google-a… - Opposing free-trade: Free trade leads to great global wealth and decreases the likelihood of war (you don’t fight people when you do business with them). Protectionism arguably led to the World Wars. Bernie opposed NAFTA, opposes the TPP and other trade deals.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/…/Political_positions_of_Bernie_Sa…
Bernie’s heart is in the right place (i.e., I think he’s trying to address pressing problems). But he approaches solving these problems through a lens of scarcity and re-distribution instead of abundance and opportunity.
I’ve addressed my concerns with these positions on their face. Still, there’s an entirely different line of criticism for all these ideas: they have little possibility of actually becoming law.
Will he be willing to compromise to actually make progress? Bernie’s personal history suggests he won’t.
3–Approach and Ideology
- Dogmatic: With all of the above ideas, they would dramatically reshape the US economy. Still, he seems unwilling to engage in a nuanced debate about the winners and losers in his new world, as well as the risks. This approach does not make his positions inherently “wrong.” Still, for someone wanting to blow up the status quo, you think they would be able to discuss the tradeoffs meaningfully. But with Sanders, I haven’t been able to find much of this.
- Rigid: His political views have remained mostly unchanged for years, and years, Yes, there is a quaint, reassuring quality to this. As humans, we love people who are “genuine.” But I see this as a scary sign of being rigidity and inflexible. The world has drastically changed since Bernie formulated his political views. There are new challenges and opportunities, and a great leader should regularly rethink their worldview, and if not radically change it, at least modify it.
- Scarcity mindset: His ideology wreaks of scarcity, not abundance (“nobody in America should make over a million dollars.”). I want an America where everyone makes over a million dollars. Scarcity mentalities tend to conflict and polarization.
What I Like About Bernie
I always try to be fair, so after focusing on all the reasons why I don’t want Bernie to be the nominee, here are a few things I like about Bernie:
- Heart: I think he does care a lot about people, and that’s important
- Healthcare: Elements of his healthcare plan may have merit. There are arguably no efficiencies or innovations that result from having a private, multi-payer system. Also, I believe we’d have an entrepreneurial renaissance if more people didn’t feel strapped to their companies because of their health insurance. I just wish he was able to engage in a more detailed discussion about it (e.g., how we’re going to pay for it). Since he’s considering changing the largest sector of our economy dramatically, it’s probably a good idea to have commissioned some independent studies.
- Campaign finance reform: I do think the vast sums of money spent in our political industry have distorted our government and made it less democratic and responsive.