I suppose he is a collectivist authoritarian.
He rightly sees student loan debt as an issue, yet he wants to
flood the market with even more worthless college degrees by making public colleges “free”, ignoring the existing Federal loan subsidies and their market distortions. He rightly sees Wall Street and bank bailouts as a symptom of cronyism,
yet flip-flopped away from supporting a bill to audit the Federal Reserve. He rightly sees unemployment as an issue, yet he is crusading for a $15 minimum wage which would create mandatory unemployment for perhaps millions of unskilled workers. He rightly calls out Big Pharma, insisting they have also fallen victim to the regulatory capture of Washington lobbyists, yet offers the solution of…even
more regulations.
Bernie Sanders is the type of man who can point out specific grants of government privilege to private companies, then turn around and
say “Unfettered free trade has been a disaster for the American people” without a hint of irony. All too often the “cure” to any given issue is to intensify the disease. After fifty years and $20,000,000,000,000 spent waging the War on Poverty without any appreciable alleviation of poverty, Bernie’s solution is riveting: spend
more money on the same old programs.
Unsurprisingly, Bernie has made it exceedingly apparent that he does not understand even the most basic economic concepts, immortalized in his
quote, “You don’t necessarily need a choice of 23 underarm spray deodorants or of 18 different pairs of sneakers when children are hungry in this country.” Due to his
inability to understand how humans acting freely produce wealth, he views the individuals who make up the economy as an entity that should (and can) be nationalized and managed like a business,
mercantilism and all.
Foreign policy is supposed to be one of Bernie’s saving points, clearly holding an edge over his main (read: bloodthirsty) competition. Although he often boasts that he voted against the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, he forgets to mention that he voted to continue
funding the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. He also supported NATO’s bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999 and more recently supported a $1 billion aid package to the Ukrainian rebels as well as air raids in Syria. Oh, and he also said he would
continue drone policies similar to Obama’s and has repeatedly
supported Israeli occupation and bombing of Palestine.
On other issues, he is troublingly conservative. He would not pardon Edward Snowden and instead
thinks he should face trial. He is
staunchly closed border, calling open borders a “Koch brothers proposal”. He wants to legalize pot but
voted to illegalize Internet gambling, demonstrating a lack of commitment to personal freedoms. He even
has a “serious problem” with Uber and presumably the broader peer-to-peer economy. Perhaps nothing sums up Bernie’s view of government and economics more than his support for Vermont’s F-35 fighter jet contract, the world’s most expensive weapons program at $1,400,000,000,000, simply because it was to be
manufactured in his home state. More of that “unfettered capitalism”.
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2015/10/will-tippens/bernie-sanders-another-phony/
