Wealth Inequality
Bernie Sanders claims that the economy is “rigged” because the “top 1% owns more wealth than the bottom 90%.”
IN FACT, the socialistic policies that Sanders supports prevent the bulk of people from amassing wealth, which Sanders then leverages to demand more socialism. Here are the specifics:
- Sanders supports expanding social programs that reduce incentives to work and the ability to save.
- Thus, a study published by the European Central Bank found that European nations with greater levels of “welfare state spending” had higher levels of “wealth inequality” because “social services provided by the state” replace “private wealth accumulation” by creating “less need for relatively poor households to hold precautionary savings” and providing “more income” to be “used for consumption purposes.”
- Likewise, a study published by the University of Chicago Press found that Social Security raises wealth inequality by about 20%, leaving lower-income households with “less to save, less reason to save, and a larger share of their old-age resources” in a government program that they cannot pass along to their heirs.
- Sanders has also supported government money printing, which increases the wealth of current asset holders while making homes, stocks, and other investments less affordable for everyone else.
- Sanders supports pervasive and aggressive government regulations, which raise the costs of living and make it difficult for small businesses to compete with major corporations.
- Sanders supports mass illegal immigration, which reduces the wages of low-income workers while decreasing the prices of services that high-income people purchase like maids, nannies, and landscapers.
- Sanders supports green energy mandates, which increase the costs of energy and virtually everything else.
- Sanders supports government-mandated employee benefits, which reduce worker’s wages.
- Sanders supports mass unionization, which utilizes monopoly powers that raise taxes and consumer prices.
- Sanders has supported liberal ethics about sex, which create household fragmentation that dilutes workers’ incomes and is strongly associated with poverty.
- Sanders supports canceling student loans, which raises the costs of college and disproportionately benefits higher income people.
- Sanders supports increased spending on K–12 education, which raises taxes while failing to substantially improve student achievement.
- Sanders supports doubling the minimum wage, which would destroy jobs, spur inflation, and give 81% of the resultant wage increases to families above the poverty line while raising the average income of families below the poverty line by about 1%.
Beyond ignoring their own roles in wealth inequality, Sanders and his fellow progressives often gripe about it without acknowledging these facts:
- Wealth is not a fixed pie, and the inflation-adjusted average wealth of the bottom 90% of U.S. households has grown by 83% since 1989, as far back as reliable data extend.
- Middle-income Americans are richer than their counterparts in every other nation of the world partly because wealthy Americans invest in enterprises that increase productivity, which is the primary driver of living standards.
- The only span in modern history in which wealth inequality declined was the three pre-Covid years of Trump’s first term when real median family wealth rose by 3% for whites, 33% for blacks, and 65% for Hispanics.
