“Billionaires Cannot Have It All” – Sanders Calls for Redistribution of Wealth

As the wealth gap between middle-income Americans and the 1 percent balloons, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) is calling for redistribution of wealth from the wealthiest Americans to the middle and working classes as one of the first steps needed to save the country from the far right and “restore democracy.”

In an interview with CBS on Tuesday, Sanders said that Democrats need to recognize that billionaires are only getting richer and richer, while workers are falling behind – and, as long as this trend continues, people will keep losing faith in the idea that the government exists to work for them.

“Right now, a lot of people are losing faith in government,” he said. “If you are a worker out there – and your job went to China, your job went to Mexico, you’re making less than you used to make, your kid can’t afford to go to college, you can’t afford health care – and somebody puts a 30 second ad up on CBS, ‘vote for me,’ [you’d] say ‘go to hell. You’re all the same, you’re not doing anything for me.’”

“You want to restore democracy? Have a government that works for ordinary people,” he said.

When asked about the threat to the U.S. from the far right and Donald Trump, Sanders said that a large problem is that voters and regular people don’t see candidates that vow to work for them.

“You’re not going to hear it much on corporate television. I believe that we need to redistribute wealth in this country. We need to protect the middle class and working class, and the billionaires cannot have it all,” he said.

While there has been a redistribution of wealth over the past half century, he said, it has “gone in the wrong direction.” “We’re talking about trillions of dollars going to the 1 percent while the working class and the middle class become poorer,” he emphasized.

Indeed, according to a reportAccording to Sanders’s request and released by CBO on Tuesday by Congress, the share of all wealth held in the top 1 per cent jumped from 27 to 34% between 1989 and 2019, while the wealth held by Americans in the bottom 50% dropped from 4 to 2 percent.

In 2019, the wealth of the top 10 percent was $2.3 trillion, while the wealth of the bottom 50 percent owned $2.3 trillion. owned $82.4 trillionThe report concluded that

Student debt has been a significant factor in the suppression and growth of wealth among the bottom 25%. According to the report, student loans were at their highest in 2019 the largest source of debtThe bottom 25% are those with the highest debt, exceeding all other types of debt such as credit cards and mortgages.

During the pandemic, the wealth gap likely grew. Although pandemic provisions such as the The stimulus checks and child tax credit kept millions of Americans afloat through the first two years of the pandemic, those financial programs are now over – while the economy remains unstable and inflation remains high.

However, U.S. millionaires are on the other side You can addSince the pandemic began, their collective wealth has grown to over $1.7 trillion. A lot of this growth has been attributable to the richest people in the globe. According to a January Oxfam Report the world’s 10 richest people have doubled their wealth during the COVID-19 pandemic, adding $5 trillion to their collective wealth – or more than two times the $2.3 trillion total wealth owned by the bottom 50 percent of Americans in 2019.