Bernie Sanders pushback on Chris Wallace could be more effective
Bernie Sanders answered Chris Wallace’s questions about a rigged economy and single-payer appropriately but missed an important opportunity. Wallace provided a rather misleading statistic. He pointed out that between 1981 and 2013 the top one percent paid 17% of income taxes vs 37% now.
“If the wealthy have rigged the system,” Wallace asked. “Why have they done such a lousy job of it.”
These are the types of statistics that the plutocracy will use to attempt to stunt the growing need for populist economic policies. Bernie Sanders schooled Wallace with his standard and truthful answer. “Chris I think you are missing the major point here,” Bernie Sanders replied. “And that is what we have seen in recent years is a huge transfer of wealth from the middle class to the top one tenth of one percent whose percentage of wealth in America has doubled.”
Chris asked if this transfer could be attributed to President Obama. Sanders pointed out that the wealth transfer had been in progress for decades.
Sanders needs to personalize this reality with more stark statements. The wealth of the middle class was stolen via purchased political policies. They transferred middle class wealth using insurance companies, drug companies, and many other companies fleecing the middle class to enrich a few. They categorized capital gains, income that requires no work, as less taxable than income from working Americans. More importantly he must point out that the top one percent has so grossly been rewarded with the nation’s treasure, that of course they are the ones most capable of having the most taxable income. If Sanders is going to speak against a rigged economy, he must tell Americans exactly how, in a language they can understand.
The grilling from Chris Wallace continued with Medicare for All, single-payer healthcare. Wallace chose to use Emory University “health care” expert Kenneth Thorpe’s imaginary assumptions instead of those from a landmark study in 2013 by Gerald Friedman, Professor and Chairman of the Department of Economics at the University of Massachusetts.
Again, Bernie Sanders missed an opportunity to be more specific. Dismissing Thorpe was justifiable but not enough. Sanders should have pointed out that there was an opposing study that more closely reflected his position on single-payer. But most importantly he should have pointed out that the world advanced economies were not assumptions by economists and professors, but they represented actual results that proves single-payer cost less, insures all people, and have better health outcomes. And that statement is a fact that is irrefutable that needs to be hammered to anyone providing some hypothetical. We have real based numbers on single-payer universal healthcare of all forms.
Going forward, Sanders must also get reputable healthcare professionals local and foreign to tell the truth about single-payer instead of those hoping for a reward from the plutocracy after misleading Americans into maintaining the status quo. It is time for Bernie Sanders to turn up the heat with stark specificity.
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