Bernie Sanders: Billionaires Shouldn’t Exist
In a recent interview, Bernie Sanders was forced to defend his position that billionaires shouldn’t exist to an exasperated Chris Wallace. Sanders is absolutely right: a humane system wouldn’t produce such dramatic disparities in the distribution of resources.
Senator Bernie Sanders during a nomination hearing for labor secretary nominee Julie Su in Washington, DC, on April 20, 2023. (Al Drago / Bloomberg via Getty Images)
When Vermont senator Bernie Sanders appeared on Who’s Talking to Chris Wallace? last Friday, the host confronted Sanders about something in his new book, It’s OK to be Angry About Capitalism.
“You say flatly [that] billionaires should not exist,” Wallace began his question. Does Sanders really want, Wallace demanded to know, to “confiscate” everything entrepreneurs make over $999 million? The Waltons, for example, have tens of billions of dollars but provide jobs to one and a half million Americans. Isn’t that a good thing?
Sanders dryly insisted that it’s “possible to get by” on $999 million dollars — and that, while Walmart pays poverty wages, his critique isn’t of this or that individual billionaire but of a system that enables such grotesque concentrations of wealth.
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