On Thursday, presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, apparently deciding he was his own version of Robin Hood, attacked Microsoft CEO Bill Gates by tweeting, “Say Bill Gates was actually taxed $100 billion. We could end homelessness and provide safe drinking water to everyone in this country. Bill would still be a multibillionaire. Our message: the billionaire class cannot have it all when so many have so little.”
Say Bill Gates was actually taxed $100 billion.
We could end homelessness and provide safe drinking water to everyone in this country.
Bill would still be a multibillionaire.
Our message: the billionaire class cannot have it all when so many have so little. https://t.co/fVlxuIGygf
— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) November 7, 2019
Of course, Sanders got it wrong, as the communist sympathizer must envision Robin Hood as the man who restored wealth stolen by the rich from the poor. But if Sanders indeed had any literary knowledge beyond the Communist Manifesto, he would know that Robin Hood took money from those who were unfairly taxing the citizenry. Taxing the citizenry is exactly what Sanders continually advocates as he maligns wealthy, successful people who have created millions of jobs while he sits comfortably in the Senate without having created jobs on his own.
So how many workers does Gates keep employed while Sanders flies around advocating redistributing the accumulated wealth of the United States? Forbes noted three years ago:
Since Gates and his friend Paul Allen founded Microsoft in 1975, the software firm has acquired a slew of companies, including video and calling application Skype and Nokia’s device and services business. Altogether, Microsoft now has more than 114,000 full-time workers. These do not include employees of professional network company LinkedIn, which Microsoft announced in June that it has agreed to acquire; once that acquisition is complete, it will add another 9,900 full-time employees to Microsoft’s roster, bringing its total employment closer to Oracle’s.
Forbes also noted: “The top 12 billionaire job creators — all together worth more than $308 billion — have generated at least 2.3 million jobs globally.” As of three years ago, Bernie Marcus and Arthur Blank of Home Depot had created 385,000 jobs.
Now let’s take a look at Sanders: after his graduation from college, he worked as a Head Start teacher, a psychiatric aide, and a carpenter. Not many jobs created there. After that he became a politician. Not many jobs created there.
As The Daily Wire noted in 2016
If you think socialists are lazy, good-for-nothings who want things just because they are breathing, rather than working for them, Bernie Sanders would agree with you. At least, if he believes in himself.
According to the new book We Are As Gods, by Kate Daloz, which tells the tale of the rise and fall of the Myrtle Hill Farm in northeast Vermont, Sanders was told to leave the commune in 1971 because he didn’t work, instead “sitting around and talking” about politics.
Daloz writes that Sanders engaged in “endless political discussion,” while the residents seethed; one resident, Craig, “resented feeling like he had to pull others out of Bernie’s orbit if any work was going to get accomplished that day.” Daloz concludes, “When Bernie had stayed for Myrtle’s allotted three days, Craig politely requested that he move on.”
The commune’s politics must have agreed with Sanders, who made several “goodwill” trips to the USSR, Cuba and Nicaragua. He called the rise to power of the Marxist-Leninist Sandinista government in Nicaragua a “heroic revolution.”
Gates and his wife? According to CNBC, “… the Gates have given a total of $45.5 billion through their foundation and other family foundations, dating back to 1994, the Chronicle of Philanthropy notes.”