Do we need to start limiting the amount of certain things wealthy people can buy (which would in turn hurt the workers who made those items)? That seems to be what 2020 presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (Socialist-VT) was suggesting in a tweet sent in April 2017.
“How many yachts do billionaires need? How many cars do they need? Give us a break. You can’t have it all,” Sanders, or a member of his staff, tweeted.
It seems like there’s something between car and yacht that rich people have more than one of, but I can’t quite put my finger on it. Oh yeah, houses! Rich people have a lot of houses. It’s odd that Sanders would leave that item off the list.
Maybe it’s because Sanders himself owns three homes despite railing against the alleged excesses of “millionaires and billionaires.”
In 2016, after Sanders had lost the Democrat primary to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, but while he was still popular with the Democrat base and espousing anti-wealth sentiments, the Vermont senator purchased a third home with his wife, according to Vanity Fair. The summer home, on the shore of Lake Champlain, cost around $600,000 and was purchased using the funds from selling a home owned by Sanders’ wife’s family.
Sanders also owns his home in Burlington, VT, and a home on Capitol Hill in D.C. I purchased my first home in 2017, and I can say from experience that houses on Capitol Hill are not cheap (not that a $600,000 home is cheap, either).
Sanders, according to Vanity Fair, is still one of the poorest members of Congress, with a net worth of about $0, according to a Roll Call ranking, placing him at 423 out of 535 members.
“His 2014 tax returns revealed that he and Jane made $205,617 that year, the bulk of which came from Sanders’s $174,000 Senate salary. (Jane, who previously made about $160,000 a year as the president of Burlington College, retired in 2011,)” Vanity Fair wrote.
Since then, however, Sanders’ income has exploded. In 2016 and 2017, according to Fox News, Sanders and his wife earned more than $1 million a year. In 2016, most of that amount ($885,767) came from an advance and royalties for his book, “Our Revolution,” about his failed run for the presidency.
Sanders entered the 2020 presidential race last week, and raised nearly $6 million for his campaign in the first 24 hours, more than any other candidate reported in the same timeframe after announcing. But Sanders’ entrance into the race is now causing other Democrats to distance themselves from the word “socialism,” a word Sanders throws around approvingly.
As The Daily Wire’s Emily Zanotti previously reported, Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA), who announced her bid for the presidency last month, recently told reporters she would not call herself “a democratic socialist.”
Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), too, is trying to paint herself as an alternative to the radical Left, saying at a townhall that she would turn down socialist solutions to the country’s problems.
Sanders, despite being 77 years old, has tapped into today’s Leftist youth, who increasingly see socialism as a solution.