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SHAPIRO: Bernie’s Plan To Crumble The Billionaire Class

   DailyWire.com
Democratic Presidential Candidate Bernie Sanders Holds Student Town Hall In Fairfax, Virginia on October 28, 2015 in Fairfax, Virginia.
Alex Wong/Staff via Getty Images

On Tuesday’s episode of “The Ben Shapiro Show,” Shapiro talks about how Senator Bernie Sanders’ proposed wealth tax goes farther to the Left than even Senator Elizabeth Warren. Video and partial transcript below: 

Bernie is starting to open up his guns as I suggested he would have to on Elizabeth Warren. Earlier today, he proposed a super wealth tax, not just a wealth tax, a super wealth tax, in which he would reduce the ability of billionaires to be billionaires. 

He literally tweeted out, [Sanders impression] Billionaires should not exist! Perhaps we should put them on trains to very cold places, you know like Montana or something, and we will build we won’t call them gulags, but they will be kind of like gulags, and we’ll put them there and then they won’t be billionaires anymore, and we will liquidate the Kulaks and we will unite the workers of the world. 

Bernie Sanders was really going for it. He tweeted out: “There is no justice when three billionaires are able to own more wealth than the bottom half of the entire country.”

Well no, there might be justice depending on whether they also employ hundreds of thousands of Americans, made millions of lives better with their products, and engaged in voluntary exchange. So in his new plan, Bernie Sanders is going to go for the super duper wealth tax, and you knew this was coming, right? Elizabeth Warren proposed her 2% wealth tax, which is unconstitutional and would not raise anywhere near the kind of money she’s talking about. Because you know what wealthy people are very good at? Tax avoidance. Very, very good at it.

In fact, it’s one of the reasons why you see Democrats say stuff [like], “Well you remember back in the 1960s when the top tax bracket was 91%?” Right, and the effective tax rate on rich people was pretty much the same because rich people started taking their money and putting it in places that were not taxable. The tax revenue of the federal government versus the GDP of the United States has basically remained stable since the reduction of war spending after World War II. So that has not really changed. 

But Bernie Sanders is proposing a new wealth tax, a 1% tax on net worth over $32 million every year, 2% from from $50-250 million, 3% from $250-500 million, 4% from $500 million to $1 billion, and 8% on wealth over $10 billion. He says this will raise $4.35 trillion per decade, and then he says this would be used to fund Bernie’s affordable housing plan, universal childcare, and would help fund Medicare For All. That’s sort of a problem considering that Medicare For All is supposed to cost something like $34 trillion, so if he raises $4.35 trillion over the next decade, where is the other $30 trillion is going to come from? But this is Bernie Sanders upping the ante. 

Also, Bernie Sanders is more of a true believer than Elizabeth Warren, and you’re gonna see him make that case. So just in the last 24 hours, Bernie Sanders is drawing the contrast between Elizabeth Warren and her supposed warm embrace of capitalism and his own love for socialism. Here’s Bernie saying that people are brainwashed to believe in capitalism, someone says this to him and, of course, he fully agrees. 

[Sanders impression] Even though I have a lake house, and I love pudding, many types of pudding. Pudding is delicious.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: I think that the kind of brainwashing, or the idea at least that I grew up with, is that our definition of success, is like the American dream, and in capitalism, you’re rewarded for getting everything and just keeping it to yourself and not worrying about everybody else, and that’s sort of like a psychology that we’ve all been taught. 

SANDERS: I think Lizzie is exactly right, that a profound it’s a profound point. 

Oh it’s super profound to believe that capitalism is good. People have been brainwashed to believe that capitalism is good by, you know, the immense prosperity that capitalism has created … I don’t know how he claims that he is in favor of quote unquote “Democratic Socialism,” Norway, Finland, Sweden-style when he is ripping on capitalism, which provides the entire growth basis for the Nordic countries as every politician in Norway, Sweden, and Finland will tell you openly. But Bernie is trying to draw a contrast with Elizabeth Warren. 

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