If it weren’t for the politics of envy, neither Bernie Sanders nor Liz Warren would have anything to run on.
There’s nothing more resentful and divisive than the politics of envy.
But if it weren’t for the politics of envy, neither Bernie Sanders nor Liz Warren would have anything to run on.
Yesterday, I was tootling along on Twitter when I noticed Bernie railing against Microsoft founder Bill Gates for having the temerity to complain about being taxed to death by the socialists running for President.
Not only is this the politics of envy, it’s wish-casting.
Does Bernie Sanders really believe that he can squeeze a hundred billion dollars out of Bill Gates every single year?
Or that homelessness can be eradicated completely for a hundred billion dollars?
You could confiscate every penny from every billionaire in the country and you still couldn’t cover a year of government spending at our current levels — let alone the increased levels in spending Bernie hopes to impose on us.
And once you’ve taken every penny from all the billionaires, what do you do the next year and the year after that?
And the year after that?
As Margaret Thatcher famously said, the problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people’s money.
But Bernie doesn’t need it to make sense. With the politics of envy, math is irrelevant. All that matters is ginning up anger and resentment among those who hate the fact that some people have more money than they do.
But for Bernie Sanders, this isn’t just a cynical exploitation of the politics of envy simply to appeal to the bitter and resentful.
He actually is one of the bitter and resentful.
But that shouldn’t come as a galloping shock.
Other than spending a lifetime suckling at the government tit, what has Bernie Sanders done? What innovations has he contributed to our economy and society? What jobs has he created?
The better question, if you ask me, is how the hell did Bernie Sanders become a millionaire when he has contributed next to nothing to our economy and society?
The innovations — not to mention charitable contributions — Bill Gates has made over the years have improved the lives of hundreds of millions of people worldwide.
Can Bernie Sanders claim that?
Hell, can he claim a fraction of that?
Look at Bernie’s “message” in that tweet: “the billionaire class cannot have it all when so many have so little.”
Economic illiterate that he is, Bernie thinks there is a fixed, unchanging amount of wealth in the world and a few greedy bastards are hoarding it all.
People aren’t poor because Bill Gates is rich.
There aren’t homeless because of “the billionaire class.”
Envy coupled with that kind of ignorance is a dangerous combination. But that’s Bernie Sanders.
Then there’s Liz Warren.
Unlike Bernie, who really is that envious and resentful, Liz is cynically exploiting the politics of envy.
She is a very wealthy woman who has figured out that the way to get know-nothing voters to support her is to capitalize on the politics of envy.
And boy does she.
If you go to Warren’s website (why would you want to?), she actually has a “calculator for billionaires” where you can see just how much a specific American would pay under her unconstitutional “wealth tax.”
That’s a candidate for President of the United States targeting specific Americans so that envious, resentful voters can get a thrill over how much Liz will screw ’em over.
But, that’s the politics of envy for you. You’re always counting other people’s money while ginning up resentment.
Actually, if you’re not following Carol Roth on Twitter, you really should.
Yesterday she had a thread that sums up Bernie, Liz and the politics of envy better than I ever could.
Both Warren and Sanders love to bellow about how divisive President Trump is. But the fact is that their politics of envy is fueled by ugly divisiveness.
The politics of envy exploits people who never take any responsibility for the decisions and choices they’ve made in their own lives and hands them someone else to blame.
It really is perverse.
And yet these two hateful cranks are the frontrunners in the Democrat primary.