There’s a glaring irony with Bernie Sanders’ brand of socialism that he’s trying to sell to America. It’s the fact that on one hand Bernie rails against the government as being corrupt and rigged, yet he says by giving that same government more money, it will fix all your problems.
To believe in Sanders’ brand of socialism and think it will work, you must also believe the government is without corruption and will handle the money it receives honorably. But that’s where the problem lies with Sanders’ plan and socialism in general. Governments are not corruption-free, and the current American government is far from corruption free. In fact, most would argue we are living in the most corrupt times in American history.
Bernie Sanders’ brand of socialism almost relies on a type of benevolent dictator type of mindset. You must believe that the government is in essence a benevolent entity which will handle the flow of all money through it honestly and fairly. Of course, experience tells us that this is not the case, and even more so it’s impossible. All governments have corruption, and the larger percentage of the country’s money they control, the more corrupt they become. We have seen this play out in countless countries throughout history.
In a hypothetical perfect world, Bernie Sanders’ plans would actually be viable. If government was 100% benevolent, they could be trusted to run a national healthcare system that would be cheaper and better than private insurance. But the problem is, we don’t live in a hypothetical perfect world. We live in the real world, where lobbyist, special interests, and corrupt politicians will siphon off huge chunks of the increased tax dollars coming in for their own enrichment, leaving an ever shrinking supply to pay for the actual healthcare, which means declining care and increased waiting times until the system collapses under its own corruption.
The confusing part of Sanders’ ideology is that along with his calls for a socialist agenda, he also rails against the same government he wants to put in charge of all our money. He believes if you just start taxing everybody’s money and cause a windfall for politicians, that somehow they will give up their corrupt ways and start caring about voters. But the reality is the total opposite, if you increase the money that politicians have access too, they will rush to the trough like pigs and start a feeding frenzy.
We’ve already seen a taste of what government does when it has access to a few extra billion dollars such as in the recent Biden family corruption scandal. A few billion dollars in aid to the Ukraine and entire political families were first in line to start siphoning off the cash. Now imagine if those same politicians had access to trillions more in tax revenue. It would spark the biggest boom in corruption the world has ever seen.
So I will concede that if we all lived in a hypothetical perfect world with a benevolent government, old Bernie would have the right idea. But we all know we don’t live in that world, not even close, and feeding the beast even more of our tax dollars would cripple this country with unending corruption.
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