My favorite Margaret Thatcher moment might be when she pointed out there’s no such thing as public money, only taxpayer money.
Or perhaps when she exposed leftists for being so fixated on class warfare that they would be willing to hurt the poor if they could hurt the rich even more.
That being said, I wouldn’t be surprised if most people instead chose Thatcher’s famous line about socialism and running out of other people’s money.
Which is a great line that cleverly pinpoints the ultimate consequence of statism. Just think Greece or Venezuela.
But what can we say about starting point rather than end point? Why do people get seduced by socialism in the first place?
For part of the answer, let’s turn to the famous quote from George Bernard Shaw about how “A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always count on the support of Paul.”
Very insightful, I hope you’ll agree.
Though it’s an observation on all governments, not just socialist regimes.
So I’m going to propose a new quote: “Socialism is fun so long as someone else is paying for it.”
And the reason I concocted that quote is because it’s a perfect description of many of the people supporting Bernie Sanders.
According to a poll conducted by Vox, they want freebies from the government so long as they aren’t the ones paying for them.
When we polled voters, we found most Sanders supporters aren’t willing to pay more than an additional $1,000 in taxes for his biggest proposals. That’s well short of how much more the average taxpayer would pay under his tax plan. …In other words, even Sanders supporters are saying they don’t want to pay as much to the federal government for health care as they are paying right now in the private sector. …The kicker for all of this? Some analysts believe Sanders’s plan will cost twice as much as his campaign estimates. …Sanders supporters are far and away the most likely to want free public college tuition. Still, 14 percent said they don’t want to pay additional taxes for it — and another half said they would only pay up to $1,000 a year…the majority of Sanders supporters in our poll (much less all voters) aren’t willing to pay enough to actually support those nationalized services.
As you can see from this chart, they want government to pick up all their medical expenses, but they’re only willing to pay $1,000 or less.
Gee, what profound and deep thinkers.
Maybe we should ask them if they also want private jets if they only have to pay $1,000. And Hollywood mansions as well.
The pie-in-the-sky fantasies of Bernie and his supporters are so extreme that even the statists at the Washington Post have editorialized against his proposals.
Mr. Sanders’s offerings to the American people are, quite simply, too good to be true, and much less feasible, politically or administratively, than he lets on. More expensive, as well. …Despite the substantial tax increases associated with Mr. Sanders’s policies, they would not be fully paid for — not even close. To the contrary, the tax hikes would be sufficient to cover just 46 percent of the spending increases, resulting in additional budget deficits of $18 trillion over 10 years. A deficit increase of that magnitude would cause an additional $3 trillion in interest payments over the same period — unless, of course, Mr. Sanders has another $18 trillion in tax increases or spending cuts up his sleeve.
The editorial writers at the Post, like so many people in Washington, make the mistake of fixating on the symptom of red ink instead of the underlying disease of excessive spending.
Would they actually favor his crazy ideas if he produced $18 trillion of additional tax hikes over the next 10 years?
Returning to the topic of whether Bernie voters actually would be willing to pay more tax, I recently appeared on Fox Business News to discuss the odd phenomenon of workers in the high-tech industry giving contributions to the anti-capitalist Senator from Vermont.
I confess that I don’t really know what would motivate someone to support Bernie Sanders, but I did share some thoughts.
- Republicans in recent decades have been big spenders, so libertarian-minded voters in Silicon Valley may have decided to base their votes on social issues.
- The high-tech industry may simply be sending “protection money” to leftist politicians, though that’s probably a motive only for senior executives.
- It’s rather ironic that the left goes after companies like WalMart and Exxon when firms like Google and Apple have much bigger profit margins.
Don’t forget, by the way, that the only difference between Bernie and Hillary is how fast we travel on the road to Greece.
P.S. Unfortunately, I haven’t accumulated much Bernie humor, though the Sandersized version of Monopoly is quite clever.
[…] you don’t believe me, I invite you to look at this polling data from left-wing supporters of Bernie Sanders. And if hard-left voters are not willing to pay more to […]
[…] you don’t believe me, I invite you to look at this polling data from left-wing supporters of Bernie Sanders. And if hard-left voters are not willing to pay more to […]
[…] I noted back in 2016, big government is only fun when somebody else is picking up the […]
[…] major political party almost nominated an out-of-the-closet socialist – It is rather troubling that Senator Bernie Sanders managed to attract considerable support while openly embracing a very […]
Bernie Sanders supporters are idiots.
Reblogged this on Truth Troubles: Why people hate the truths' of the real world.
[…] crowd in Silicon Valley also is generally forgiven for being rich, perhaps because they donate to politicians like Bernie […]
Venezuelans are hunting dogs and cats in the streets in order to feed their families… rioting… bare shelves… hospitals incapable of caring for patients… it is interesting to look at how the country has devolved from being a relative economic success… to failed state status… thank “21st Century Socialism”…
feel the Bern…
“16 Reasons Why Venezuela Is on the Brink of Collapse”
“Venezuela’s Eminent Collapse Was Decades in the Making”
“by Pedro García Otero May 2, 2016 at 4:37 pm”
https://panampost.com/pedro-garcia/2016/05/02/16-reasons-why-venezuela-is-on-the-brink-of-collapse/
[…] crowd in Silicon Valley also is generally forgiven for being rich, perhaps because they donate to politicians like Bernie […]
and….. there is the problem with disease…. and related taxpayer expense…
“22 Percent of Resettled Refugees in Minnesota Test Positive for Tuberculosis”
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2016/05/17/22-resettled-refugees-minnesota-tested-positive-tuberculosis/
speaking of unbridled immigration… as things exist now… millions of foreign nationals have been allowed to re-locate to America… many of them are exploiting our “social safety net”… and enjoying a quality of life unavailable in their native countries… all at the expense of the American taxpayer… our national security has been compromised… and sooner or later Americans will die because of the negligence of our political class… we spend billions of dollars snooping on our own citizen’s phone calls… yet we will not secure our borders? how does that make sense? the bottom line is democrat and republican politicians refuse to enforce our immigration laws… probably because their benefactors have asked them not to…
the socialist state of Venezuela is in a state of collapse… people are rioting for food… the situation is desperate… other south and central American countries could well follow suit… their citizens will most likely head for north America in an effort to salvage their lives…………….. what then?
Hello.
If it hasn’t happened already, get ready for the argument that immigration will fix any issues with financing the welfare-state. By using immigration of non-whites as an argument, anyone objecting will implicitly be labeled a racist. As the new-new left thinks in social hierarchies and strata, the darker the skin and the more different the religious views and corresponding social mores and values, the ‘gooder’ the person.
Look at Sweden and the EU as a warning, not a model. Our unemployment-figures are artificially low thanks to wonders of creative accounting; the self-sufficiency numbers and the numbers of net contributors are dwindling fast. The true numbers of unemployment in Sweden is one in every four aged 18 to 25, and the unemployment figure for the nation as a whole is around 17% when those in various governemental programs are accounted for.
Beware of the welfare state, America, it has nothing good to offer, but a lot of soft totalitarianism.
Comradely greetings,
Rikard, schoolteacher
[…] The Motto of Sanders Voters: “Socialism is fun so long as someone else is paying for it”, by Dan Mitchell. […]
The American left is converging to the European left, and the American right is converging to the European right.
See a pattern here?
I see perpetual Euro-like growth rates ahead, i.e. half to a quarter the world average, compounding American standard of living into averagedom and America into the middle income country group.
This is I think the greatest conceptual error commuted by Americans: They think that they will be able to Europeanize their society but retain American cultural dynamism. Nothing could be further than the truth. Nothing a more detrimental delusion. The left thinks that it can float a happy free ride socialist boat on top of American cultural dynamism which they take for granted.
Once your legislation becomes European, so will your voting patterns, so will your economy, so will your economic growth.
In the mid and long term there are three things that are important for prosperity: Growth, growth, and growth.
Reblogged this on Gds44's Blog.
socialism… even in it’s most benign form… inspires statism and violence… just today democrat elders were chastising the Bern for not encouraging his followers to behave in Nevada… “nonsense” said the Bern… and he charged that his followers were not being treated with “fairness and respect…” there is trouble ahead… particularly if the democrats are less than subtle when they nominate granny Clinton as their candidate… and relegate the elderly socialist to the dust bin of history…
it is increasingly evident that the free tuition crowd will not take this well… and after all………… they are the future of the democrat party…
Spoiled brats who are afraid to face life. Driven by envy, jealousy and resentment.
Students clamoring for free tuition don’t seem to realize that as soon as they graduate, they will be paying someone else’s tuition.
In fact, they probably will have graduated before free tuition takes effect.
The Bernopoly game should add: “Unless you’re a politician with a charitable foundation, or you just don’t bother to pay taxes.”
I would add “…so long as YOU THINK someone else is paying the bill”.
Because if you go to Europe with its 1-1.5% growth trendline (less than half the world average) you see that not only you are paying, but so will your children and grandchildren — though if Europe continues on this growth trajectory, by the time grand-children grow up, virtually all European countries will have become middle income countries and most of their more competent citizens will have emigrated.
The American path to Greece (the rate of Grecification, or Hellenization, as would be the term preferred by Greeks) will not stay constant. As the decline of slow growth takes hold and Americans keep losing their prosperity rankings in the world, the magic potion of statism, the potion that will bring (or force) everyone to work for the beehive –and with enough enthusiasm to outcompete the rest of the world! — will accelerate.
In that environment (today’s Europe) voters become even more statist than politicians — with politicians sweating it out “Oh s&$-! I have to promise all this stuff to get elected, but how am I going to deliver? We may just implode too soon, with me still in office. I have to talk some reason into these voter -lemmings”.
So you get some politicians like Manuel Valls trying to beat some mediocre sense out of his voters. Too little, too late, it’s futile! France is careening into the middle income country group. Obama took a definitive steer in that direction and Hillary or Bernie will take another serious and irreversible turn towards the same fate.
Two college students are walking as a new Tesla drives by.
The budding capitalist says, “Some day, I’ll have the newest most expensive car available.”
The budding socialist says, “Some day, I want that driver to be walking.”
[…] The Motto of Sanders Voters: “Socialism is fun so long as someone else is paying for it” […]