Replies

Taken on its face, the list contains some very arguable propositions. I am absolutely opposed to the welfare state or wealth confiscation, but some of this bears close scrutiny. For example:

"Between 1979 and 2010, for instance, the average after-tax income for the poorest quintile of American households rose from $14,800 to $19,200; for the second-poorest quintile, it rose from $29,900 to $39,100. Meanwhile, per-person antipoverty spending at the state and federal level increased sixfold between 1968 and 2008 â€” and that's excluding Medicare, unemployment benefits and Social Security."

These are not inflation adjusted numbers. In 1973 I could pay rent buy food and save money to help pay for college, in the Boston metropolitan area, making $3.00 an hour, well under the $14,800 level listed here. I assure you that in 2010 you would struggle to pay rent on the 30% increase to $3.90 per hour.

Yes we have transformed ourselves into a socialist hell-hole, but those who attempt to make a living in the bottom 2 quartiles are having to struggle. And this explains why we have "...a population the size of Spain's living in the U.S. on food stamps."

And then we have this gem Bernie Sanders thinks you can pay for an 18 trillion dollar expansion of the welfare state to make it align with a Denmark that doesn't actually exist simply by taxing 'the billionaire class.' There are 536 billionaires in America. Even if you confiscated everything they hadâ€ which, by the way, would surely destroy the American economy by triggering the greatest round of capital flight in human history and amount to government seizure of countless businesses it wouldn't come close to covering the tab of Sanders's proposals.

First, this is changing the terms of the debate. The issue is not the 536 billionaires, but how the top 1% or top .1% (320,000 folks) or top .01% (still 32,000) have faired compared to everyone else. And the answers are staggering. Almost all of us (the 99%) have, on average as a group, in real terms lost income over the last decade. The rest of them have made out handsomely.

Now some of this is hard work, risk-taking to build productive enterprises, etc. And they deserve their rewards. But a lot of it is simply crony capitalism, being paid out for tanking the economy, playing the financial shell games that got us in a mess and continue to get us in a mess.

Re #6: A large percentage of these death are from black tar heroin sold exclusively by illegal aliens from Mexico. Their unique marketing, often to school children, can only be handled by deportation and border protection. Just one of the many problems inflicted upon us by illegal aliens.

We have family friends whose young teen son OD (not from black tar). He was an intelligent, friendly guy who seemed to have a bright future but made a bad decision. It took just one time.