Opinion Of Bernie Sanders

[RaphaelDLG]

HP. Someone who has never held a real job besides public office shouldn't be dictating to others how they should best run their businesses, healthcare, and lives. Whenever, in townhall debates, Bernie is confronted by real people who would be harmed by his policies, he, like some worn-down, left wing robot, reverts to his talking points about the "millionehz and billionehz".

I have a certain respect for him, in that I don't think he's nearly as corrupt as the average politician, but his actual policy proposals would be awful for the country.

Bernie has had many types of jobs. They include carpenter, farmer, filmmaker, writer, non-profit director, campaign worker, as well as his elected positions.

Perhaps what I said was a bit of an exaggeration, but the point remains that before becoming Mayor of Burlington, Senator Sanders was largely an angry left-wing couch surfer who could never keep a steady job nor contribute to the economy in any productive way.

https://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/bernie-sanders-the-bum-who-wants-your-money/

I'm aware that in the grand scheme of things, this is not very important, but I think it speaks to his complete lack of knowledge as to how the economy actually functions.

I appreciate your logic, but we have had other Presidents that basically have done nothing with their lives other than be politicians and have been tremendously successful in their political jobs and sensitive to the realities of regular working folks.

FDR, for instance, worked a real job for less than two years before going into politics and had a prissy, entitled upbringing where he never had to do any real work, but turned out to be great for whatever reason.

And of course you can occasionally have rags to riches people with a delusional view of their own success and how it was A) 100% due to their own will and not any exogenous factors and B) reproducable for every single other person if they work hard enough (cough*Reagan*cough).

One thing that benefits Sanders in his background is the relative poverty and poor health that his parents struggled through when he was a kid.

[GM Team Member and Senator WB]

One of the best current US politicians.

[Fuzzy Bear]

HP. Someone who has never held a real job besides public office shouldn't be dictating to others how they should best run their businesses, healthcare, and lives. Whenever, in townhall debates, Bernie is confronted by real people who would be harmed by his policies, he, like some worn-down, left wing robot, reverts to his talking points about the "millionehz and billionehz".

I have a certain respect for him, in that I don't think he's nearly as corrupt as the average politician, but his actual policy proposals would be awful for the country.

Bernie has had many types of jobs. They include carpenter, farmer, filmmaker, writer, non-profit director, campaign worker, as well as his elected positions.

Perhaps what I said was a bit of an exaggeration, but the point remains that before becoming Mayor of Burlington, Senator Sanders was largely an angry left-wing couch surfer who could never keep a steady job nor contribute to the economy in any productive way.

https://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/bernie-sanders-the-bum-who-wants-your-money/

I'm aware that in the grand scheme of things, this is not very important, but I think it speaks to his complete lack of knowledge as to how the economy actually functions.

I appreciate your logic, but we have had other Presidents that basically have done nothing with their lives other than be politicians and have been tremendously successful in their political jobs and sensitive to the realities of regular working folks.

FDR, for instance, worked a real job for less than two years before going into politics and had a prissy, entitled upbringing where he never had to do any real work, but turned out to be great for whatever reason.

And of course you can occasionally have rags to riches people with a delusional view of their own success and how it was A) 100% due to their own will and not any exogenous factors and B) reproducable for every single other person if they work hard enough (cough*Reagan*cough).

One thing that benefits Sanders in his background is the relative poverty and poor health that his parents struggled through when he was a kid.

I am not real impressed with businessmen that go into politics.  The basis for their candidacies  is the false logic of "We need to run government like a business."

The problem is that, in order to maintain a stable, middle-class society, expenditures need to be made for the common weal that are not profitibale, in and of themselves, but without them, you'll have a third world country with a thin veneer of rich people at the top. a small, unstable middle class, and a large mass of poor people living in poverty (at best) or in destitution (at worst).

Rick Scott espoused the philosophy of the businessman politician in his Inaugural Address as Governor of FL:  "Prosperity comes from the Private Sector.  ONLY from the Private Sector."  And he's not entirely wrong, but lots of third world countries and perpetually "developing" nations (e.g. Brazil) have prosperity, but no stability.  That's because stability comes from the Public Sector.  ONLY from the Public Sector.  Stability comes from those institutions that allow persons to enjoy at least a marginal middle class life with a degree of stability to it.

Sanders is the counterpoint to the Rick Scotts and the Rick Snyders; benevolence (to the point of naivete') to counter the unmitigated greed and the shirking of public and social responsibilities of citizenship (such as paying one's fair share of taxes) at the cost of those institutions that stabilize the middle class.  These men never consider the real cost of their philosophies.  They don't think that the public school system and the safety net are what stands between them and a sea of homeless adults and "street urchin" children (homeless AND parentless) as were once common in our cities.  It is because of the public safety net and pubic schools that we don't have mobs of hungry people storming our state houses and the Capitol in Washington.  The stock market rise means nothing to those who would do so for the simple reason that it doesn't benefit them.

However much Sanders lives in a dream world on some issues, the Scotts and Snyders live in the same dream world; just the other side of the coin.  Yes, people will eventually get tired of paying taxes to folks who don't work and (more importantly) don't try to work,  and people are righteously indignant at those receiving safety net benefits to make honest efforts at maintaining employment (and there are some; please don't insult my intelligence).  How tired will they get of their Medicare being ripped off at the level of Epic Proportions (as Rick Scott did)?  How tired will they get of drinking sewer water (as they have in Flint, MI) due to a combination of greed and neglect by businessman-pols (like Rick Snyder)?  Their dream is that their greed and neglect have no blowback.  They have no idea how patient Americans have been with their leaders.

Perhaps a big reason for such partisan divisions these days is the degree to which the GOP has chosen to deny the degree to which the middle class is maintained by the public sector.  Perhaps Bernie Sanders doesn't fully appreciate the degree to which our Free Enterprise System (a misnomer, given the barriers to entry for most people starting businesses in many areas, but I'll ride with it for this post) is the Golden Goose  It is, indeed, possible to kill the Goose that lays the Golden Eggs; it's just a Goose.  But if Bernie Sanders represents that side of the naivete' coin, Scott,  Snyder, and others represent the side that will view "job creation" as an accomplishment, even if the beneficiaries of that job they created will need a 2nd job, just like it, in order to have their own apartment.

[TPIG]

HP. Someone who has never held a real job besides public office shouldn't be dictating to others how they should best run their businesses, healthcare, and lives. Whenever, in townhall debates, Bernie is confronted by real people who would be harmed by his policies, he, like some worn-down, left wing robot, reverts to his talking points about the "millionehz and billionehz".

I have a certain respect for him, in that I don't think he's nearly as corrupt as the average politician, but his actual policy proposals would be awful for the country.

Bernie has had many types of jobs. They include carpenter, farmer, filmmaker, writer, non-profit director, campaign worker, as well as his elected positions.

Perhaps what I said was a bit of an exaggeration, but the point remains that before becoming Mayor of Burlington, Senator Sanders was largely an angry left-wing couch surfer who could never keep a steady job nor contribute to the economy in any productive way.

https://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/bernie-sanders-the-bum-who-wants-your-money/

I'm aware that in the grand scheme of things, this is not very important, but I think it speaks to his complete lack of knowledge as to how the economy actually functions.

I appreciate your logic, but we have had other Presidents that basically have done nothing with their lives other than be politicians and have been tremendously successful in their political jobs and sensitive to the realities of regular working folks.

FDR, for instance, worked a real job for less than two years before going into politics and had a prissy, entitled upbringing where he never had to do any real work, but turned out to be great for whatever reason.

And of course you can occasionally have rags to riches people with a delusional view of their own success and how it was A) 100% due to their own will and not any exogenous factors and B) reproducable for every single other person if they work hard enough (cough*Reagan*cough).

One thing that benefits Sanders in his background is the relative poverty and poor health that his parents struggled through when he was a kid.

Well, my point is not that every politician needs to be some master businessman or great economic mind. I'm simply saying that those politicians who seek to massively change the economic system of the country should at least have some experience and knowledge in how the system actually works. And while we're talking about FDR, he wasn't exactly known as an economic genius; things like the Agricultural Adjustment Act come to mind...

[RaphaelDLG]

I have some appreciation for both of the above responses

[IceSpear]

I've disagreed with him a lot of times, but overall I'd still say FF. Count me as one of the few people that doesn't see him as either Satan incarnate or a godlike deity.

[JGibson]

FF.