I like Bernie too. Not because I agree with his political views, but because he seems like an honest and consistent man, and that's rare among politicians. But I want to show you that there are other candidates who are also honest and consistent, and that America doesn't need to emulate Scandanavia in order to be successful.
- Spreading the wealth from the top 1% to all Americans.
One of the methods he believes he should do this with is by raising the minimum wage. Anybody that has taken Econ 101 knows the issue with raising the minimum wage. You increase the cost of labor for employers, raising the bar to be in the work force, since it only makes economic sense to hire people who increase the companies production by a greater value than their wage.
While the economic literature goes both ways, a fairly recent study by the National Bearue of Economic Research found "binding minimum wage increases had significant, negative effects on the employment and income growth of targeted workers. Lost income reflects contributions from employment declines, increased probabilities of working without pay (i.e., an "internship" effect), and lost wage growth associated with reductions in experience accumulation.
The point is that there's evidence that tinkering with market forces can have unintended consequences. But there is no evidence that you need a minimum wage in order to help the poor, when you already have a welfare system in place.
Free college tuition for all citizens.
Planet Money did a great podcast on the price of college. The point was that the issue today is not paying for college, since community college is still fairly cheap, especially for low income households. The issue is finishing college, since something like 1/3 of community college students never get their degree.
Why anyone would defend this is beyond me, unless that person is an employer.
People seem to have the impression that the top 1% is full of families with passed down wealth that never had to work for their money. That is simply not the case...
https://www.aeaweb.org/aea/2013conference/program/retrieve.php?pdfid=160
69% of the Forbes 400 are the first in their family to own a business.
68% of them did not grow up in wealthy household.
If those in the top .1% made the that money by creating businesses and goods people around the glob enjoyed, I'll sure as hell defend their right to keep that money.
Now I want to bring up two issue where I think Bernie Sanders is lacking. Obviously this is influenced by my own libertarian views.
Privacy
To my knowledge Bernie has done little to no talking about the NSA and protecting our privacy. The only main party candidate that seems to truly care about protecting Americans privacy is Rand Paul, who filibustered an NSA extension for 11 hours. This was when Rand won my vote.
Gun Rights
I haven't hear Bernie talk much about protecting gun rights. I fear he will just go along with his parties views and support increasing gun control.
And this is really why I'm hesitant to support Bernie. His goal seems to be turn the US into Scandinavian 2.0 . Scandinavian countries are doing great and there's many things we can learn from them, but I don't think we should lose our own countries values of individualism and capitalism. I think free markets are strength of the US, not a weakness. I think the second amendment is a strength of the US, not a weakness.
I personally like Rand Paul the most, because he's fiscally Conservative while leaving most of the Christian and Militaristic conservative views behind. But Sanders, is my second choice between the two main parties.