Trying to convince my cousin that Bernie is in HER best interest as well as the US.

Like a lot of people who either see taxation as theft or an unjust imposition by government, your cousin appears to be operating under the misapprehension that current capitalist arrangements represent a proportionate relationship between how hard someone works and what they earn. Essentially, that all legally earned money under this system is deserved and justified, in some natural sense. Subsequently, she feels guilty about anyone making her wealthy neighbour pay more tax, because she believes that it would be unfair to expropriate more of his "deserved" wealth.

To overcome this block, you have to explain to her that wealth accrued under capitalism does not entail that it is morally justified wealth. Explain that capitalism is just an idiosyncratic economic system of rules cobbled together by the wealthy and powerful to advantage themselves, not something that arises out of nature. Nothing about it is based on fairness, justice or morality. Its unique quality is that it exploits people's labour and pays the rewards to undeserving individuals who are able to use the rules to accumulate land, large-scale property and hoard wealth, then pass it on to their descendants in a never ending escalation of domination. Get her to start thinking from first principles and questioning whether exclusive, individual, ownership of natural resources can be justified or whether earned money really reflects deserved money. Ask if owning portions of the moon would be justified. Ask what she thinks someone like Jeff Bezos could achieve if had to exclusively rely on his own mental and physical capacities, without any of the infrastructure or manpower that he currently depends on and which enables his disproportionate accumulation of wealth? Obviously, he'd be poor.

Explain that there are numerous critiques of this system and that many intelligent people have written about, discussed and support modifications or alternative systems that do a better job of distributing resources more fairly. Elaborate that because the infrastructure in the United States and other capitalist countries is owned and run by the wealthy and powerful, they seek to silence, smear or obscure these critiques and promote the status quo to an indoctrinated public.

Then tell her that Bernie Sanders is one of those people who believes the rules should be re-written to make the United States fairer and enfranchise a group of people who have historically been left out of their fair share of the economic rewards their labour creates.

So, I think your best bet with your cousin is to try and engineer a paradigm shift in her thinking and get her to realize that she is not defending an immutable system beyond reproach or a moral one, and therefore does not need to feel guilty about the wealthy paying more tax on their undeserved wealth.

/r/SandersForPresident Thread