Fusion senior editor Felix Salmon sat down with Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders in Los Angeles last Wednesday, the day after the first Democratic presidential debate, to talk about economic policy.
That day, at least, fresh off his strong performance in front of 15 million people, Sanders was not in policy-wonk mode. Instead, he had one big message that he wanted to convey: The rich and powerful have far too much control of America, and it’s time the country was run not for them but for the 99%.
Q: Thank you for doing this. As an Englishman, I’m glad to see proud socialists running for president. Do you believe in redistribution of wealth?
A: Yeah. I think what’s happened is that there has been mass redistribution of wealth in this country for the last 30 years. The problem is it’s gone from the middle class to the top one-tenth of 1%. And I think we have to redistribute it back to working families and the middle class so that they can have a decent standard of living.
Q: So we’ll take the wealth from the rich and redistribute it to the middle classes?
A: It’s a little more complicated than that. But what we have seen in the last 30 years is the percentage of wealth owned by the top one-tenth of 1% double—double!—while the percentage of wealth owned by the middle class has significantly shrunk to the tune of many trillions of dollars. And we have to deal with that.
Q: So would you believe in a wealth tax?
A: A variety of a wealth tax. What I certainly do believe is that we have to have a strong estate tax so that when billionaires pass on, they don’t leave all of their money to their kids and perpetuate a very distorted class society. I believe we have to end these tax havens that exist in the Cayman Islands and elsewhere by which large corporations make billions of dollars a year in profits and just stash their money there and don’t pay a nickel in federal taxes. I think we need a progressive income tax so that we don’t have a situation where—as Warren Buffett reminds us—billionaires end up paying an effective tax rate lower than truck drivers or nurses. So I think there is a lot to be done in making our tax system fairer. And that’s based on the fact that today almost all of the new income and wealth being created is going to the top 1%.
Read More: http://fusion.net/story/216948/bernie-sanders-felix-salmon-interview-economy/
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