Say it like it is, Bernie.
Today, Bernie Sanders gave a speech at the Brookings Institution--if ever there is a bastion of the establishment, elite "group think" and conventional wisdom, Brookings is the one. Still,Sanders did not hold back. I suggest reading his lead-up to the policy part of his talk--he charts his political campaigns, basically pointing out that each time he ran, he started out a vast underdog but eventually won by speaking truth to power:
Today, the most serious problem we face is the grotesque and growing level of wealth and income inequality. This is a profound moral issue, this is an economic issue and this is a political issue.
Economically, for the last 40 years, the great middle class of our country – once the envy of the world – has been in decline. Despite exploding technology, despite increased productivity, despite the global economy millions of Americas today are working longer hours for lower wages, and we have more people living in poverty than at almost any time in American history.
Today, real unemployment is not the 5.7 percent you read in newspapers. It is 11.3 percent if you include those workers who have given up looking for jobs or who are working part time when they want to work full time. Youth unemployment is over 18 percent and African-American youth unemployment is near 30 percent. Shamefully we have, by far, the highest rate of childhood poverty of any major country on earth. Despite the modest success of the Affordable Care Act, some 40 million Americans continue to have no health insurance while even more are underinsured or have heavy co-payments or deductibles on their insurance. We remain the only major country on earth that does not guarantee health care to all people as a right.
And:
Meanwhile, while the middle class continues to disappear, the wealthiest people and largest corporations are doing phenomenally well and the gap between the very, very rich and everybody else is growing wider, and wider and wider. The top 1 percent now own about 41 percent of the entire wealth in the U.S., while the bottom 60 percent own less than 2 percent of our wealth. Today, incredibly, the top one-tenth of 1 percent – the richest 16,000 families in the U.S. – now own almost as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent.
Today, The Walton family – the owner of Wal-Mart and the wealthiest family in America – is now worth $153 billion. That is more wealth than the bottom 40 percent of Americans.
Over the past decade, the net worth of the top 400 billionaires in this country has doubled – up by an astronomical $1 trillion in just 10 years.
In terms of income, as opposed to wealth, almost all of the new income generated in recent years has gone to the top one percent. In fact, the last information that we have shows that, in recent years, over 99 percent of all new income went to the top 1 percent.
In other words, while millions and millions of Americans saw a decline in their family income, while we have seen an increase in senior poverty throughout this country and millions of elderly Americans are trying to live on Social Security checks of $10,000 or $12,000 a year, over 99 percent of all new income went to the top 1 percent.
The top 25 hedge-fund managers made more than $24 billion in 2013, equivalent to the full salaries of more than 425,000 public school teachers.
And:
We need a major federal jobs program to put millions of American back to work. The fastest way to do that is to rebuild our crumbling infrastructure: roads, bridges, water systems, waste water plants, airports, railroads and schools. It has been estimated that the cost of the Bush-Cheney Iraq War, a war we should never have waged, will total $3 trillion by the time the last veteran receives needed care. A $1 trillion investment in infrastructure could support 13 million decent-paying jobs and make this country more efficient, productive and safer. Along with Senator Barbara Mikulski I introduced that legislation two weeks ago.
We must understand that climate change is real, caused by human activity and is already causing devastating harm. We must listen to the scientific community and lead the world in reversing climate change so that this planet is habitable for our children and grandchildren. We must transform our energy system away from fossil fuels and into energy efficiency and sustainable energies. Millions of homes and buildings need to be weatherized, our transportation system needs to be energy efficient and we need to greatly accelerate the progress we are already seeing in wind, solar, geothermal, biomass and other forms of sustainable energy. Transforming our energy system will not only protect the environment, it will create good paying jobs.
We not only need to create jobs, we need to raise wages. The current federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour is a starvation wage. We need to raise the minimum wage to a living wage, $15 an hour over the next few years. No one in this country who works 40 hours a week should live in poverty. We must also demand pay equity for women workers who today earn 78 percent of what their male counterparts make for doing the same job. We must also end the scandal regarding overtime pay. It is absurd that so –called “managers” making $25,000 a year do not earn time-and-a-half, even if they work 60 hours a week. Further, we need to make it easier for workers to join unions by passing card check legislation.
And, finally:
I have ticked off a number of very important issues, but let me suggest to you that the struggle that we are engaged in right now is much more than sum of all of these parts. The unprecedented struggle that we're engaged in now against the Billionaire Class is not just about preserving Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, or whether we create the millions of jobs our economy desperately needs. It's not merely about whether we raise the minimum wage, make college affordable, protect women's rights or take the bold initiatives we need to reverse climate change and save our planet. It's not just about creating a health care system which guarantees health care to all as a right, or addressing the abysmally high rate of childhood poverty.
The real struggle is whether we can prevent this country from moving to an oligarchic form of society in which virtually all economic and political power rests with a handful of billionaires. And that’s a struggle we must win.[emphasis added]
I don't think he necessarily persuaded many of the elite in the room. But, what is striking--and something we need from a president--is someone who isn't searching for an poll-tested and focus-group driven economic agenda. Rather, we need someone who knows what he or she stands for, has traveled with those beliefs for many years and is willing to stand up and describe principles and positions no matter the audiences.