Bernie Sanders photographed on March 9, 2020 in St. Louis / Credit: AP Photo / Jeff Roberson
Editor's Note:
Carlos Alberto Montaner is a writer, journalist, and CNN contributor.
His columns are published in dozens of newspapers in Spain, the United States and Latin America.
Montaner is also vice president of the Liberal International.
The opinions expressed here are solely his.
(CNN Spanish) -
They call him "the 1% man."
Bernie Sanders seems to believe that all of America's fiscal problems could be solved if the "rich" paid more taxes.
There are roughly 330 million Americans.
The 1% is more than 3 million people.
It would be about 3,300,000.
I don't think there are that many billionaires or ultra-rich.
Apparently there are only 660, according to Forbes.
Millionaires "simply" there are many more (18.6 million, according to 2019 figures), but they do not even agree on the definition of the word.
Sanders himself has about a couple of million dollars and he defined himself as a millionaire.
In any case, the way I see it, Sanders has as much "socialism" between his chest and back as an American politician can do.
He calls himself a “democratic socialist” of the “Scandinavian” species.
Through the Sanders Institute, which his wife co-founded, he joined with the Democracy Movement in Europe in 2018 and created the Progressive International, an organization to spread his ideas.
One of the council members is the Greek economist Yanis Varoufakis.
Rafael Correa, asylee in Belgium and sentenced to 8 years in prison for the crime of bribery, is also a member of the council, as well as Andrés Arauz, the man who could solve Correa's return to Ecuador if he is elected president in front of Guillermo Lasso.
Young college students tend to be Bernie's supporters.
They like "the old man."
My granddaughter Gabriela would like her and her husband Joey not to be charged for their loans to study.
In that they agree with the vast majority of university students.
They owe, between the two, about $ 300,000.
My daughter Gina paid Gabriela in full for her four years of undergrad at Barnard.
Then came law school.
There Gabriela had to fight with the bills.
She studied law at Boston University and he did a master's degree at Columbia University.
They both have good, well-paying jobs, even though they are both starting their working lives.
OPINION | The war that was lost beforehand
One of Sanders' best arguments is that college grants are not bad expenses, but investments in America's future.
It is something that the country needs to stay ahead of the planet.
In the same way, it requires a healthy population and should not save on public health.
This country must compete in international markets and it takes a good education and healthy people to do so.
After all, the US "spends" or invests in "health" 18% of GDP, which was the annualized rate in the first three months of 2020. The highest in the world.
(The Danes only spend just over 10%.)
In 1960, the last year of President Dwight Eisenhower, it was only 5%.
In other words, we are at the beginning of the European formula of the “welfare state”: health plus university expenses.
Only the invention of that formula is not Scandinavian but German.
It started slowly under the Conservative rule of Otto von Bismarck in the 19th century.
It was then implemented by the British, Labor, Liberal and Conservative alike.
Once the voters have a “conquest”, it is very difficult to return to the previous position.
OPINION | Loneliness: reflection for Easter
Of course, this does not make Sanders a communist.
It is debatable whether it is worthwhile to address the state's health and education expenditures, but Sanders (and much less Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez) can be frivolously accused of being communists for trying to repeat in the United States what is done in Europe.
Not even Sanders' defense of certain aspects of the Cuban Revolution, Sandinismo or Chavismo can be used to qualify Sanders as a Bolshevik, although it can be used as a "useful idiot", a phrase attributed to Lenin to define certain pro-communist attitudes of whom, really, are not.
Rather, it seems to me that the fierce Bob Avakian, head of the Revolutionary Communist Party of the United States, is right when he expresses his contempt for the “progressive leaders” of his country in his book The New Communism.
It is the old communism of always, arisen from the elucubrations of Karl Marx, that leads to unspeakable crimes or tremendous famines.
Again, nothing at all.
It is the usual communism.
Something terrible.