The only way that rich people could pay Bernie Sanders’s proposed annual 8% wealth tax would be by selling enough stock to get the money to pay the tax. This would drive down stock prices, and would hurt every single middle class person who has a pension, a 401K, or an IRA.

Billionaires don’t just have billions of dollars in cash just sitting around, waiting to pay Bernie Sanders’s proposed annual 8% wealth tax.

For example, the richest person in the world is Jeff Bezos, the guy who created amazon. 99.9% of his wealth is in the form of stock in the company that he himself created. In the beginning, that company was worth zero. The only reason that it has value today is because he created that value. The stock in any company is worth only as much as what people are willing to pay for it.

If Sanders forced Bezos to pay an 8% annual wealth tax, Bezos would have to sell enough of his amazon stock to get the money to pay the tax.

That would drive the price of the stock down.

And that would hurt every single middle class person who has a pension, a 401K, or an IRA.

And it gets even worse than that.

Sanders tried to justify his annual 8% wealth tax by saying

“Billionaires should not exist.”

But if billionaires don’t exist, then the companies that those billionaires created would not exist either.

And the goods and services that are provided by those companies would not exist either.

Which is why Sanders also said that people in the U.S. have too many choices when it comes to deodorant and shoes, and that it’s a “good thing” when people have to wait in line to buy food.

Sanders said that Americans have too many choices when it comes to deodorant and shoes. These are his exact words:

“You don’t necessarily need a choice of 23 underarm spray deodorants or of 18 different pairs of sneakers when children are hungry in this country.”

Well, as it turns out, the policies of Hugo Chavez and Nicolas Maduro have caused a shortage of both deodorant and shoes in Venezuela.

Sanders also said that it was a “good thing” when people have to wait in line for food.

These are Sanders’s exact words:

“It’s funny, sometimes American journalists talk about how bad a country is, cause people are lining up for food. That’s a good thing! In other countries people don’t line up for food: the rich get the food and the poor starve to death.”

You can see and hear Sanders saying those words in this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJBjjP8WSbc

Well, as it turns out, the policies of Chavez and Maduro have caused shortages of food in Venezuela.

For example, in May 2017, the Washington Post reported:

In a recent survey of 6,500 Venezuelan families by the country’s leading universities, three-quarters of adults said they lost weight in 2016 — an average of 19 pounds… a level of hunger almost unheard-of outside war zones or areas ravaged by hurricane, drought or plague.

Then in February 2018, Reuters reported:

Venezuelans reported losing on average 11 kilograms (24 lbs) in body weight last year… according to a new university study…

That’s 43 pounds in two years.

Here’s a photograph from 2014 of people in Venezuela waiting in line for food: (posted here under fair use from http://www.businessinsider.com/long-food-lines-are-in-venezuela-2014-2 )

You can read all about how Venezuela ended up like this at this link.

All of this happened in Venezuela because Chavez and Maduro decided to wage war against the rich.

What is exactly what Sanders is trying to do.

In fact, I have never, ever heard Sanders criticize any of the specific economic policies of Chavez or Maduro.

Sanders hasn’t criticized Chavez or Maduro for setting price controls on food.

Sanders hasn’t criticized Chavez or Maduro for nationalizing farmland.

Sanders hasn’t criticized Chavez or Maduro for nationalizing the electric, steel, cement, and construction industries.

On the contrary, every single economic policy that Sanders has ever expressed support for adopting in the U.S. is completely in line with the economic policies that were enacted by Chavez and Maduro in Venezuela.

You cannot help the poor and the middle class by hurting the rich people who provide the goods and services, as well as the jobs, that the poor and the middle class need.

Bernie Sanders’s hatred for the rich exceeds any concern for the poor and the middle class that he claims to have.

Sanders would rather hurt the middle class and the poor, as long as it also meant that he got to hurt the rich.

A falling tide lowers all ships.

Sanders has repeatedly criticized the existence of “millionaires and billionaires.” (Although he stopped doing so after the New York Times reported that he was one of them.)

Sanders defended his own millionaire status by saying the following:

“I wrote a best-selling book. If you write a best-selling book, you can be a millionaire, too.”

I agree with Sanders.

But here’s the difference between what I believe and what Sanders believes: I believe that it’s a good thing when any person becomes a millionaire or billionaire by providing their customers with the goods and services that their customers choose to buy. By comparison, the only person whose millionaire or billionaire status Sanders has ever defended is his own.

And I never trust anyone who doesn’t hold themselves to the same standards that they expect everyone else to follow.