Bernie Sanders Answers Michael Moore: 'What's Wrong With Capitalism Today?'

[Hissyspit]

Run time: 04:55 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I5rcnAWaC64   Posted on YouTube: October 01, 2009 By YouTube Member: Views on YouTube: 0   Posted on DU: October 02, 2009 By DU Member: Hissyspit Views on DU: 847

 
Get weekly Sanders Unfiltered delivered to you on Facebook, email, Twitter, or podcast. Go to SandersUnfiltered.com http://sandersunfiltered.com/ And, be part of Senator Sanders weekly show. Submit your video question using YouTube, then post it as a video response!

MICHAEL MOORE: Hey, Bernie. It's Michael Moore. And I'd like for you to just explain to people the basic things that... what's wrong with American capitalism these days.

SEN. SANDERS: Michael, thanks very much for that very important and profound question. To do that question justice would take a lot more time than what we have today, but let me just say a few things.

Capitalism does a lot of things well... It creates wealth, it sparks entrepreneurial spirit, and that's great. But on the other hand, what we have had, especially since the Reagan administration, is an unfettered cowboy-type capitalism which has ended up with the shrinking and decline of the middle class, a very significant increase in poverty, and the reality that the people on top, the top one percent or two percent, are making out like bandits.

The top one percent earns more income than the bottom 50 percent. That is to my mind immoral. And from an economic perspective, it is not good. You have CEOs of top corporations making 400 times more than their workers. I'd like somebody to explain to me how that makes any sense - both from a moral and an economic perspective.

The United States today has the highest rate of childhood poverty. We are the only nation in the industrialized world that doesn't guarantee health care to all of its people. When kids go to college in America, they often come out twenty, thirty, forty thousand dollars in debt. I think all of that is wrong, and I think as a nation, we can do better than that.

MORE

[defendandprotect]

1. It's a ridiculous "King-of-the-Hill" system . . . intended to move the wealth and

resources of a nation from the many to the few --

Unregulated capitalism is merely organized crime --

FDR did save capitalism by regulating it --

We need to reestablish the regulations/laws which the right wing has knocked over -- NOW!!!

Glass-Stegall, for one.

[libodem]

2. I agree 100%

That was a stupendous answer! I can't help but contrast that to the way Guano-boy, spits out the words, "social justice", like he has a mouth full of spoiled milk.

[TommyPaine]

3. It's not "survival of the fittest", though...

It's survival of the most deviant, the most antisocial, the most greedy--cutting jobs, exporting jobs, cutting benefits, working people harder for less pay while executives take home seven-digit salaries, etc.

(As for Darwin, he's often misquoted. It's not "survival of the fittest", it's "survival of the most adaptable".)

[jeff30997]

4. Mmm,not sure...

That Sanders guy have a strange accent.Must be a Socialist Nazi.:sarcasm:

[Omnibus]

5. You go, Bernie!

I made the same argument with a high school friend (since turned libertarian) on facebook the other day. If all citizens don't have the same opportunity to succeed, the nation as a whole is weakened. Give them all the education they need, all the health care they need, and all the vacation time they need (not want), and American workers can equal and surpass any workers in the world!

It's too bad we're too handicapped to compete right now.