Quote of the Day

What we have seen in recent years is not that [government] works for working people. [Rather, we] have seen attempts to make massive cuts to health care and education and environmental protections. [We] have also seen massive federal aid to Wall Street with the biggest bailout in American history in 2008; and massive help to the fossil-fuel industry, to the pharmaceutical industry, and so forth and so on.

So, as people like Martin Luther King Jr. talked about, we do have socialism: We have socialism for the rich and large corporations, and we have unfettered free enterprise for working families. We have to change that.

. . . We have to talk about democratic socialism as an alternative to unfettered capitalism, where the rich get richer and almost everybody else is getting poorer. I think that’s a message that young people are receptive to, and I think it’s a message that working people are receptive to.

Right now, the average worker in America is making, in inflation-accounted-for dollars, and despite a huge increase in technology and worker productivity, exactly the same amount of money that he or she made 43 years ago. That’s incomprehensible.

There has been a massive transfer of wealth from the working class of this country to the top one percent, and the corporate media doesn’t talk about it. And at the end of the day, nobody can defend three families in this country owning more wealth than the bottom half of the American people. Or that 49 percent of all new income today goes to the top one percent. That is indefensible. That is outrageous. That is immoral. And I think the American people understand that that has got to change.

– Sen. Bernie Sanders
Quoted in John Nichol's interview of Sanders for The Nation
June 12, 2019

Related Off-site Links:
Watch Bernie Sanders Deliver His George Washington University Speech on Why Democratic Socialism Is the “Only Way to Defeat Oligarchy and Authoritarianism” – Common Dreams (June 12, 2019).
Transcript: Bernie Sanders Defines His Vision for Democratic Socialism in the United States – Vox (June 12, 2019).
Bernie Sanders Calls His Brand of Socialism a Pathway to Beating Trump – Reid J. Epstein and Sydney Ember (The New York Times, June 12, 2019).
Bernie Has Opened the Door for Democratic Socialism – Meagan Day (Jacobin, June 12, 2019).
Bernie Sanders, Channeling FDR, Argues Case for Democratic Socialism, Pitches “Economic Bill of Rights” – Adam Kelsey and Lissette Rodriguez (ABC News, June 12, 2019).
Sanders Defends Democratic Socialism, Calling for “21st Century Bill of Rights” – Cara Korte (CBS News, June 12, 2019).
Bernie Sanders’s Definition of Democratic Socialism, Explained – Tara Golshan (Vox, June 12, 2019).
Bringing Socialism Back: How Bernie Sanders Is Reviving an American Tradition – Joseph M. Schwartz (In These Times, December 17, 2017).

UPDATES: Bernie Sanders Just Made a Brilliant Defense of Democratic Socialism – Bhaskar Sunkara (The Guardian, June 13, 2019).
Bernie Sanders Says Democratic Socialism Needed to Defeat “Corporate Socialism for the Rich” – Democracy Now! (June 13, 2019).
Bernie Sanders Is Right – We’re All “Socialists” Now – Eric Levitz (New York Magazine, June 13, 2019).
Can Sanders Beat Trump? “Absolutely,” Says Famed Actor and Activist Danny Glover – Colin Demarest (Aiken Standard, June 13, 2019).

For more coverage at The Wild Reed of the 2020 U.S. presidential election, see:
• Marianne Williamson: Quote of the Day – November 5, 2018
• Jacob Weindling: Quote of the Day – November 19, 2018
• Something to Think About – February 19, 2019
• Quotes(s) of the Day – February 26, 2019
• Bernie Sanders: Quote of the Day – March 2, 2019
• Talkin’ ’Bout An Evolution: Marianne Williamson’s Presidential Bid
• Why Marianne Williamson Is a Serious and Credible Presidential Candidate
• Pete Buttigieg: Quote of the Day – April 17, 2019
• Marianne Williamson: Quote of the Day – April 24, 2019
• Marianne Williamson: Reaching for Higher Ground
• Progressive Perspectives on Joe Biden's Presidential Run
• Beto, Biden and Buttigieg: “Empty Suits and Poll-Tested Brands”
• Pete Buttigieg, White Privilege, and Identity Politics
• “A Lefty With Soul”: Why Presidential Candidate Marianne Williamson Deserves Some Serious Attention

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• Something to Think About – February 19, 2018
• Quote of the Day – January 8, 2019
• Quote of the Day – September 7, 2017
• Something to Think About – January 22, 2017
• Quote of the Day – January 21, 2017
• Quote of the Day – November 9, 2016
• Progressive Perspectives on the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election
• Carrying It On
• Hope, History, and Bernie Sanders

Image: Associated Press/Jeff Chiu.