Bernie Sanders Sounds The Alarm On Historic Wealth Inequality In The United States

5 months ago

At a "Fight Oligarchy" event in Lenore, West Virginia on Sunday, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) spoke about wealth inequality in the United States.

Transcript

00:00So what I'm gonna talk about, and then I want to open it up, I'm gonna ask you

00:06questions and you ask me questions, but what I want to just talk about is

00:11something that you don't see much in the media and you don't hear much in Congress.

00:16And that is you are living in a country today where one person, Mr. Musk, owns

00:25more wealth than the bottom 52% of American households. You got that? One

00:32person more wealth, some 400 billion, than the bottom 52% of American households.

00:39In America today, the top 1% owns more wealth than the bottom 93%. CEOs of large

00:48companies make 350 times what their workers make. That is America today.

00:56People on top, top 1%, have never in the history of the United States of America,

01:04our great country, never had it so good. They're making more money than they can

01:09count. But what is going on in rural West Virginia, rural Vermont, all over America?

01:1760% of our people are living paycheck to paycheck. You all know what living paycheck

01:26to paycheck is about? You got 800,000 people who are homeless in America. You got 85 million

01:40Americans who have no health insurance or who are underinsured. And as a result of Trump's bill,

01:47that situation is going to become even worse. So in America in a sense, you got two countries. People on

01:56top doing phenomenally well, working class people struggling. And here's another fact you don't hear

02:02much about. In the last 50 years, all of you know, we've seen an explosion in technology. Every worker in

02:11this room is producing significantly more than a similar type worker did 50 years ago. Have wages

02:20kept up with worker productivity increases? You got the right answer. It's a sad answer, but you're right.

02:27And here's an amazing fact. That over the last 50 years, real inflation accounted for weekly wages

02:36in the last 50 years. All right? During that period, there was a massive transfer of wealth. According to the

02:49RAND Corporation, not a particularly progressive group, $75 trillion in wealth was transferred from the

02:58bottom 90% to the top 1%. So what you have seen over the last many, many decades, way before Trump,

03:10people working longer and longer hours, struggling to put food on the table, in many cases seeing a

03:17decline in their standard of living, today worried that their kids, in many ways, are going to be worse

03:23off than they are. And almost all new income and wealth goes to the people on top. And then on top of

03:31all of that, it's not only income and wealth inequality. Anybody here think that the American

03:37health care system is working well? How many major countries on earth do not guarantee health care to

03:48all of their people as a human right? Anybody know? You're living in it. I live in northern Vermont,

03:5650 miles away from the Canadian border. You get sick in Canada, you need a heart transfer, whatever it is,

04:02you end up in the hospital. You know what the bill is when you come out? Zero. And they end up spending

04:07much less per person than we do on health care. And I want to speak about this issue. I was chairman of the

04:16committee. It's an issue that I've dealt with for years. The system we have today is not only

04:22dysfunctional and broken, it is unbelievably cruel. You've got about a half a million Americans every

04:30year who go bankrupt because of medically related illnesses. They can't pay their bills, they go

04:39bankrupt. Does it make sense to anybody that because you come diagnosed with cancer or some other terrible

04:48disease that you should go bankrupt? That is crazy. We have 60,000 people a year who die unnecessarily

04:59because they don't go to a doctor when they should. I've talked to doctors all over this country and they

05:05say, you know, people coming into my office and they're really sick. And the doctors say, why didn't

05:09you come in here when you first got your symptoms? Well, I don't have any insurance. I couldn't pay

05:13the deductible. And people die unnecessarily as a result of that. In America today, we pay by far,

05:21not even close, the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs. Now, the good news for all of

05:29you who are major investors in the pharmaceutical industry is you made $100 billion in profit last

05:37year. The bad news is if you get sick and you go to the drug store, you're paying by far the highest

05:44prices in the world. In some cases, 10 times more than people in other countries. So what we're looking

05:53at America today, in my view, is a nation, people on top, got it all. They're doing really well.

06:01Working class people struggling. Healthcare system broken. A lot of kids cannot afford to go to college.

06:08That's why the time they leave school, they're going to be $50,000, $100,000 in debt. You got a housing

06:14crisis that exists in many, many parts of this country. Hundreds of thousands of people homeless,

06:21other people paying 40, 50 percent of their limited incomes for housing. So the challenge that we face,

06:29and I want your questions on this, and it's not easy stuff, is essentially how do we create an economy

06:37in the richest country on earth that works for working people and not just billionaires.

06:44And one of the impediments that we have as we go forward, it's not just the economy which is broken,

06:50we have a political system which is broken.

06:54We have a political system which is broken.

Bernie Sanders Sounds The Alarm On Historic Wealth Inequality In The United States

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