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Bernie Sanders: The Vox Conversation

Mar 08, 2020
Ezra Klein: Tell me what it means to be a socialist. Bernie Sanders: a democratic socialist. What it means is that you look closely at countries around the world that have successful records of fighting and implementing programs for the middle class and working families. When you do that, you automatically go to countries like Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden and other countries that have had Labor governments or social democratic governments, and what you find is that in virtually all of those countries, healthcare is a right for everyone. all the people and their systems are much more profitable than ours, university education is practically free in all those countries, people retire with benefits, the salaries they receive are usually higher, the distribution of wealth and income is much fairer, their public education systems are generally stronger than ours.
bernie sanders the vox conversation
In general, their governments tend to represent the needs of their middle class and working families rather than billionaires and campaign contributors. When I talk about being a democratic socialist, those are the countries I'm talking about and those are the ideas I think we can learn a lot from. Ezra Klein: What's the underlying principle there? What are the situations where, when you look at a certain area of ​​the economy, you say, "That's something we should give to the market" or "That's something we should possibly federalize"? Bernie Sanders: Good questions. Health care, in my opinion, is a right of all people.
bernie sanders the vox conversation

More Interesting Facts About,

bernie sanders the vox conversation...

That's what I think. I believe that every man, woman and child has the right to health care and that right exists in virtually every other major industrialized country on the planet. We're the weird ones out there. Despite the modest gains of the Affordable Care Act, we have 35 million people still uninsured and, more importantly, millions more are underinsured with high copays and deductibles. I believe in Medicare for all people and I believe that it is not an area where private insurance companies should work, because once you have private insurance companies, their goal is to make as much money as possible, not to provide quality care.
bernie sanders the vox conversation
In terms of healthcare, yes, we should have a public healthcare system that guarantees healthcare to all people in a cost-effective way. I think the way to do it is to take a Medicare and single-payer approach. In terms of education, I don't know how the United States can be competitive in a global economy if we don't have the best-educated workforce in the world. What does that mean? It means everyone should be able to get all the education they need, regardless of their family's income. What does that mean? It means that we should go back to where we were 50 years ago and what Germany and many other countries were like, and say, "Do you want to go to university?
bernie sanders the vox conversation
Do you have the ability to go to university? Do you have the desire to go to university?" "Public colleges and universities will be free," because education should be a right of all people. It seems to me that when you consider the basic needs of life - education, healthcare, nutrition - there must be a guarantee that people receive what they need to live a decent life. Ezra Klein: Implicit in what you just said and knowing some of your policies on this, you want to see the government lowering health care prices a little bit lower than they are now.
Americans pay much higher prices... Bernie Sanders: Let me interrupt you, the answer is absolutely yes. Ezra Klein: Yes, although I have a slightly different question about that. The argument made in this regard is that a huge amount of healthcare innovation around the world comes from other countries that take advantage of the amount of money Americans pay to induce innovation in the pharmaceutical sector in the medical device sector. Are you concerned that if we got to that point we would see a slowdown in healthcare innovation? Bernie Sanders: I don't. A lot of healthcare research money goes into me-too drugs, copycat drugs that will create another drug that doesn't really substantially increase the kinds of benefits it has for the patient.
In my opinion, this issue of the high cost of prescription drugs is a huge issue, it is an economic issue, it is a moral issue and I strongly reject what is happening in this country right now. Right now in the United States, unique among major countries, pharmaceutical companies can double the prices of a drug tomorrow for no particular reason, simply because they can make more money. We've seen that with brand name drugs, now we see it more and more with generic drugs. I absolutely believe that the cost of prescription drugs should be regulated. I will never forget - it was a moment I will remember all my life - taking a group of women from Vermont across the border into Canada, where they bought the medications they needed for breast cancer at a tenth of the price they paid in the country. .
United States of America. I also find it very interesting that many of my friends who are large free traders, who want to see lettuce and tomatoes brought in from small farms in Mexico, have no problem with the fact that we cannot import brand name prescription drugs from other countries. worldwide. That speaks to the power of the pharmaceutical industry. Pharma, very powerful lobbying forces, forcing us to pay high prices in this country. I talk to doctors who work in working-class communities and they tell me that a quarter of the prescriptions they write are not filled. That's crazy.
I think we need to approach the cost of prescription drugs very differently than we do today. Ezra Klein: Something in that answer, but also in what you said about being a democratic socialist, is a more international vision. I think that if you take global poverty seriously, you reach conclusions that in the United States are considered out of bounds politically. Things like dramatically increasing the level of immigration we allow, even up to an open borders level. On a sharp increase... Bernie Sanders: Open borders? No, that is a proposal from the Koch brothers. Ezra Klein: Really? Bernie Sanders: Of course.
That's a right-wing proposal that essentially says there is no United States... Ezra Klein: But it would... Bernie Sanders: Excuse me... Ezra Klein: It would make a lot of the world's poor richer, right? he? Bernie Sanders: It would impoverish everyone in the United States, it would be eliminating the concept of the nation state and I don't think there is any country in the world that believes in that. If you believe in a nation state or a country called the United States, the United Kingdom, Denmark or any other country, in my opinion you have an obligation to do everything you can to help the poor.
What people on the right in this country would love is an open borders policy. Bringing in all kinds of people, working for $2 or $3 an hour, that would be great for them. I do not believe in that. I think we have to raise wages in this country, I think we have to do everything we can to create millions of jobs. I was on the ground a few minutes ago. Do you know what youth unemployment is in the United States of America today? If you're white and a high school graduate, it's 33%, 36% Hispanic, and 51% African American. Do you think we should open the borders and bring in a lot of low-wage workers or do you think maybe we should try to get those kids jobs?
I believe that from a moral responsibility we have to work with the rest of the industrialized world to address the problems of international poverty, but that cannot be achieved by making the people of this country even poorer. Ezra Klein: So what are the responsibilities that we have? Someone who is poor by American standards is quite well off by Malaysian standards, for example, so if the calculation so easily benefits the person in the United States, how do we think about that responsibility? I agree. you have a nation-state structure. You are always going to do it, politics does not allow anything else.
But philosophically, the question is how to weigh it? How do you think what the foreign aid budget should be? What do you think about poverty abroad? Bernie Sanders: I weigh it. As a United States Senator from Vermont, my first obligation is to ensure that children in my state and across the country have the opportunity to go to college, which is why I support free public colleges and universities. I think we should create millions of jobs by rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure and ask the richest people in this country to start paying their fair share of taxes. I think we should raise the minimum wage to at least $15 an hour so the people of this county don't live in poverty.
I believe we will end the plight of about 20% of our children who live in poverty in America. Now how do you do that? What you have to do is understand that there has been a huge redistribution of wealth in the last 30 years from the middle class to the richest 1/10 or 1%. The other thing that is understood globally is a horrendous imbalance in terms of wealth in the world. As I mentioned above, the top 1% will own more than the bottom 99% in about a year. That's absurd. That leads you to programs like the IMF and so on. I think what we need to do as a global economy is make sure that people in poor countries have good paying jobs, education, healthcare and nutrition for their people.
This is a moral responsibility, but it cannot be done, as some would suggest, by lowering the standards of American workers, which have already declined very significantly. Ezra Klein: Do you think service sector jobs can become high-paying jobs? Bernie Sanders: Not only do I think they can, I know they can. If you look at what culinary workers have done in Las Vegas, there are people who clean bathrooms, who make beds, who make $35,000 to $40,000 a year and have good health care benefits. So the answer is that there is nothing magical. I mean, what we've seen historically in this country, until recently, is that if you worked in a unionized factory in Detroit, and this is changing, unfortunately as part of the race to the bottom, you can earn a middle-class wage. , $20-$25 an hour, you have good benefits, you have a retirement program.
And that is being attacked every day. There is nothing sacred about working in a factory compared to making a bed or cleaning a bathroom. In the case of hospitality workers, we have seen that with good unions they can earn a living wage and good benefits. Ezra Klein: So is it fair to say that your strategy to bring back that middle class and improve those jobs is to increase union density? Bernie Sanders: Oh, absolutely. No doubt about it. Ezra Klein: How do you do that? Bernie Sanders: That is achieved by passing laws that make it easier for workers to join unions.
Right now it's pretty difficult. I'm not saying that all workers want to join a union, that's not true, but there are millions of people who do. Right now employers can take workers, put them in a private room, threaten them that if this company unionizes we'll move to China, or say that if they try to organize the union, well, they've been late lately. , I'm afraid we'll have to say goodbye to you. I think we have to make it easier for them. There is legislation, which I support, the Employee Free Choice Act, which says that if 50 percent of an agency's workers plus one sign a union card, they have a union.
And I believe in that. Ezra Klein: That legislation, as I recall, virtually all Democrats signed in 2008, and Democrats had huge majorities in Congress in 2009 and it just didn't go anywhere. What makes you optimistic that it can be approved? Bernie Sanders: I think what we need in this country is to understand that, given the power of corporate America, the billionaire class, the big campaign contributors, what is happening today in the United States Congress has nothing to do with with the reality of the middle class. working class families in this country. It has to do with the power of big money.
The only way real change will happen is when millions of people get involved in the political process and tell the United States Congress and any president of the United States that they have to start working for us and not just for the United States. More rich. in this country. When that happens, huge things happen. Let me give you an example. Three or four years ago the minimum wage was 7 and a quarter and nobody talked about it. Do you know what happened thanks to the grassroots organization? Not only have cities and states raised the minimum wage due to grassroots activism, as recently seen a few weeks ago in a Wall Street Journal poll, but by a 10% margin the American people think we should raise the minimum wage. minimum wage, not $10.10, whichRepublicans oppose it, but at $15.
I give you another example. Social Security. You've heard here in Washington that virtually every Republican wants to cut Social Security, right? That's his mantra. Do you know what the American people want according to that same poll by a margin of 3 to 1? They don't want to cut Social Security, they want to expand Social Security benefits by lifting the limit on taxable income. When you organize at the grassroots level, whether for gay rights, raising the minimum wage, or expanding social security, that's when change happens. Ezra Klein: I think a lot of people would have thought that the amount of popular support that the Democrats had in 2008 would have produced that kind of effect.
Why don't you think it was like that? Bernie Sanders: Because Democrats, to a large extent, are separated from working families. Are Democrats 10 times, 100 times better than Republicans on every issue? Surely they are, but I think it would be hard to imagine you walking out of here or walking down the street or walking a few miles away from here and stopping someone on the street and saying, "Do you think the Democratic Party is the Democratic Party? the party of the American working class? People would look at you and say, "What are you talking about?" There was a time, I think under Roosevelt, maybe even under Truman, when workers were perceived to be part of the party Democrat.Party.
I think for a variety of reasons, many of them related to money and politics, that is no longer the case. In my opinion, that is exactly what should not be happening. Instead of spending all our time fundraising money, I think we should go out and organize people and get them together around a progressive agenda that expands the middle class, that tells the billionaire class that they can't have it all, that tells corporate America: " They're going to have to start paying their fair share of taxes," which says that we're going to raise the minimum wage, that we're going to make college available to everyone, regardless of income, that we're going to have pay equity for working women, that We are going to create millions of jobs by rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure.
You need a progressive agenda and then you need the ability to go out and organize people. When that happens, things change here, it's not the other way around. Ezra Klein: What does it mean to organize people? Bernie Sanders: That's a great question. In terms of my campaign, on July 29 we will be holding, as I understand it, at least 1,000 organizing meetings simultaneously across this country involving 20 or 30,000 people. What we urge our supporters to do is go out, knock on doors, register people to vote, talk about the important issues facing our country in a way that the media too often does not.
Talk to our Republican friends and neighbors and ask them why they vote for candidates who are willing to send their jobs to China, deny their children the ability to receive health care or obtain a higher education, engage people in that discussion. I often make the joke, although it's not such a joke, that if we could spend half the time in this country talking about why the middle class is collapsing instead of football or baseball, we would revolutionize what is happening in America. I want that discussion. I want to know why the rich get richer and everyone else gets poorer.
I want to know why the United States is the only major country in the world that does not provide healthcare to its entire population. The only major country that does not have family and medical leave so women can stay home with their children when they have a baby. Those are the questions we should debate. Ezra Klein: You talk a lot about class outcomes in the American economy. Another way to solve many of these problems, and it came up when you talked about youth employment, is by race. Do you think we need specific issues to address the racial wealth gap and the racial employment gap?
Bernie Sanders: Sure. Everyone knows that racism has existed since day one. Think about what we did: what the people who came from Europe did to the Native Americans, the atrocities committed. Think of the horrors of slavery. Think about what we did to the Asians who came to build the railroads and the Asian Exclusion Act. Think of the discrimination against Italians, Irish, Jews, and virtually everyone else who wasn't like the people who were here. What we are seeing today, of course, is some people developing a wage problem between Native Americans and those people who have come to our country.
We have 51% African American children who are unemployed, poverty rates in the African American community are much higher than whites, wealth ownership is much lower than whites, so of course we have that gap. What we have to do is create economic policies that improve the lives of all our people. The white working class is disappearing, the middle class is disappearing, and it's worse in Hispanic and African American communities. We have to come together and create policies that improve the lives of all working people. In terms of prejudice, yes, of course, that's an extra topic. Is there racism in the United States?
Of course. We've seen an explosion of that recently. Ezra Klein: What about politicians' social networks? And what I'm asking is that the most traceable relationship between the rich and the middle class is donations and lobbying spending. But a big part of the reason Democratic administrations have so many Wall Streeters is that politicians end up riding in the CEO/Wall Street class. I'm curious how you think people's actual social media class ends up affecting political outcomes. Bernie Sanders: The answer is that you are right, but I would approach it from another perspective. If I'm a regular politician and I need to raise $20 million to run for the United States Senate or $50 million, where am I going to go?
Do you think I'm going to the American Legion hall? A union hall, talking to the working class? Especially with Citizens United, candidates are increasingly reliant on the very, very rich. I am a normal politician and I am proud, by the way, the vast majority of our money comes from workers, not from the rich, but if I am a normal politician who needs to raise 20 or 50 million dollars, where am I going to go? I'll sit with the rich, go to the country club, fundraise at fancy resorts, and meet those people. But that is the goal of this corrupt campaign finance system.
If you're going to contribute a million dollars to my super PAC, well, maybe you're a really nice guy and you like to participate or maybe you want something. I think you want something and you and I will become very good friends so that I can do your bidding. In other words, the millionaire class and the billionaire class increasingly own the political process and the politicians who come to them for money. I am very concerned, and I say this from the bottom of my heart, that we are moving very, very quickly from a democratic society, one person, one vote, to an oligarchic form of society that determines who the elected officials of this country are.
I'm going to do everything I can to stop that. Ezra Klein: When you say you want elections to be publicly funded, do you want to reduce the ability to fund them privately? Bernie Sanders: The first thing I want to do is overturn the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision, which is a total disaster. Free speech does not equate to people's ability to buy elections and what I have said is that if I am elected President of the United States, any Supreme Court nominee I run will make it very clear that they will vote to overthrow Citizens United. .
Secondly, I think what you want to do is at least make sure that the candidates running have as much money as their opponents, who may have unlimited amounts of money. Third, I think there are several ways, and we're going to come to a position on this, several ways that the issue can be addressed. One way that I find intriguing is that you basically provide $100 for every citizen of the United States of America and you say to that person, "Here's your hundred dollars, you can make a contribution, you can get a hundred dollar tax credit." Yes Spend $100 on any candidate you want.
I think that would very significantly democratize the political process in the United States and take us a long way from these billionaire-controlled super PACS that are now buying elections. Ezra Klein: I want to change foreign policy. Is there a particular school of thought in foreign policy that you subscribe to? Do you describe yourself as a realist or a democratic socialist? Bernie Sanders: I don't know what that means. I trust that we are all realistic. Ezra Klein: I'm not sure we are. Bernie Sanders: I don't know what that word means. Look, this is what I'll tell you.
When you talk about foreign policy, you talk about many, many things, but perhaps the most important thing you talk about is war. Voting to go to war is the most difficult decision any member of Congress must make. If you want, I'll tell you a little about my history in foreign policy. I was elected in 1990 to the House. Remember the first Gulf War when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait? The first Bush told us that the only alternative was war. The only way to get them out is for the whole world to be united against Saddam Hussein and President Bush said that the only way to get him out is by invading that region.
I voted no. It wasn't a difficult vote because most people believed we should go to war. In 2003, the second Bush told us that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, that it was absolutely imperative that we invade Iraq, that our soldiers would return home in six months, that we would establish democracy in Iraq and perhaps the entire region, that everything be wonderful. I didn't believe it and if you look at the speeches I made in the House, unfortunately a lot of what I said about the destabilizing impact of that invasion turned out to be true. I am not a pacifist and I understand that sometimes you have to go to war.
I think war is the last option. In terms of Iran, which is what we're dealing with right now, I applaud the President and I applaud Secretary Kerry for his enormously difficult job of trying to reach an agreement with the P5 plus 1 on Iran, to try to work out how we can avoid for Iran to obtain a nuclear weapon, which for me is an absolute imperative, but it must be done in a way that does not lead to war. I get very nervous, I get very nervous listening to many of my Republican colleagues who apparently have learned nothing from the war in Afghanistan, from the war in Iraq, and they are ready to go, to war again, that is the simple TRUE.
I am the former chairman of the Senate Veterans Committee. Most people don't know it. People know that we lost 6,700 brave women in Iraq and Afghanistan. They don't know that 500,000 came home with PTSD and traumatic brain injury and they don't know what that has done to those people and their families. Before going to war, explore all other options. That would be the basic principle of my foreign policy. Ezra Klein: If the time came, do you think it's worth it for the United States to go to war to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon? Bernie Sanders: That's a hypothesis.
You are asking me a hypothetical situation and I surely applaud what the President has done to prevent us from considering that option. Ezra Klein: You won't say if that was the choice, if... Bernie Sanders: That's not the choice right now. I have to examine this proposal. It just came out the other day and I can't tell you that I've read every word of it, I haven't. What the president has tried to do is make sure that we have a verifiable agreement that prevents Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, and I applaud that greatly. That is where we are now and I hope that, after examining this treaty, I hope to be able to strongly support it.
Ezra Klein: Let me ask you then not a hypothesis but a retrospective. Should the United States have intervened to stop the Rwandan genocide? Bernie Sanders: Yes. Yes, but it's not just the United States. This is the damn problem we face. We are spending more money on the military than the nine countries behind us. Where is the UK? Where is France? Germany is the economic power of Europe. They provide healthcare to all their people, they provide free college education to their children. Did you know? Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Scandinavia and the rest of Europe, we all have to work together to prevent that kind of genocide and atrocities and we have to strengthen the United Nations to be able to do it.
Ezra Klein: Do you consider yourself a Zionist? Bernie Sanders: a Zionist? Ezra Klein: a Zionist. Bernie Sanders: What does that mean? Do you want to define what the word is? Do I believe Israel has the right to exist? Yes I believe it. Do I think the United States should play an impartial role in its relations with the Palestinian community in Israel? I absolutely do. Once again, I think there are volatile regions in the world,The Middle East is one of them, and the United States must work with other countries around the world to fight for the security and existence of Israel while also fighting for a Palestinian state where the people of that country can enjoy a level of decent life, which is certainly not the case at the moment.
My long-term hope is that instead of sending so much military aid to Israel or Egypt, we can provide more economic aid to help improve the standard of living of the people in that area. Ezra Klein: Let me ask you about the economic aspect of foreign policy. I think one of the overwhelming underlying questions, and sometimes the foreground question, is whether the economic rise of China, in particular, but to some extent India and others, necessarily means a decline in American power and influence. Do you see it as zero-sum in that sense? Bernie Sanders: No. I should also tell you that when you talk about foreign policy, what you didn't ask me about, which may be as important an issue as any other, is the issue of climate change.
If you talk to the CIA, if you talk to the Department of Defense, and I have, what they will tell you is that one of the big security problems facing this planet is the fact that as we see more and more droughts As poor people around the world cannot grow the food they need to survive, we will see migrations of people in the international climate. I think when you talk about foreign policy, at the top of the list is the need for the United States to lead the world, work with China, work with Russia, work with India to transform our energy system away from fossil fuels and toward energy efficiency. and sustainable energy.
This is not only an "environmental issue", but also a global national security issue. Ezra Klein: Do you think there is capacity and international relationships to verifiably price carbon? Bernie Sanders: Yes, I do, and we have introduced legislation to do it. Look, it turns out that I agree with Pope Francis and practically the entire scientific community. I am a member of both the Energy Committee and the Environment Committee. I listen to what scientists say not just in the United States but around the world and climate change is real, it is caused by human activity, look at California, it is already causing devastating problems.
Not just in the United States, let's look at Pakistan: heat waves. It is an international crisis and I must tell you, without being overtly political, that I am ashamed that we have a major political party called the Republican Party, which with few exceptions refuses to even acknowledge the reality of climate change. much less willing to do anything about it. That's a shame. That you have a major party that refuses to listen to science. Ezra Klein: Do you think we should put a price on carbon? Bernie Sanders: Yes. Ezra Klein: Would you do it through a carbon tax or a cap-and-trade system?
Bernie Sanders: carbon tax. Ezra Klein: Why? Bernie Sanders: I have introduced legislation. It's the simple, straightforward way to do it, and I've introduced legislation with Senator Boxer to do just that. It is the simplest and clearest way. Once you get into limit and trading, you run into all kinds of complicated things. The people on Wall Street are going to make a lot of money. Look, we have to reach out and answer a simple question. Are scientists right or wrong? If they are right, they are telling us that planet Earth will be 5 to 10 degrees Fahrenheit warmer by the end of this century.
This will cause catastrophic changes in terms of drought, climate disruption, sea level rise, ocean acidification and international conflicts. If they are right, I think they are right, we have to act very, very boldly. We have to do it yesterday. Ezra Klein: So that speaks a little bit to the China India question. What would you say to countries that look at us and say, "Well, you guys got rich off of cheap energy and now you're telling us we can't?" Bernie Sanders: That's a fair point and a good question. Let's understand that the United States could do everything right.
We could transform our energy system tomorrow to significantly reduce carbon emissions. And yet, if other countries produce enormous amounts of carbon, the game is lost. It has to be a global commitment. It is no coincidence that people in China wear surgical masks when walking the streets and that their water systems are being destroyed. They have big, big, big environmental problems. I think the role we can play with our scientific community is to work with these countries and talk about a win-win proposal. Can solar energy really be cheaper than more mature forms of energy, such as coal or oil?
I think it can. Wind too. But we have to start investing in the types of technologies that are useful not only in the United States, but that also work with China, Russia and India. These countries need energy. No doubt about it. No one should approach them and tell them they have to cut their energy in half. What we should be able to say to them, "We're going to work with you to transform your energy system and make sure you have the energy you need to maintain a strong economy," but it's not an advantage for India, it's an advantage for China. , to destroy this planet.
Nobody wins with that and I think many of them understand that. Ezra Klein: Do you think the way Americans view China's increasing economic development is right or wrong? I am especially referring to returning to the question of whether this is a zero-sum competition for influence between us. Bernie Sanders: I think what the average American sees is that for many decades, what corporate America has said is, "Hey, I'm not going to pay you $20 or $25 in a factory, I don't need you anymore." "We're going to close their factory. I'm going to move to China, I'm going to pay the people there a dollar or two an hour.
I don't have to worry about environmental regulations, I don't have to worry about unions." and I'm going to produce products there and I'm going to bring them back to the United States of America.” Now, is that China's fault? No. That issue has to do with the greed of American companies who sold out American workers and essentially moved manufacturing to China and other low-wage countries. Are Americans worried about that? Are you worried when you walk? in a department store and product after product after product is not made in the United States but in China, are you worried about that?
If they are. Me too, in fact. Does that mean we have to make China an enemy? Absolutely. What we need is a trade policy in this country that, among other things, works for American workers and not for the CEOs of large corporations. I voted against with China, that was the correct vote. "And if I'm elected president, I will radically transform trade policies. Ezra Klein: However, if I were Chinese, that would seem like a very zero sum to me because those factories have been part of the tremendous rise in living standards there. Bernie Sanders: That It's great, but you know what?
At the same time, the standard of living of the American people has gone down. As I indicated before, I am an internationalist. I want to see the poor around the world, see their standard of living increase, but you talk zero-sum. I don't think you have to. A lot of people tell me this. Oh yeah, American workers are going to have to become poorer so we can help the poor in China. I don't believe that for a second. I want to see people of China to live in a democratic society with a higher standard of living. I want to see that, but I don't think it has to come at the expense of the American worker.
I don't think decent-paying jobs should be lost in this country as companies They close here and move to China. I think we can work with China, I want to see American workers maintain a strong position... I want to see the middle class expand and not shrink, I want the Chinese people to do so too, but I don't want to see it collapse. of the American middle class and I will fight it as hard as I can. Ezra Klein: Going to another continent, do you think the euro was a mistake? Bernie Sanders: That's a very good question, I can't give you a definitive answer right now.
I am concerned – I will tell you this – about what is happening in Greece. I am very concerned that the Germans have led an effort to squeeze the blood out of the stone. The Greek economy has contracted by about 25% in the last five years, unemployment is 26%, youth unemployment is around 60% and I think the idea that Germany and the European banks are imposing more austerity on the Greek people is not It's just a terrible economic crisis. mistake, it is a political mistake and I will tell you why. The third largest party in Greece is the party called "Golden Dawn".
You know who they are? They are a Nazi party. Not even neos. These are real Nazis. If you remember what happened in 1932 in Germany, when there was hyperinflation, when there was an economy that was in a terrible depression, that's the kind of climate in which a Hitler could come to power. I think the European community has to work with Greece to create economic growth, to address unemployment, to create an economy so that they can, over a period of years, pay off their debt, but you can't keep squeezing that country, so that's why I'm concerned. that. Ezra Klein: Let me close with a question about a policy that's gaining some momentum but isn't often talked about in Washington: a universal basic income.
You've started to have people going back to Milton Friedman and Martin Luther King Jr., saying that we really should have a fundamentally guaranteed standard of living in this country. Bernie Sanders: I absolutely sympathize with that approach. That's why I'm fighting for a $15 minimum wage, why I'm fighting to make sure everyone in this country gets the nutrition they need, why I'm fighting to expand Social Security benefits and not cut them, making sure everyone A child in this country, regardless of income, can go to college, but that is what makes a civilized nation. What makes a civilized nation.
This is the point. This is the richest nation in the history of the world, but no one in America knows it because their standard of living is falling and almost all of the new wealth will go to the top 1%. That is an issue we have to address. In the richest nation in the history of the world, the top tenth of the 1% should not own nearly as much wealth as the bottom 90%. In fact, everyone in this country should have at least a minimum, decent standard of living. Alright?

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