Bernie Sanders

 On  March 26th Bernie Sanders spoke here at Carthage College in an effort to spread his “revolution” of a socialistic society. Bernie brought up a number of points that he believes are issues that our country faces today.  Those main points were income inequality, free education, free healthcare, foreign affairs, the legalization of marijuana, climate change, and women’s rights. He is fighting for an idea that goes against everything that we were founded on as a country. Our founding fathers founded this country with idea of a limited government and a free capitalistic market that would allow people work to their highest potential. With that said, who are Bernie Sanders supporters? From my estimation they are low income individuals that are tired of how capitalism works. Many just want an opportunity to grow as individuals to better our nation. There are also a good majority that are lazy and want the wealthy, hardworking Americans to pay their fair share for the good of the people. Keeping my political views aside Senator Sanders is way too much of an idealist and his views for the United States are too liberal. It is clear that the system we have is broken, but Bernie is not the answer. His policies will cause a further economic collapse that will cripple our nation even further.

His first point of income inequality is something that he has talked about numerous times. In his eyes the top 1% of America have too much power. According to taxfoundation.org, Bernie wants to raise taxes on high income households up to 52%. In my eyes that is ridiculous. Simply punishing the rich is not going to help our country return to what it used to be. We were founded on the idea of a free market capitalistic society where anyone has the freedom to pursue whatever career they want to better themselves. His socialistic society will hurt us significantly in the long run. Socialism prevents growth, punishes success, and rewards laziness. Our nation’s youth has become very lazy over the past two decades. Many fail to realize that if you work hard, smart, and make good connections, good things come from it in our system. We cannot grow as a country if we do not reward success. Capitalism is a really simple idea when you think about it. When you work you are rewarded for that work with money and you have the freedom to do whatever you please with that money. On top of that Bernie wants to raise the minimum wage to fifteen dollars an hour. People fail to understand that raising minimum wage will increase the cost of living. When you raise the minimum wage will only cause prices to increase. Raising the minimum wage will do nothing to help grow our nation and will keep small businesses from growing. Another point that seems to be overlooked when raising the minimum wage is the fact that if it does go up it will eliminate minimum wage jobs all together. Technology will take overtake the industry because corporations will not want to pay their employees that much money for a job that doesn’t require that much skill.

The second point he brought up was free education for public schools and free healthcare. Many families across the nation struggle with the cost of a college tuition, including my own. Pretty soon my parents will be paying for my education and my sisters at the same time. In my views I believe that education education should in no way be a debt sentence, but it should not be free. There are a number of problems that will arise if education were to be free. The first problem that will arise is the quality of education will fall significantly at public schools. These institutions will be forced to make budget cuts that will hurt us in the long run. The second problem that will arise is college acceptance rates will drop tremendously as a result of not having enough resources to support everyone that applies. Going along with free education he wants to create a universal healthcare plan that will make healthcare free for Americans. That would be a good thing for many people who do not have health insurance, but it is way to unrealistic for this to happen. It would cost trillions of dollars that we do not have.

ISIS is on the rise. There have been many attacks across Europe and a few attacks here in the US. Bernie has made it clear that he will not put troops on the ground to take out ISIS. I myself am antiwar, but when it comes to the safety of our nation shouldn’t we do whatever it takes to keep our nation safe? If it takes troops then so be it. As long as we are safe that is all that matters. We have done nothing but sit back and watch innocent people die because we are too worried about doing the right thing. We don’t want to offend the good majority because we don’t want to hurt their feelings. President Obama does not seem to want to take action on the issue of ISIS because he does not want the outcome to affect his reputation as president. This is going to put our next president in a tough situation, whether he/she is a republican or democrat. I think it is important to realize that there is no easy solution to any of this, but we need to make up our minds on what to do before it is too late.

The legalization of marijuana has become a big issue that has been going on for a number of years now. Many people call this issue a twenty-first century prohibition. Bernie is pro legalization and so am I. However, if it comes at the cost of laziness I am completely against it. Marijuana does not make people lazy. He wants to create programs that educate people rather than incarcerate them. That would be a great thing to do but again we do not have the funding to make this kind of program work.

As far as women’s rights I believe that everyone should have equal pay in the work force so I don’t have anything else to say about that. Male or female, they should be paid the same. Moving on to climate change it is also clear that the climate is changing. In our current economic situation, it is not ideal for us to invest into other resources right now simply because we cannot afford it.

We are at an all time low and it is very important that we make the right decision when it comes to this election. Based on everything I’ve shared it is clear that Bernie Sanders is not the right choice going forward. So America I challenge you to rethink your political views on this upcoming election. I know for certain that I am not feeling the Bern.