Hi, this is senator Bernie Sanders. I need your help.
One of the reasons that our campaign is doing so well is that
we are discussing the real issues facing the American people,
something that most politicians and the media just don't do.
In fact one of the great concerns I have had for many, many years is that
the corporate media looks at elections as
if they were a baseball game in terms of who's winning or losing, or
how much money your campaign is raising, or even a soap opera, you know,
what kind of dumb things somebody said yesterday that we can put all over CNN.
But in my view what this election should be about, what our democracy should be about,
is the debate concerning the enormous problems
facing our people, and, in fact, our entire planet. And that's what I intend to be focusing on
throughout this campaign. Now today I'm gonna be talking about the incredibly important
issue of income and wealth inequality
and I very much would appreciate your help in getting this video out to your friends
and to your family.
The economic reality for most Americans is
pretty clear: For the last forty years the American middle class
has been disappearing and
more Americans are living in poverty than at almost any point in our nation's history.
Today, real median family income is almost $5,000 dollars less than it was in 1999.
Today, the typical male worker is making $783 less, last year than he did
42 years ago after adjusting for inflation. Your typical female worker is making $1,337
less than she did in 2007. Despite the modest gains of the Affordable
Care Act, 35 million Americans continue to have
no health insurance, and even more are underinsured. And today, embarrassingly, the United States
of America has by far the highest rate childhood poverty
of every major industrialized country on Earth. And while the middle class continues to disappear,
over the last 2 years, just as an example, the wealthiest 15 Americans in this country —
15 people; and that includes Bill Gates, the Koch brothers, Sheldon Adelson, and a bunch of others —,
These guys have seen their wealth increase by a hundred and seventy billion dollars.
That's just an increase in what they previously had in a two year career.
To put this in perspective, the increase in wealth for the top 15
Americans is more wealth than is owned by the bottom 40%
of our people and is double what this country spends on nutrition programs
to feed over 40 million Americans. Meanwhile, since 2005 the typical middle class
family has seen its wealth go down by more than 36 percent — from $130,000 in 2005
to just $81,000 today. We have witnessed an enormous transfer of
wealth from the middle class and the poor to multi-millionaires and billionaires.
Since 1985, the share of our nation's wealth owned by the bottom 90% has plummeted from 36% to just 23%.
Now, what does this mean? It means that if the bottom 90%, the vast majority of our people,
had simply maintained the same share of wealth that they had 30 years ago, they would have over $10 trillion
more today than they in fact do have.
Now, where did that wealth go? Well, about 8 trillion of it has gone
to a tiny, tiny sliver of the wealthiest people in our country. Over the past 30 years
the top one-tenth of one percent — not one percent — one-tenth of one percent,
has seen its share of our nation's wealth more than double from 10 percent to 22 percent.
The very, very rich are getting incredibly richer,
the middle class is disappearing, and the poor are getting poorer.
That is the tragic reality of our economy today.
This is the Robin Hood principle in reverse. We are taking from the poor and working families
and seeing that wealth go to a handful of the richest people in this country.
That is wrong. That is unacceptable.
And that is not what the American economy should be about.
The concentration of wealth at the very top
is more than bad economics — it is a immoral
and it is unsustainable. Instead of growing an economy
with good wages where anyone can unlock their useful potential,
we are undermining our middle class, undermining the needs of our kids,
undermining the heart of our democracy. Now, if we are serious about reversing income
and wealth inequality, what are some of the things
that we need to do? First, we have got to make sure that
anybody in America who works 40 hours a week
is not living in poverty. And that means that over a period of
a few years we have got to increase the minimum wage
to a living wage of $15 an hour. Furthermore, we need to make certain
that we have pay equity for women workers. It's absurd that women continue to make 78
cents on the dollar compared to men.
Second of all we have to put the American people back to work, and that means
a trillion-dollar job program to rebuild our crumbling infrastructure
which will result in up to 13 million decent paying jobs.
Third, we need a tax system which is fair.
And among other things, we need to put a tax
on Wall Street speculation so that every American, regardless
of income, can go to college tuition-free.
Now, as many of you know, seven years ago the tax payers of this country,
as a result of the greed and recklessness
and illegal behavior on Wall Street, our country, our middle class
bailed them out. Well, now it is Wall Street's
turn to make sure that they help the middle class of this country,
and that all of our people regardless of income can get to college.
In my view, a society in which so many
have so little, while so few have so much,
is not what the United States of America is supposed to be about.
If you agree please make sure to share this video and the facts in this
video with your friends and your neighbors,
but also with your Republican coworkers and the Republicans that you know.
To my mind it is a very sad state of affairs
that we have too many working-class Republicans
who continue to vote against their own best interests,
and my hope is that by engaging in a good honest straight-forward
dialogue with our Republican friends, we can win them over
so they can help us create a government which works for all of the
people and not just the Koch brothers and a handful of billionaires.
So once again, thank you
very much for listening, and thanks for your help
in getting this video out. Take care.