Here is Senator Sanders reaction the the Richard Branson space flight.
“Here on Earth, in the richest country on the planet, half our people live paycheck to paycheck, people are struggling to feed themselves, struggling to see a doctor – but hey, the richest guys in the world are off in outer space! Yes. It’s time to tax the billionaires.”
He is a master of generalization and over simplification, not to mention naive. It is precisely because of people like Branson and Musk, and Bezos and before them the standouts of the 19th century that this Country is what it is economically. And why in the USA, even our poor are well off by international standards and why immigrants flood our borders.
Those words “live paycheck to paycheck” are the most misused in the political vocabulary. They immediately conjure poverty and financial hardship.
The fact is living paycheck to paycheck is an American thing. It has little to do with income in most cases, but it has a great deal to do with spending and lifestyle. Anyone imprudent with their money will live P to P and often do. That is why Americans are poor savers, generally unprepared for retirement or a financial emergency.
Government is not the answer to irresponsible behavior.
QUINNSCOMMENTARY 
I’m happy to pitch in and send to Bernie a couple of books:
Tyler Cowen, Stubborn Attachments, where this economist says we should have one primary goal – maximizing the sustainable rate of economic growth. Wealth is the best thing humans have ever created – enabling us to live past thirty, avoid starvation, washing machines, phones, air conditioning and even free time.
Steven Pinker, Enlightenment Now, who confirmed the correlation of GDP “with every indicator of human flourishing” including longevity, health, nutrition, peace, freedom, human rights, tolerance, and even self-reported happiness levels.
Perhaps if he read something other than Karl Marx or Friedrich Engels …
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Sanders is a poster boy for useful idiot voters.
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Amen!
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I wonder if Sanders is upset that Space-X and Virgin Galactic, and other former NASA contractors are no longer fully dependent on government contracts and thus their political whims. Not to mention, the private sector jobs these these billionaires created.
Now the government (NASA and the military) get to have bidding wars on proven technology instead of design concepts for rockets, satellites, and missiles. I believe that this is how it should work.
Did the army keep the horse once Ford and others could mass produce trucks?
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