Bernie Sanders Buys Third House – A Mere $600k “Summer Vacation House”…

Billy_T wrote:

zn wrote:

Billy_T wrote:

You’re making a mountain out of a molehill.

That would be the logical version.

He’s just engaged in the usual partisan personality defamation tactics that very partisan political types buy into. They even bot it off of bot sites, they don’t invent it. It’s not like we’re ever going to get an original, informed critique of a Sanders policy. Just monkeys throwing shit level stuff.

I get that. But what I don’t get is that someone would begrudge a home to Sanders and his wife, with roughly a century of work between them, when he supports the billionaire Trump.

A billionaire who inherited roughly 40 million, and then managed to go bankrupt six times and still owns private jets, etc. Trump owns too many to count, apparently, including the Kluge Estate in Charlottesville. He gets to live like a pasha, and bnw has a problem with Sanders and his wife buying a vacation home at 74-years-old and 65, respectively?

“a home”? No, a summer home along with his homes in Vermont and Washington DC.

Billy_T wrote:

Nittany,

From wikipedia
“Democratic socialism is distinguished from both the Soviet model of centralized socialism and from social democracy, where “social democracy” refers to support for political democracy, regulation of the capitalist economy, and a welfare state”

That’s why all the hysteria about Sanders was so out of place. He was actually pushing FDR, New Deal policies, updated for 2016. They weren’t even Democratic Socialist, a la Michael Harrington. And while he rightfully talked about how well Denmark works for its citizens — far better than our system, and it’s not close — he didn’t even go that far.

My own vision is anticapitalist, and that we need to repeal and replace our current system. And by “capitalism,” I don’t mean “commerce” or “business” or “trade.” Capitalism isn’t synonymous with those things. It’s a unique and unprecedented form of economics. Non-capitalist commerce, trade and business have been around for thousands of years, etc. I’m talking about M-C-M and exchange value, with a capitalist purchasing labor as a commodity, in order to get workers to make commodities for money, which the capitalist then appropriates (exploitation) for himself or herself.

One could easily have a non-capitalist business by avoiding the above. As in, you make your own custom chairs for sale, all by yourself. With your own two hands. You don’t have employees. You sell them yourself. You’re not a capitalist and do not own a capitalist business in that case. You become a capitalist, however, when you hire employees to build those chairs for you and collect the surplus value they generate as if you had done all the work yourself.

You could, of course, grow that business without it ever becoming capitalist if all new chair builders share equally in surplus value, and you didn’t have an employer/employee structure.

A society with nothing but sole proprietors and democratic co-ops would not be “capitalist,” but could produce the same things as a “capitalist” society.

Aw but that wouldn’t get you three houses at the same time. Especially a $600K summer home. Not one chair at a time.

Billy_T wrote:

Aw but that wouldn’t get you three houses at the same time. Especially a $600K summer home. Not one chair at a time.

Well, they managed that over the course of half a century, and she sold her family’s summer home to get this one . . . which is quite modest. Just 1800 square feet. Not exactly a palace. They didn’t buy all three houses at the same time, obviously. It took a lifetime for them to get there.

And, btw, they aren’t capitalists. As far as I know, the Sanders have never been capitalists. See, one of the most immoral things about the capitalist system is it functions to radically limit who can and can’t be capitalists in the first place. It can’t work if it doesn’t do that. The vast majority of Americans aren’t and never will be capitalists. Ironic, isn’t it?

In the alternative I envision, and those like it, we’d just scale up to make sure wages and prices match closely enough so everyone is quite comfortable. That’s something the capitalist system can never do. It wouldn’t be “capitalism” if it focused on the needs of citizens instead of capitalists. If it couldn’t concentrate wealth, income, power, privilege and access at the very top, it wouldn’t be capitalism.

So, in the alternative, the focus is never on a few owners and how to make them rich at everyone else’s expense. The focus is literally on everyone. How do we match wages with prices enough to guarantee the highest quality of life? We’ve already solved the funding problem with the completely separate revenue stream, as mentioned before, so all we need to do is match prices with wages. And when everyone gets the vast majority of their necessities for free, anyway, simply for being citizens, that job is all the easier:

Free cradle to grave education, health care, transportation, access to cultural venues, parks and recs, physical fitness, transport, etc. etc. All free. All the highest quality. Cradle to grave. “Purchases” are in addition to all of that, and that’s where we need to make the match.

Capitalism can’t compete with that alternative when it comes to the well-being and quality of life for at least 95% of the population. It can only offer a better deal for the super-rich, cuz they won’t exist in the alternative.

“Summer Weekends at Bernie’s”

Dak wrote:

Until Trump’s supporters take Trump to task for not releasing his tax returns, I don’t want to hear their thoughts on other candidate’s private purchases. Sanders was right to throw his support behind Hillary, simply because Donald Trump is not fit to rule this country. You can’t bankrupt yourself out of trouble when you’re President.

But you can lie to the people while enriching yourself through government service and breaking the law with impunity as president ala Hildabeast?

Billy_T wrote:

bnw,

But you can lie to the people while enriching yourself through government service and breaking the law with impunity as president ala Hildabeast?

Again, if these things really bother you — lying and law-breaking — you can’t in good conscience support Trump. He’s spent his entire adult life doing that. Lying, cheating, stealing, breaking the law. And he’s obviously enriched himself a great deal more than the Clintons in the process.

I can understand a principled stance against the Clintons, and the Dems, and the GOP. But to then choose Trump?

That defies all logic.

No not the same. Trump is a capitalist and you view that as cheating and stealing while I don’t. Hildabeast will sell out this nation like Bill did with the Chinese back in the ’90s. It is treason. The Clinton Family business model. No thanks.