{"id":3296,"date":"2020-03-11T15:00:37","date_gmt":"2020-03-11T15:00:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2020\/03\/11\/the-opium-of-the-redistributionists\/"},"modified":"2020-03-11T15:00:37","modified_gmt":"2020-03-11T15:00:37","slug":"the-opium-of-the-redistributionists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2020\/03\/11\/the-opium-of-the-redistributionists\/","title":{"rendered":"The Opium of the Redistributionists"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino; font-size: 12pt;\">A re-post from April 2016 that targets the hypocrisy of Sanders the Socialist.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino; font-size: 12pt;\">&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino; font-size: 12pt;\">If religion is the opium of the masses, then OPM is the opium of the redistributionist.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino; font-size: 12pt;\">Bernie Sanders, the superannuated socialist, &quot;and his wife, Jane,&#0160;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.bostonglobe.com\/opinion\/2016\/04\/20\/the-illusions-bernie-sanders-and-ted-cruz\/KwWRGfTGHS3Ftsyq47nJlK\/story.html\">paid<\/a>&#0160;an effective tax rate of 13.5 percent, or $27,653 in federal taxes on an adjusted gross income of $205,271.&quot; This is for 2014.&#0160; That is less than Mitt Romney paid, percentage-wise, in 2011.&#0160; But Romney paid more dollars and thus did more good than Bernie, if you assume that Federal taxes do good for &#39;the people&#39; and not just for state&#0160;<em>apparatchiki<\/em>.&#0160;<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino; font-size: 12pt;\">For Sanders, a legitimate function of government is wealth redistribution so that the government can do good with other people&#39;s money (OPM).&#0160; So why did Bernie take so many (legal) deductions?&#0160; Why didn&#39;t he pay his &#39;fair share,&#39; say, 28% of his AGI? Why didn&#39;t he fork over 50%?&#0160; Surely an old man and his wife can live on 100K a year!&#0160; Why doesn&#39;t Bernie practice what he preaches?<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino; font-size: 12pt;\">Because he smokes the opium of OPM: it is the other guy&#39;s money that is to be confiscated, not his.&#0160; By any reasonable standard, Sanders is a &#39;fat cat.&#39;&#0160; But he doesn&#39;t see himself as one.&#0160; And no doubt he thinks he&#0160;<em>earned<\/em>&#0160;his high senatorial salary when he produced nothing, but merely spouted a lot of socialist nonsense while acting the pied piper to foolish and impressionable youth.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A re-post from April 2016 that targets the hypocrisy of Sanders the Socialist. &#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;. If religion is the opium of the masses, then OPM is the opium of the redistributionist. Bernie Sanders, the superannuated socialist, &quot;and his wife, Jane,&#0160;paid&#0160;an effective tax rate of 13.5 percent, or $27,653 in federal taxes on an adjusted gross income &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2020\/03\/11\/the-opium-of-the-redistributionists\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;The Opium of the Redistributionists&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[130],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3296","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-socialism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3296","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3296"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3296\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3296"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3296"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3296"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}