Taking care of people when they get sick, paying people a fair wage for fair work, educating our children no matter how much money they were born into, letting mothers and fathers spend time with their babies, creating jobs for our young people, and having transportation that works? BLECH! Who needs freedom, justice, and prosperity? We're happy with our expensive, oligarchic, expensive again, wealth-dominated system, thank you very much!

Americans are living under an expensive and unjust system.

Our public-organizer, our government, spends billions and billions of the people’s dollars, our money, in corporate welfare (tax breaks, subsidies, economic development programs for the rich) while our children go hungry, our poor scrape by at low-wage jobs, and our elderly fall into poverty.

The majority of Americans are financially struggling, yet each year, something like $100 billion taxpayer dollars (stop, think about how large an amount that is) are spent on corporations already worth multi-billions.

In the United States, we don’t pay politicians to organize our money properly to benefit us, the masses paying into the system, but the corporate executives who are are rich and getting richer.

Amongst those left to suffer are the millions of Americans who, right now, just as you’re reading this, are “living at a level of poverty we normally associate with the developing world.”

While U.S. kids grow up in circumstances “many people don’t believe… exist here,” wealthy corporations are actually receiving welfare.

From Forbes,

Think about that. The largest, wealthiest, most powerful organizations in the world are on the public dole. Where is the outrage? ...The sheer size of the corporate welfare system should spark outrage whether we are conservatives, liberals, or libertarians. And that outrage should be reflected in how we vote.

Talk about moochers!

If you want to get mad at someone taking advantage of the system, get mad at the rich. Get mad at big business. Get mad at Wal-Mart and Boeing and Geico. Get mad at General Electric and Walgreen and FedEx. At General Motors and whoever the Netjets and the General Re Corporation are.

There is a third-world inside of this first-world, and we’re spending a hundred billion dollars a year to subsidize it.

Our politicians help the “largest, wealthiest, most powerful” individuals, while spreading far about the debt, the budget, and trying to further slash money for the poor, the hungry, the sick, the children, the youth, the veterans, and the elderly— while they propose outrageous tax plans or raise the minimum wage to a decent amount so people can actually work out of poverty and take care of themselves.

This corporate welfare system is a monster, made fat off taxpayer funds.

Can you imagine how many programs we could pay for if we killed it?

As Forbes puts it,

The billion dollars [Warren Buffet’s] companies took would pay for a lot of teachers, healthcare, and other public goods.

We are getting fooled.

The cash we give to the government every year is for schools, roads, poverty, hunger, health care, for the people— not for millionaire corporate executives.

Yet that’s where billions of it goes.

Why?

Why do taxpayer dollars get funneled to those who do not need it? Why do American politicians act on behalf of the wealthy, not the poor? Why is our country so corrupt?

Follow. The. Money.

Our politicians work for the rich because they’re getting paid to. The biggest for-greed organizations in this country — Wall Street, oil companies, prison companies, pharmaceutical companies, gun companies — control this government by pouring money into our politicians’ pockets, ensuring the politicians get elected and their corporate greed goes unchecked.

Big business and political “leaders” exist in a symbiotic relationship, helping each other to stay and get even more rich and powerful.

From The New York Times,

There is little question that the enormous sums flowing into candidates’ campaign coffers undermine democracy, breed cynicism and shape policy to the preferences of powerful donors. Unbridled campaign contributions invite nightmare situations in which those at the pinnacle of society purchase the power needed to preserve the yawning inequities of the status quo.

We should be furious.

And if we knew the truth deeply, we would be.

But warning calls and shouts about how gravely the majority is taken advantage of fall upon deaf ears. Our leaders keep us confused by saying the exact right stuff.

Republicans speak all day of how "they care about the poor people,” how they’re fighting to help “the very poorest to the very weakest,” how they’re going to “help people increase their pay,” how they want to “make our country greater than it’s ever been,” while pushing tax plans that are good for the rich and advocating against raising the minimum wage.

Hillary Clinton waxes lyrical about how “we're going to take things away from [the rich] on behalf of the common good,” that “the American people are tired of liars and people who pretend to be something they're not,” while opposing a $15 minimum wage, making poor kids who want to go to college work for it, and, perhaps worst of all, pushing a Wall Street crackdown plan that is “artificial” and “arcane.” Even her Wall Street donors don’t believe she’ll reign them in “for a minute,” calling her populist rhetoric “just politics.”

Clinton may chorus that “there’s something wrong when hedge fund managers pay lower taxes than nurses,” but she won’t tell you she refused to put her name on a June 2007 bill to close the loophole. She even gave a campaign speech after Obama signed on— yet still didn’t sign the legislation.

Clinton says one thing, but does another.

That’s the definition of someone pretending “to be something they’re not.”

And guess what’s the same about the Republicans and Hillary Clinton?

They’re both funded by Wall Street.

And both will always say they’re not working for the people paying them, but fighting for you, because if they don’t, they won’t get elected.

The Republicans are trying to “bridge their populist message with the party’s traditional support for lower taxes and less regulation,” while Hillary Clinton is selling an “idealist porridge [that] is not too hot, not too cold, but just fake enough,” because it’ll get them votes.

Neither of them will ever do what they say they will, and neither of them will ever tell you they won’t. To tell the truth would be folly, because they’re a part of and benefiting from the system.

But we have been so saturated with lies, so imbued with nice-sounding catch phrases, we have no idea who to run from and who to trust.

The establishment politicians talk, talk, talk, our ears absorb, absorb, absorb, and, before you know it, we’re laying complacently down in the coffin at our own funeral.

We continue to vote politicians into office who are indebted to those big companies, getting paid by those big companies, against our own interests, because we are muddled and misled by the wealthy, corporate families throwing enormous amounts of cash (more than we even know about) to get access to our eyes, ears, and minds.

The constant exposure to them and their dishonest message assails us into voting not for the candidate who will help us, but any of the ones (Republicans and Hillary Clinton are funded by some of the same people) who will help the corporations sweeping them into office on a cash wave.

Our “democratic” elections are being purchased by the wealthiest people in this country—

From The New York Times,

[These election-buyers] are overwhelmingly white, rich, older and male, in a nation that is being remade by the young, by women, and by black and brown voters.

Our elections do not represent the people.

Our government is not controlled by us. It does not listen to us.

“The opinions of the bottom 90% of income earners in America have essentially no impact at all” on Congress.

Yet we still pay them.

Let that sink in.

This is all a waste, a sham, a cruel fairy tale.

We do not even have a scrap of the “democracy” we are so proud of.

From BBC,

The US is dominated by a rich and powerful elite.

Our leaders don’t care what we think, because they don’t have to.

We don’t have any influence over them, because we’re not paying attention.

We have to wake up.

We have to get aware.

We have to get angry.

And we have to get active.

We need a screeching halt and a full force assault in the opposite direction.

We need…

A Revolution.

—Enter Bernie Sanders—

This human, a man we know as Bernie Sanders, is trying to change our reality.

He wants to upheave our costly, corrupt, unjust system, and replace it with one that’s cheap, transparent, and moral.

Because, funnily enough, a fair system is also less expensive.

It seems intuitive, but it is also factually true— if we end the insanely unfair and inegalitarian system we have now, a system corrupted by greed, big money, and nefarious lobbying, we will save billions.

Bernie’s programs will help Americans be healthier, better paid, better educated, have stronger families, get employed, and be safe while driving to work— and they’ll be cheaper.

Do not be afraid of bad stuff happening, because it already is.

The crisis is not Berne Sanders becoming President, it’s what’s happening now.

Under his mainstream plans, Americans, in a stark change from the status quo, will actually pay less, for more.

ON HEALTH CARE—

Americans spend more than twice as much on health care as other countries of our wealth, yet the bodies of our citizens are far more broken and ill. We have higher infant mortality, higher rates of obesity, higher number of chronic diseases— we even die younger than people of other nations.

Americans are sick and injured, and going broke for it.

More than any other reason, U.S. citizens are forced into bankruptcy over their medical bills— and 3 in 4 of the people going bankrupt actually have health insurance.

These dead-and-broke insurance companies, both for-profit and (dishonestly) non-profit, do not insure our health.

They take our money and then cast us away, sick and in debt, when we are no longer profitable.

From Business Insider,

Our "health care industry" has turned large numbers of doctors, lawyers, health insurance company executives and pharmaceutical company executives into multi-millionaires. The health care industry in the United States has been so corrupt and so greedy for so long that we don't even remember what a legitimate medical system looks like anymore.

Health care in the United States, like our prison system, is an industry, not designed to help people, but to extort them.

We scoff at Europe, scoff at Canada, scoff at Brazil, Australia, and Russia, when we’re the fools struggling in pain and paying for the privilege of getting sponged dry.

From Reuters,

Millions of Americans suffering from serious illness lack access to care that could improve their quality of life by relieving pain and other symptoms, a study finds.

We spend more, for worse.

Bernie Sanders is advocating we transition to a public, transparent, non-privatized health care system, free of corruption and efficiently organized.

Not only will his plan provide health care to every single woman, man, and child in America— but it’ll be less expensive.

From The Washington Post,

Every single-payer system in the world, and there are many of them of varying flavors, is cheaper than the American health care system. Every single one. So whatever you might say about Sanders’ advocacy for a single-payer system, you can’t say it represents some kind of profligate, free-spending idea that would cost us all terrible amounts of money.

An analysis of expanding Medicaid, which is what Bernie wants to do, found that,

Health care financing in the U.S. is regressive, weighing heaviest on the poor, the working class, and the sick. With the progressive financing plan outlined for HR 676 (below), 95% of all U.S. households would save money.

Non-universal, non-single-payer health care costs far more, does not result in universal coverage, underinsures when it does provide coverage, and makes taking care of the sick a for-profit enterprise instead of a non-profit human right, resulting in worse care (e.g. the explosion of the corporate hospice industry).

The current health care system is aimed at enriching doctors, lawyers, health insurance company executives, and pharmaceutical company executives, not at taking care of the American people.

And not only is it cheaper, it is supported by a majority of Americans.

As Salon reports,

Is real universal health care – e.g. a single-payer national health program – at this point feasible? Based on national polling, the answer is yes, absolutely, of course. A majority or near majority generally voice support for a single-payer system, including in one recent survey.

ON THE MINIMUM WAGE—

Having a low minimum wage does not only hurt low-wage workers, it costs American taxpayers billions a year in public assistance and who-knows-how-much in potential economic growth.

From The Huffington Post,

Poverty wages cost U.S. taxpayers about $153 billion each year, according to a recent report from the University of California, Berkeley. ...When families depend on low-wage jobs to survive, they're forced to rely on government programs like Medicaid and food stamps to make ends meet.

From The Washington Post,

Let that sink in — American taxpayers are subsidizing people who work — most of them full-time (in some case more than full-time) because businesses do not pay a living wage...

From the Economic Policy Institute,

American employers are too often dodging their responsibilities as partners in the social contract— the understanding that Americans who work hard should be paid enough to make ends meet... Raising the minimum wage to $10.10 would reduce government expenditures on current income-support programs by $7.6 billion per year—and possibly more, given the conservative nature of this estimate. This would allow these funds to be repurposed into either new programs or expansions of existing programs to further leverage the poverty-fighting impact of this spending.

By continuing this insanity of a $7.25 national minimum wage, we are quite literally funding cash-soaked corporations in their endless quest to get even richer, wreaking a huge toll on our tax-dollars and destroying any chance our fellow humans have of getting out of poverty.

By all estimates, billions of our dollars are being stolen by wealthy executives so they can make 300 times the poverty wages they pay their workers, a fact that should be intolerable to every human of earth— just another way corporations get away with murder in this country.

Those billions could be spent on social programs to break the cycle of poverty and get our people out of destitution, reducing our public welfare needs and stimulating the economy.

Because, strange as it may seem, when your people are employed at well-paying jobs, they spend what they make, growing the economy.

From CNN,

When working families get a raise, they don't stash it in offshore tax havens. They pump it right back into their local economies at the grocery store, hardware store or auto body shop. Increasing the minimum wage boosts consumer demand, growing our economy and helping communities thrive.

When rich executives get more money, we don’t see a penny of it. When working people are fairly paid, we all benefit.

Raising the minimum wage saves billions in public welfare, stimulates the economy, and contrary to the fear-mongering of our politicians, does not destroy jobs.

States that have raised their minimum wage are experiencing “higher employment growth” than those states that did not.

From Think Progress,

[Researchers] “found no clear evidence that the minimum-wage increases affect aggregate job creation when unemployment rates are high.” ...The rate actually declined 52 percent of the time and in a few cases remained unchanged. The authors also point to five other studies that did the same state-level analysis while controlling for other factors that could impact employment and similarly found “no discernible effect on employment levels.”

1 in 10 Americans are unemployed—this is the “real” rate that includes part-time workers who want to be full-time and those who want to work but have given up searching. We’re losing 10% of our full-time workforce— that is, indeed, “high.” The minimum wage, if it had kept pace with productivity, would be $21.72. Raising it now will only help the economy.

From the same Think Progress article,

Other studies have found that while some job losses may occur, there can still be an economic net gain thanks to the fact that so many workers will have more money to spend. A $10.10 minimum wage would mean a direct raise for 16.7 million workers, according to the Economic Policy Institute, who would then have more money in their pockets to spend on goods and services, boosting the economy. The Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago found that even when potential job losses are taken into account, an increase in the minimum wage to $9, as President Obama proposed in his 2013 State of the Union, would increase household spending by $28 billion, or 0.2 percent of GDP. That extra spending stimulates the economy, which can lead to more job growth.

Small business is also in favor of raising the minimum wage, because it actually saves money in the long run and helps to create a better working environment.

From CNN,

Fortunately, many businesses are turning away from this low-road business model... They know that higher wages strengthen their bottom line by increasing employee loyalty, retention and productivity.

The experts agree: 200 economists have released a letter endorsing a $15 minimum wage increase.

By allowing big business to ensure the poverty of their employees, we’re not just violating humanitarian principles, but actually shooting ourselves in the foot. Or, to be more precise, the checkbook.

It is both democratic and cost-effective for us to raise the minimum wage.

And the public knows it!

Bernie has the majority on his side again, with 63% of Americans in favor of raising the minimum wage to $15.

On education—

From the 2001 No Child Left Behind Act that treats children as numbers and forces teachers to abandon effective instruction for test preparation, to the 2015 reform bill that leaves in place the testing, to the impossibly expensive public and private colleges that make up the skills-teaching system in this country, we are in an education crisis.

Our school system does not educate our children.

And everyone’s bearing the cost.

From early education, as reported by The Huffington Post,

Every year, 63 percent of all kindergarteners begin school unprepared for lifelong learning... The brain develops so rapidly that children lacking early literary stimulation will likely sustain educational difficulties later in life. The economic strain of these difficulties can — and has — been measured, totaling an estimated cost of $260,000 per high school dropout.

to high school education, as reported by The New York Times,

If we could reduce the current number of dropouts by just half, we would yield almost 700,000 new graduates a year, and it would more than pay for itself. Studies show that the typical high school graduate will obtain higher employment and earnings — an astonishing 50 percent to 100 percent increase in lifetime income — and will be less likely to draw on public money for health care and welfare and less likely to be involved in the criminal justice system. Further, because of the increased income, the typical graduate will contribute more in tax revenues over his [or her] lifetime than if he [or she had] dropped out. ...This is a benefit to the public of nearly $90 billion for each year of success in reducing the number of high school dropouts by 700,000 — or something close to $1 trillion after 11 years.

As reported by U.S. News,

The U.S. spends significantly more on education than other OECD countries... Yet, more money spent doesn’t translate to better educational outcomes. In fact, American education is rife with problems, starting with the gaping differences between white students and students of color.

All the way to college, as reported by The Atlantic,

On the whole, Americans seem to want affordable colleges that are accessible to all. But rather than simply using our resources to maintain a cheap public system (and remember, public schools educate 75 percent of undergrads), we spill them into a fairly wasteful and expensive private sector. At one point, a Senate investigation found that the for-profit sector alone was chowing down on 25 percent of all federal aid dollars. If that story sounds awfully similar to the problems the U.S. faces with healthcare costs, well, that's because it is similar. Americans have an allergy to straightforward policy solutions involving the public sector. And for that, we pay a price.

America, once again, pays more, for less.

Our primary and secondary education systems not only fail our children, especially those of color, not only drain our current public funds in health care, welfare, and prison expenses, but cost us in potential dollars of $90 billion a year.

Our college education system bars access to teenagers and adults simply because they have less money, and pours the students who are somehow able to attend into a “fairly wasteful and expensive private sector” instead of a “cheap public system” for the simple, terrible reason that Americans have been politically mind-rinsed to fear what Republicans call “big government,” or, to phrase it in reality, “straightforward policy solutions involving the public sector.”

We tolerate a bizarre, failing system, throwing money away in return for crushingly unjust and unequal results. We rob our children of a fair and equal education, an inarguable right of every baby.

We allow our children to grow up in poverty, the toll of which is enormous—

From PBS,

There is the near-constant hunger, the stress that comes from watching a parent struggle, and oftentimes, days and weeks spent living in a shelter or bouncing from motel to motel.

And we allow our education system to fail them, disallowing these disadvantaged babies from overcoming the struggles we allowed them to be born into—

From American Progress,

Education has been called the passport to the future. It has been defined as the great equalizer and lauded as being a key to unlocking the American Dream. Yet too many children—often low-income and minority children—are denied access to high-quality education because they attend schools that are underfunded and under-resourced. The sad reality is that gross funding inequities continue to exist in this country, and too often the schools serving students with the greatest needs receive the fewest resources.

Without a fair education system, without equally funded and resourced schools, without serving and educating those children most in need, we cannot have a just society.

And America does not have a fair education system.

If we wish to have any semblance of democracy, we must give budding humans the ability to survive in this world. We must teach our kids skills so they can make money and provide for themselves. We cannot have education systems that funnel children through for the sake of funneling them through. They’ve got to actually learn.

Our children are full of creativity, intelligence, innovation, wisdom, and logic, qualities just sitting in their brains, waiting to be tapped, to be nourished, to be challenged.

How many geniuses have been born into poverty, blocked from unlocking their brilliance because of how much money their parents have? How many great minds have we lost? How many wondrous scientists, inventors, mathematicians, leaders, musicians, and artists could have contributed to our society, could have pushed humanity above and beyond, but for our wasteful, expensive, and unjust schooling?

That potential is wasted, along with any ability for our people to be free from the constant, grinding, life-long stress of poverty.

The power of education is great, and the lack of it equally so. When we deny babies equal education, we deny them their humanity.

And even putting that aside, even putting aside common human decency and our belief in justice, even putting aside the vibrant society we could have with all these fully realized individuals— it makes monetary sense for us to educate every child, and educate them well.

Uneducated citizens cost taxpayers money— in lower tax revenues, a reduced work force, greater spending on public assistance, health care, and prisons, lost economic contribution in the “my spending is your income, and your spending is my income” feed-back loop, and higher crime rates.

It makes FISCAL sense for us to educate everyone, even if you don’t care about the human baby side of it (which I kinda think you do).

This flawed education system is costing us lives and dollars, and Bernie is going to fix it.

The man has an exceptionally strong record on the subject, and, when president, he will do even more to introduce high-quality, affordable, early childhood education, bringing an end to the evil cycle of poverty through educating our children.

In the Senate, he introduced the Foundations for Success Act, a bill that,

Directs the Secretary of Education to award grants to states to establish and support Early Care and Education Systems providing children, from the age of six weeks until they reach kindergarten, with universal access to high quality early care and education programs.

It passed in February 2011.

Bernie also voted against the No Child Left Behind Act, while Hillary Clinton voted for it. The bill is now widely renounced as being “bad for teachers, bad for kids”— transferring funds from needy schools and districts to for-profit companies, forcing students to undergo wave after wave of standardized testing, causing the shut-down of enrichment programs, electives, and libraries, closing schools to open up new schools only to close down those new schools, a “merry-go-round [that] leads nowhere but down,” and all-around working against reducing social inequality.

Bernie has had the right ideas about education for years.

Besides being committed to expanding early education (and actually doing it), his free public college plan is very cost-effective, even beyond the future economic benefits.

On his free public college plan, from The Atlantic,

The government would have to spend [a mere $62.6 billion dollars] to make public college tuition-free. According to new Department of Education data, that's how much tuition public colleges collected from undergraduates in 2012 across the entire United States. And I'm not being facetious with the word mere, either. The New America Foundation says that the federal government spent a whole $69 billion in 2013 on its hodgepodge of financial aid programs, such as Pell Grants for low-income students, tax breaks, work study funding. And that doesn't even include loans. If we were scrapping our current system and starting from scratch, Washington could make public college tuition free with the money it sets aside in its scattershot attempts to make college affordable today.

We spend $69 billion now, and making public college tuition-free would cost $62.6 billion.

Okay, one of those numbers is lower than the other.

Do you need any more convincing this will work?

Here—

From The Nation, in an article entitled, “Bernie Sanders’ ‘College for All’ Plan Is Fair, Smart and Achievable,”

...Sanders’ College for All offers a way out of a corrupt system that ensnares masses of young people in the prison of debt, and holds them and their families personally responsible for the skilling of the nation... Even some liberals will pooh-pooh this proposal as pie-in-the-sky or inconsistent with putative American values, despite powerful precedents in lived American history… ﻿Under the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944, aka the GI Bill: the federal government–funded education grant for all veterans returning from World War II that covered tuition, lab fees, books, health insurance, and supplies. Students received living stipends for dependents, in 2015 dollars, of up to $19,035. By 1952, the federal government had spent $125,706,792,450 in 2015 dollars on education and job training for 7.8 million veterans, half of which went to college and graduate-school expenses for 2.2 million GIs. The point is clear: We’ve done it before, and we can do it again. It is a matter of political will. We believe that Bernie Sanders’s candidacy can be a clarion call to galvanize millions of working- and middle-class Americans to fight for a policy vision that can invigorate the public, and make paramount our interests and concerns.

We’ve provided free public college before in these United States, with the government spending trillions of dollars, and it can be done again, for far less.

We can use our money for public education, we just have to force the politicians to make it happen.

From The Washington Post,

It may seem hard to believe, but there was a time when higher education was pretty close to free in this country, at least for many Americans… It is time to build on the progressive movement of the past and make public colleges and universities tuition-free in the United States — a development that will be the driver of a new era of American prosperity. We will have a stronger economy and a stronger democracy when all young people with the ambition and the talent can reach their full potential, regardless of their circumstances at birth.

When we educate all our people, our economy flourishes, our populace becomes skilled, talented, and relieved of the stress of struggling to meet basic needs.

In comparison to Hillary Clinton’s plan, as The Nation further writes,

Even Hillary Clinton’s New College Compact acknowledges the need for “debt-free college,” but her solutions replicate privatized, “human-capital” models of higher education that assume family contributions, are outcome-contingent, and involve student work requirements, perhaps some of them in the private sector. And it positions higher education as an engine of “global competitiveness,” rather than an institution for democratic citizen-making and conduit of social solidarity.

Clinton is corporatizing education to “compete” with the world, instead of to create a “democratic” society here.

She wants to force families to pay, students to work, and their schooling to be “outcome-contingent,” if they are poor.

The differences between Clinton and Sanders are stark.

From Al Jazeera America,

On education, Sanders said, “We need to ensure that every young person in this country who wishes to go to college can get the education that he or she desires, without going into debt and regardless of his or her family’s income.” Clinton said, “I think it’s important for everybody to have some part of getting this accomplished … I would like students to work 10 hours a week.” Sanders says college should be free for those who want to go; Clinton says if you’re poor, you should have to work for it.

Both agree we must do something about this education crisis, yet neither Hillary’s record nor her plan are as strong or people-oriented as Bernie’s.

On paid family leave—

From Fortune,

The United States is the only developed country that doesn’t guarantee paid leave for workers who are new parents… Here are some of the major costs of not having paid leave. More workers go on public assistance… Women who take paid leave are about 40 percent less likely to receive public assistance or food stamps… ”Our lack of paid family leave lowers our labor supply,” Boushey [executive director and chief economist of the Washington Center for Equitable Growth] asserts… A July report by the White House Council of Economic Advisers pegged the decline [in women’s labor force participation] to the fact that in the past decade other countries developed paid leave and other policies to help working families while the U.S. did not. Employers take a hit on employee turnover costs. When employees are forced to leave jobs to care for family members, companies spend time and money to hire new workers. Boushey and Sarah Jane Glynn found that the median cost to employers to replace an employee is an estimated 21 percent of that employee’s salary.

Yet again, the United States, the so-called “greatest nation in the world,” is behind the rest.

When we don’t allow working parents time off to spend with their newborns, they quit, upping how much we spend on public assistance, slashing our workforce, and hurting employers.

It is not only obscene for new parents to be separated from their babies, but, like everything else, it is expensive.

To fix this, Bernie is proposing a tax increase on middle-class families of $72 a year, a small amount, especially when the rest of his economy- and income-growing policies are taken into account.

From The Washington Post,

The plan backed by Sanders, a senator from Vermont, would be paid for with an increase in the payroll tax that would cost the average worker about $72 a year. "You think that we can afford $1.39 per week?" Sanders asked a crowd of more than 400 people... gathered for a town hall meeting here the day after the second Democratic presidential debate. “It is unconscionable that millions of new parents in this country are forced back to work because they don’t have the income to stay home with their newborn babies.”

Bernie, it is indeed unconscionable, I completely agree—

And so does the rest of the public, with 81% saying paid leave would be “good for our nation.”

On youth unemployment—

From NPR,

Youth unemployment remains remarkably high across the country. In some places, the unemployment rate among 16- to 24-year-olds is more than twice the national unemployment rate, which is currently 6.3 percent. It's a development that experts warn could have ripple effects for decades to come — not only for young people's lifelong earning potential but also for their contributions to the tax base and the strength of the U.S. economy overall… "We risk really having this lost generation of workers," Jacobs says. "And what that means in terms of the economy's ability to innovate and compete, when you've kind of wasted the talents of some substantial portion of a generation, is really, it's alarming."

Our young people are really struggling in this economy, wreaking not only a huge human cost, but causing “ripple effects” of wasted talent, lost taxes, and the weakening of the U.S. economy.

Inequality and injustice, once again, are not only harmful to the people directly suffering, but to our entire society.

Bernie is calling for addressing this major issue with a $5.5 billions jobs programs to fix our infrastructure, employ our youth, teach our young people skills, grow the economy, and strengthen our economic future.

Besides the lost tax dollars, lost economic contributions, and lost talent, unemployed young people hike our prison costs.

As Bernie himself says,

"In America now we spend nearly $200 billion on public safety, including $70 billion on correctional facilities each and every year. So, let me be very clear: in my view it makes a lot more sense to invest in jobs, in job training, and in education than spending incredible amounts of money on jails and law enforcement."

We spend $70 billion a year on prisons, but can’t cough up $5 billion for a million jobs program? We’ve spent more than $2 trillion on an oil war, but can’t spend 1/400th that amount on our kids?

When I realize this is where America’s priorities lie, I want to go crawl in a hole.

And I also think of line in Tupac’s ‘Keep Ya Head Up’— “Got money for wars, but can’t feed the poor.”

On our crumbling infrastructure—

From Fortune,

The condition of infrastructure in the U.S. is very bad. There are over 240,000 water main breaks each year, and the cost of rail congestion is enormous. For example, Midwest farmers alone lost over $500 million in 2013 and 2014 due to rail delays... Indeed, the overall quality of roads, bridges, schools and other basic national and local facilities in the U.S. received a grade of D+ from the American Society of Civil Engineers in 2013… Many schools can scarcely find room for new students.

From America Aljazeera and Patrick J. Natale, the executive director of the American Society of Civil Engineers,

For far too long, lawmakers have ignored upgrading our aging infrastructure for other priorities. Americans are now paying the price... Currently more than 40 percent of major U.S. urban highways are congested, costing taxpayers time and money. On average, a typical American commuter loses 34 hours sitting in traffic each year — nearly an entire week of work... In addition to time wasted, our ailing roads and bridges directly affect the pocketbooks of American families. About 32 percent of U.S. interstates and major highways are in poor or mediocre condition. These substandard roads result in drivers’ paying $67 billion, or $324 per motorist, annually in vehicle repairs and operating costs... America’s roads are ranked 19th in the world, behind even developing Namibia’s… Simply continuing to invest at the same meager levels in the nation’s existing transportation infrastructure may not be enough to maintain the United States’ standing in the global economy in the long run. The safety of our roadways continues to be a major concern. Statistics indicate that road conditions are a significant factor in approximately one-third of U.S. traffic fatalities. Roadway fatalities... cost the U.S. economy $230 billion each year. Reducing exposure to obstructions, adding or improving median barrier systems and widening lanes and shoulders offer opportunities to reduce crashes, injuries and fatalities... The nation, along with its patchwork infrastructure, is facing a transportation fiscal cliff in 2015. Congress must take swift action to find a long-term revenue solution if the country is to maintain its economic prosperity in the coming century.

Our crumbling infrastructure costs farmers, students, educators, commuters, motorists, and everyone who participates in the American economy. Because Congress won’t fund legislation to fix our deteriorating roadways, citizens must deal with expensive repairs and roadway deaths that cost us $230 billion a year.

There’s no room for our children in schools, death on our streets because of road conditions, and a heavy weight on our economy.

Bernie has a plan to fix it.

From The Washington Post,

Sanders can make a credible case that he can fund his $1 trillion infrastructure program over a 10 year period by taxing the profits of U.S. corporations now held in low-tax tax havens — and that such a spending plan could result in 13 million jobs.

They gave his plan, in their “Pinocchio Test,” zero Pinocchios.

By some estimates, it will actually end up costing us nothing.

From Fortune,

It should be obvious that improved roads and bridges as well as other forms of transport make businesses and workers more productive and save money... Right now, the costs of investing in our infrastructure are as low as they have ever been. In fact, we would be paid back for making these investments in terms of increased economic activity and other benefits. So why wait any longer to make these necessary investments? ...The benefits of improved infrastructure spending on economic growth, however, would be considerably higher, so the actual cost to taxpayers is nothing... Thus, “business economics” says that this would be a wise decision.

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The truth is overwhelming: oligarchy is more expensive than democracy.

Our people are sick and bankrupt, our workers struggle under poverty wages so that rich executives may profit, our children and teenagers go uneducated, our fathers and mothers are barred from spending time with their newborns, our youth are unemployed, our roads and railways are falling apart.

And the vast majority of us, whether you feel directly affected or not, pay for it.

There are, literally, hundreds of millions of dollars in lost tax revenue, corporate welfare, unnecessary public assistance spending, and lost economic growth because of big business greed, just waiting to be taken and redirected towards the people.

Bernie Sanders will take those dollars, and he will use them.

He has done it before.

Financial management is extremely important, and Bernie was a pro.

As an executive, Bernie Sanders tightened the budget, cut down the waste, sliced off the fat, and brushed Burlington’s system clean to get as efficient and people-oriented a government as possible.

Sanders was “a pragmatic and efficient administrator, one so fiscally conservative that some Republicans say he managed to ‘out-Republican the Republicans.”

Republican Board of Aldermen member Allen Gear said of Mayor Sanders,

“He’s done things I don’t think we Republicans could have done…, put a lot of modern accounting practices and money-management practices into place that are good Republican business practices.”

Bernie Sanders is not going to bankrupt the United States.

He’s a fiscal conservative!

The man is smart, efficient, and the only major Democratic candidate with executive experience.

And, if you are thinking— well, how is he going to get his policies through this Republican Congress? You are correct, he cannot.

In Bernie’s own words,

“I do not say, ‘Elect Bernie Sanders for president, I'm going to solve all of these problems.’ We need millions of people to stand up and fight back, to demand that government represents all of us, not just the one percent. I'm trying to create a movement. That is what my campaign is about – that is not what Hillary Clinton's establishment campaign is about.”

Barack Obama could barely scrape a handful of liberal policies through, and it will be the same with Hillary Clinton.

Bernie Sanders, and his political revolution, however, will not be the same.

He is not just calling for his election. He is calling for a complete change in the way the American people interact with their government. He is calling for disillusioned Americans to become engaged, for the distracted citizens to start paying attention, for the people to flood their legislators’ offices with phone calls and petitions, for the electorate to stand up and unite, together, Republican and Democrat, to take back our democracy from this greedy millionaire Congress.

A president cannot change this country, it is true.

But a president backed by an army of angry citizens can.

It’s already happening— polls show Bernie Sanders is the most electable candidate in either political party and half of us are ready for a socialist president.

With your help, and your vote, the Revolution is not only possible— it’s probable.

Do not be fooled into thinking a true democracy is impossible.

Do not believe the people benefiting from the current system when they tell you how impossible change is.

Do not shy away from the man trying to increase your standard of living, but from those sitting on heaps of cash telling you how crazy that man is.

Do not be afraid of spending money— when it comes to war and corporations, our politicians certainly are not.

Be afraid of our people staying sick and our children staying poor. Be afraid of the oligarchy and a land controlled by the powerful few. Be afraid of the wool that’s so thoroughly pulled over our eyes we may elect yet another politician to enforce this oppressive system.

Do not be afraid of the Revolution— be afraid of the status quo.