by Micah J. Fleck

Hudson Institute senior fellow Jeffrey H. Anderson has uncovered some shocking numbers that reveal a tax plan like what Sanders proposes would actually reduce the average citizen’s income by one sixth.

Anderson writes in The Weekly Standard:

Now that Bernie Sanders has routed Hillary Clinton by 22 points in New Hampshire, the American people might be curious to learn more about some of his specific policy proposals, starting with his tax plan. The nonpartisan Tax Foundation has scored Sanders’s plan and has found it would cause the after-tax incomes of those in the middle of the income spectrum—those with incomes between the 40th and 60th percentiles—to drop by between 16.3 and 17 percent. In other words, Sanders’s tax plan would reduce the typical American’s income by a sixth.

This is unsettling news, as Sanders has repeatedly positioned himself as a candidate of the people looking out for the low wage workers. Though he has perpetuated the myth of “the poor get poorer,” it was always my impression that it was mere ignorance that motivated Sanders’ vacuousness in this regard; but the more data that comes out on the unflattering end of Sander’s policies, the harder I’m finding it to keep chalking it all up to simple oversight.

Anderson elaborates:

This would result partly from Sanders’s raising of taxes on the middle class (and on everyone else), and partly from the ill-effects that his myriad tax hikes would have on the economy. In terms of tax increases for the middle class, Sanders would add a new 6.2 percent employer-side payroll tax that his campaign calls an “income-based health care premium paid by employers,” which would be passed on to employees in the form of lower wages. He would also add a new 2.2 percent “income-based [health-care] premium paid by households,” which the Tax Foundation writes “is equivalent to increasing all tax bracket rates by 2.2 percentage points.” It turns out that government-run “single payer” health care requires a whole lot of payers. In all, the Tax Foundation finds that Sanders’s tax plan would be a $13.6 trillion tax hike—27 times as large as Hillary Clinton’s proposed $498 billion tax hike.

No news yet on how the Sanders apologists fared and blaming it all on “runaway capitalism” yet again when confronted with more news of their prophet’s economic illiteracy.