What kind of elderly couple spends more than their net worth on a vacation home? Certainly, at a minimum, we can say a couple with no financial worries.

The great thing about being an avowed socialist is that you get to posture as a self-righteous man of the people without forgoing the benefits of wealth. Take the case of Bernie Sanders, whose self-reported net worth was $528,014, yet who just spent a reported $600,000 on a summer “vacation home” with 500 feet of lake frontage on gorgeous Lake Champlain.

Local Paper Seven Days Vermont broke the story Monday that Senator Sanders:

... is the proud new owner of a summer home in the Champlain Islands, Seven Days has confirmed. The Burlington resident last week plopped down nearly $600,000 on a lakefront camp in North Hero. [What a perfect name for a New Englander seeking to lead a movement! - TL] Sanders’ new crib has four bedrooms and 500 feet of Lake Champlain beachfront on the east side of the island — facing Vermont, not New York. The Bern will keep his home in Burlington and use the new camp seasonally. (snip) Last Tuesday, the day of the closing, a relaxed-looking Bernie Sanders posed for a photo at Hero’s Welcome General Store on Route 2.

The new home marks the third Sanders residence.

The Sanders [sic] also own a row house on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., and a house in Burlington’s New North End.

I suspect that Bernie’s and Jane’s current net worth is about to be supplemented by a huge publisher’s advance, just as with “dead broke” Hillary Clinton. In fact, there is a very decent chance that people will actually buy a book by Sanders, so the publisher will not have to mentally write off the advance as a political donation.

The fact is that politics can be a hugely lucrative business, and that when a socialist politician claims to be a pure small-d democrat, more likely than not, riches lie ahead, no matter whose name the property is in. Remember that Al Sharpton, the moral center of the Democrats, evaded paying a court judgment against him for libel by claiming he didn’t even own the suits he wore.