One of the great things about being Bernie Sanders is that you don't have to make any sense.
Not in the Joe Biden way of being completely incomprehensible, but in the way that a fantasy novelist can invent the rules by which people and the world work so that the impossible happens whenever you want.
Lots of people love those books, and that's fine. I love Science Fiction, and I assume romance novels appeal to people for much the same reason: escaping into fantasy is a release from the hard realities of the here and now. We enjoy movies, literature, video games, and other forms of entertainment at least partly because they let us live in a world that does not exist or obey the same rules as the one we live in.
Unfortunately, plenty of people don't see the distinction between reality and fantasy clearly, and they want pretty stories, great adventures, clashes between good and evil, and utopias to exist when the world is much grayer, less vivid, and more disappointing.
Everybody indulges in that to some extent, but few Americans more so than Bernie Sanders' supporters.
Bernie Sanders: The American people want a tax on billionaires so that we can have universal child care, we can make public colleges tuition-free, and we can build millions of units of low-income and affordable housing. It's time that the billionaire class, many of whom pay an effective tax rate lower than a truck driver, start paying their fair share of taxes.
— Clash Report (@clashreport) November 6, 2026
It's time that the billionaire class, many of whom pay an effective tax rate lower than a truck driver, start paying their fair share of taxes.
Bernie is the bad romance novelist for the politically moronic. He appeals to their fantasy that resources are unlimited, that wealth simply exists on its own, and that the only reason things aren't perfect is that people like him don't get to distribute it wisely. He spins a tale in which evil billionaires hoard wealth and truck drivers, none of whom he probably knows, could be at home loafing if only Elon Musk gave up his (mostly paper) wealth.
The thing is, it's easy to do the math, and even if Bernie could seize all, and not just steal 5 percent at a time, billionaires' wealth all in one go, it would make basically no difference to solving any of the problems Bernie is promising to solve. He claims that over ten years he could collect $4.4 trillion with his billionaires' tax, which covers...a couple of years of deficits if you had it all at once, and you wouldn't.
We could go into all the economic reasons why wealth taxes are a horrible idea in and of themselves, but even if you took Bernie's assumptions at face value and assumed no negative economic effects, he is spinning a yarn. His numbers don't come close to adding up, and he keeps adding ways to spend money that his plan would never deliver.
Just one example: he is now promising 7 million new affordable housing units. That, alone, on conservative estimates that assume most would not be in cities where construction is most needed but also astronomically expensive, would cost somewhere between $2 trillion and $4 trillion. Half to 90 percent of the money would be gone before you hit child care, healthcare, free college, or anything else on his wish list.
He spends all that money he would never actually get, because billionaires would move or shelter their wealth, and investment would collapse 5, 6, 7, 8 times, depending on which promises you take seriously at any moment.
Even California voters are smart enough to see this. Or should I say, just enough of them have that they said No to Bernie and his pals.
DSA leader Megan Romer has NO answer when Fox News’s Martha MacCallum asks where the $49 TRILLION for her socialist agenda is coming from. Romer calls the number “made-up.” Then MacCallum what HER number is, and it gets embarrassing fast. MACCALLUM: “That’s $350,000 per household. Cancelling student debt, open borders and amnesty, Medicare for All. How are you going to pay for that?” ROMER: “Yeah, I mean, we understand that the White House, who does not like us very much, managed to come up with some math that made us look bad.” MACCALLUM: “So that’s $47.4 trillion, Medicare for All.” ROMER: “Yeah, it’s a made up number.” MACCALLUM: “You say it’s a made up number, but it was done by economists. Your number versus their number.” So MacCallum throws her a lifeline. MACCALLUM: “What’s your number when you add up everything on that list? What number did you come up with?” ROMER: “There’s no like, one solid number because it depends on what pieces we can build in the meantime.” MACCALLUM: “So just give me a basic number for your wish list.” ROMER: “That number is outrageous.” MACCALLUM: “What’s your number for your wish list?” ROMER: “That number is ridiculous ... I’m not going to give you a solid number. That’s not what I’m here to do.” The number isn’t just coming from White House economists. Cato ran the DSA platform and found that confiscating the entire net worth of the 400 richest Americans, all $6.6 trillion of it, covers about 9% of the bill. Take every dollar of corporate profit on top of that and they’re still $29 trillion short. Romer is more than happy to explain how she’ll take money from the “billionaire class” and hand it to the working class. But ask how much it costs, or how she’ll actually pay for everything, and her entire argument collapses. CONTEXT: The DSA’s own estimate for its billionaire wealth tax is $3.9 trillion over ten years. The agenda costs $49 trillion. Even by their math, the billionaires cover 8 cents of every dollar.
— The Vigilant Fox 🦊 (@VigilantFox) November 6, 2026
DSA leader Megan Romer has NO answer when Fox News’s Martha MacCallum asks where the $49 TRILLION for her socialist agenda is coming from.
Romer calls the number “made-up.” Then MacCallum what HER number is, and it gets embarrassing fast.
MACCALLUM: “That’s $350,000 per household. Cancelling student debt, open borders and amnesty, Medicare for All. How are you going to pay for that?”
ROMER: “Yeah, I mean, we understand that the White House, who does not like us very much, managed to come up with some math that made us look bad.”
MACCALLUM: “So that’s $47.4 trillion, Medicare for All.”
ROMER: “Yeah, it’s a made up number.”
MACCALLUM: “You say it’s a made up number, but it was done by economists. Your number versus their number.”
So MacCallum throws her a lifeline.
MACCALLUM: “What’s your number when you add up everything on that list? What number did you come up with?”
ROMER: “There’s no like, one solid number because it depends on what pieces we can build in the meantime.”
MACCALLUM: “So just give me a basic number for your wish list.”
ROMER: “That number is outrageous.”
MACCALLUM: “What’s your number for your wish list?”
ROMER: “That number is ridiculous ... I’m not going to give you a solid number. That’s not what I’m here to do.”
The number isn’t just coming from White House economists.
Cato ran the DSA platform and found that confiscating the entire net worth of the 400 richest Americans, all $6.6 trillion of it, covers about 9% of the bill. Take every dollar of corporate profit on top of that and they’re still $29 trillion short.
Romer is more than happy to explain how she’ll take money from the “billionaire class” and hand it to the working class.
But ask how much it costs, or how she’ll actually pay for everything, and her entire argument collapses.
CONTEXT: The DSA’s own estimate for its billionaire wealth tax is $3.9 trillion over ten years. The agenda costs $49 trillion. Even by their math, the billionaires cover 8 cents of every dollar.
It's DSA math. Numbers? What numbers? We have a dream.
That works fine in the first season of Star Trek: The Next Generation, where resources are unlimited, disease has been conquered, and somehow people just work to better themselves, but in this world we need to create wealth in order to live. You can't just say "Tea, Earl Grey, hot" and have it magically appear.
It must be nice to think you live in that world, and perhaps it comes close if the government, mommy and daddy, and Neville Singham keep throwing money at you. But most of us don't have that luxury.
Editor's Note: The Democrat Party has never been less popular as voters reject its globalist agenda.
Help us continue exposing Democrats' plans to lead America down a dangerous path. Join HotAir VIP and use promo code FIGHT to receive 60% off your membership.
Join the Conversation
VIP members get the ability to comment on articles.