The First and Last Resort

Let me return to Bernie Sanders, who thankfully, was beaten in North Carolina by an opponent who, to put it gently, is exhibiting the typical patterns of an elderly man in the very first stages of dementia. But Joe Biden (and I do feel sorry for the man) is a topic for another day. Today, I'll revisit Bernie's recurrent mantras—his "medicare-for-all" policy where he believes that the state should control all medical care and provide it "free" to all the people and his income inequality rants where he rails against the rich and uses class warfare as a club.

The author of Regie's Blog recounts an experience with socialist, state run medicine in China, long before COVID-19 swamped their medical care system. His infant daughter became sick and he went to a hospital in Hutong, China:

As we stepped in more urine, took our number from the print-out machine, walked past the line of children whining and crying from the scalp IVs in their heads, then rushed to clean up blood and mucus (left by the last patient) on the plastic table they were now laying our baby on, then waited on the ONE overworked doctor (attending to no less than three hundred people) try to round up a basic anti-biotic to administer to my daughter (right there on site – no refills) it dawned on me what I was seeing and what I had been seeing this whole time. I wasn’t watching a “backward” culture or a third-world society. These people weren’t genetically inferior to first-worlders. They weren’t “less-evolved” than I was ...

So what if you don’t like the conditions in the hospital? Where else are you going to go? This hospital is the last (and only) stop. You can’t opt for another place and then just pay out of your own pocket. The government has capped financial upward mobility. There is now “income equality.” And that means nobody has the means to buy their way into a different (or better) situation. And even if you could, one doesn’t exist. The state provides it all. You’re stuck.

And there's the rub. In Bernie's socialist utopia, the state is the first and last resort. You don't like what they give you for "free?" You're screwed, because when medicare-for-all (as an example) is launched, you'll have no where else to go. Bottom line, socialist policies take away freedom—all in the name of social justice. The result isn't "justice," it's the ruination of countries that we see over and over again.

And if you're delusional enough to accept the fantasy that the state will somehow be more efficient, more caring, and more competent than the private sector, you really do need to go to a hospital—a psychiatric facility, to be exact.

UPDATE:
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"But, but, but ...," cry Bernie's supporters, "He gets his funding from little people who send small amounts, so his ideas must be the ones that are best for the prolitariat." Ummm... no.

Daniel Greenfield has done some research and reports:

Geographically, Bernie's top dollar zip code is 94110 in San Francisco. The average household income in this part of the Mission District, specifically the Inner Mission, the Bernal Heights area, is $166,302. The median home value is around $1.5 million and the median rent is almost $5,000 a month.

There are no poor socialists in what was dubbed as “the hottest neighborhood in San Francisco.”

This was the area that Salon founder David Talbot blasted as the "hottest zip code in the country" overrun by "Silicon Valley movers and shakers" in "new-model Teslas, BMWs and Uber limousines". It’s only fitting that it should also be the spigot through which so much of Bernie’s tech bros dollars flow.

The second top dollar Bernie zip code in San Francisco, 94117 or Haight-Ashbury, seems like a better fit for Bernie. But the Summer of Love has long since given way to the Winter of Trust Fund Hipsters in the Haight where the average income is $201,503 and average home values top $1.6 million.

The media has made much of Bernie’s flow of donations from Brooklyn. But the money isn’t coming from the working-class Brooklynites of Bernie’s old neighborhood, but the gentrifying areas of the borough. 11215 or Park Slope is the second biggest top dollar zip code of Bernie donors.

The neighborhood, formerly urban, known as the home of Mayor Bill de Blasio, and the Park Slope Food Co-Op and its anti-Semitic push to boycott Israel, is filled with renovated brownstones filled with wealthy hipsters. It’s a place where a three-bedroom apartment can go for $2.9 million.

To New Yorkers, Park Slope has become a curse word embodying everything wrong with the new elite.

In third place on Bernie’s donor list is 10025 or the Upper West Side of Manhattan. With an average rental price of $4,695, it’s not exactly an inexpensive place to live. The UWS is the 8th richest neighborhood with a $190,281 mean household income. And this is where Bernie’s cash comes from.

Heh ... looks like there's some income inequality among Bernie's donors. It's also ironic that the capitalist system he hates and wants to dismantle is the same system that has enabled his most prolific donors to earn enough to keep his campaign going.