Bernie Sanders is many a progressive’s fairy-tale candidate.
Well, yeah.
Not “once upon a time,” but today … the federal government’s public debt is in the double-digit trillions. The total debt — consisting also of unfunded/underfunded welfare state “promises” — may be in the triple digits. Still, politicians pat themselves on their backs when they deliver annual deficits under half a trillion per year.
Meanwhile, Senator Sanders, former member of America’s Socialist Party and current caucuser with the Democrats, is running on the “freebie” platform: let’s spend more!
He serves as the pusher of a very old folly: thinking that good things come to us without cost.
But the costs have to be paid.
And will be.
That’s the essence of common-sense wisdom since ancient times. Usually I conjure up an accountant or an economist to explain this, but why not go back to folklore? Folk and fairy tales, along with myths both ancient and modern (remember Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings?), tell us that magic powers come at a price.
And those costs can be killer.
Far-left-of-center magic pretends that not only can Bernie provide “free” stuff for everyone (including those of us in his “hard-working middle class”), but also that the wherewithal for these goodies (college, medicine, food, shelter, meaningful work) can easily come from … three pot-of-gold sources: “the rich,” “print more money,” and that least plausible sprinkle of fairy dust, “government efficiency.”
We tell children fairy tales not to make them wish for magic solutions, but to illuminate the logic of responsibility.
Bernie didn’t get that lesson.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
