Michael Moore joins Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren for Town Hall on ‘Inequality in America,’ refuted by Ben Shapiro
Does America have a poverty problem? What is the solution? Can the tax code be changed to benefit the downtrodden? Those are questions debated on Monday evening as Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Michael Moore and economist Darrick Hamilton hosted a townhall on inequality in America.
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Ben Shapiro noted that “This makes sense, since they should know an awful lot about it: Sanders owns three homes, Michael Moore owned nine homes as of 2014 and was worth $50 million then, Warren lives in a $2.4 million home and is worth between $3.7 and $10 million herself. All three of them are intent on rectifying the financial imbalances in America by taxing people who make less than they do to pay people who make even less than that, presumably.”
“What I would say to our friends in the corporate media: Start paying attention to the reality of how many people in our country are struggling economically every single day – and talk about it,” Sanders said in response to the participants attacking the press for spending most of their time covering the alleged Russian collusion instead of the poverty crisis in America.
Elizabeth Warren touted unions: “Unions built America’s middle class. It’ll take unions to rebuild America’s middle class.”
Shapiro refuted the claim: “This isn’t even close to true, but it makes for a good campaign talking point for her 2020 run (in point of fact, America’s middle class was burgeoning long before the advent of the union movement, and in the aftermath of the downfall of private unions, Americans have been moving into the upper middle class at a rapid rate).”
“In recent years, we have seen incredible growth in the number of billionaires, while 40 million Americans continue to live in poverty and we have the highest rate of childhood poverty of almost any major country on Earth,” Sanders stated.
“The billionaires are not, of course, stealing from small children; America has a rich welfare system for childhood poverty,” Shapiro again counters. “And America does not have the highest rates of childhood poverty – we have higher rates of relative poverty than other countries (meaning number of children living at 50 percent or below a country’s median income, which is still relatively rich by global standards). Even Politifact, a left-wing outlet, has rated Sanders’ statements along these lines ‘mostly false.'”
Moore attacked Democrats: “It’s so important that we hold the people who say they’re for the people – hold their feet to the fire! And if they’re not going to do the job they say they’re going to do, let’s get somebody else.”
Shapiro’s conclusion: “If these rather rich central-planning advocates want income equality, they can begin by taking out their checkbooks. But that’s not the agenda. The agenda is political power, and demagoguery in its pursuit.”
