Sanders is 84 years old. He has been a U.S. Senator since 2007, which means he has de facto been in the majority twice. Taxes on the rich fell both times.
He doesn’t put forward serious ideas. He makes headlines to sell books, the source of his millions in personal wealth.
Being in he majority party doesn’t mean he can force the rest of the party to line up behind him. And even if he could, in 2021-24, the Republican filibuster stonewalled absolutely anything interesting that the Democrats wanted to do anyway.
By 2019 it was more than a million [1] and by 2024 over $3 million [2].
To be clear, I make no allegations of corruption. Just that he’s pushed zero policy that aligns with his purported views in the way he’s pushed his book sales.
Not how politics works! He puts zero effort into making them passable, or pushing to get them included into omnibuses. He’s there to placate and sell books. If what you want is an influencer in the Senate, he’s your guy.
isn't a method used by smaller groups with less popular ideas to try to shift the overton window in their favor? if that's the case with Sanders then his goal wouldn't be to make his bills passable, it would be to shift the conversation to something like "hey maybe a sovereign wealth fund isn't a bad idea"
Can we just stick to letting the market work, lifting all boats, etc.. The more you mess with laws like this, the more draconian things get. Remember when Newsom said all cars except Tesla get some tax credit. So corrupt.
“The market” doesn’t do shit for labour, which is just another commodity.
It turns out that a capitalist system favours those who have capital, who coincidentally have all the power.
So “the market”, is literally controlled by those in power. Why would they give a shit about labour, who the capitalist owning class are benefitting from by training their models on?
To put it even blunter,
Some people inherit power and exploit that power over those of us who have inherited a low status in society.
I think this is laziness. There's a massive need for inventions right now. Need for new software in this agentic world. There's a massive need for building things. Some of this requires no backers, no capital, no experience. Some people are creating traveling dog grooming companies and making 100k per year.
I think a lot of people on hacker news are doomers and are trying to spread this message far and wide, when in reality, you really can change the world by being proactive with your thoughts and actions.
He doesn’t put forward serious ideas. He makes headlines to sell books, the source of his millions in personal wealth.