Sounding very much like a Republican celebrating the legitimacy of the rewards that follow successful entrepreneurship, Bernie Sanders is defending his own earning of over a million dollars in one year. Joshua Caplan quotes him at Breitbart:

I didn’t know that it was a crime to write a good book which turns out to be a bestseller. My view has always been that we need a progressive tax system which demands that the wealthiest people in this country finally start paying their fair share of taxes,” he continued. “If I make a lot of money, you make a lot of money, that is what I believe. So again, I don’t apologize for writing a book that was number three on the New York Times bestseller, translated into five or six languages and that’s that

Bernie Sanders speaks in Gary, IN: "I didn't know that it was a crime to write a good book, which turned out to be a best seller." pic.twitter.com/vbfWjE0jCr

— The Hill (@thehill) April 13, 2019

But Bernie seems to be forgetting the immortal words of Barack Obama in favor of collective rewards for individual effort: “You didn’t build that.” After all, without the forests leveled for paper, without the roads to transport the goods, without the editors (and ghostwriter?) at his publisher, and without the internet for e-books (developed orginally by taxpayer-supported DARPA) Bernie would never have been able to reap his million bucks.

And what about the fairness of one author earning big bucks, while other authors earn next to nothing for their books? The Left frequently denounces the fact that teachers earn less money than business owners, as if market outcomes ought to be irrelevant when it comes to monetary rewards for effort.

Don’t get me wrong: I enthusiastically endorse Bernie’s new position that the market justly determines who gets rewarded and who doesn’t. But from now on, I want to hold him to applying that principle to fields of endeavor beyond authorship.

Image credit: Twitter video screen grab