Bernie Sanders called out and quantified what should have been the issue of a lifetime. The Big Steal, a “$50 trillion transfer of wealth”, ** is the ongoing economic theft from the American working class by the very rich.
It was presented by Sanders as corporate greed channeling the increased productivity of American workers into the pockets of the executive and shareholder class. This immense transfer (“looting” in DJT parlance) underlies a great many of the social and economic problems the US faces today.
For both progressives and populists, “The Big Steal” should have been the mother lode issue; one that exposed economic injustice and finally energized a broad swath of the political spectrum into action.
But Sanders ascribed the transfer of wealth solely to the division of productive output in the real economy and did not acknowledge the wealth appropriated through the misuse of the money economy. In fact, the printing of money by the banking system gave the printers a claim on real goods while having produced no real goods themselves.
How?
As Sanders pointed out, the executive/shareholder class is taking a greater share of productivity increases but the financial “trifecta’s” portion of the Big Steal is effected by:
- Stock market inflation
- Take the valuation of Elon Musk’s fortune estimated at $850 billion while the net income his only profitable company Tesla, averaged $220 million annually. On what street in America besides Wall Street does a 3800:1 P/E ratio make sense?
- Inflated valuations were created by printed money and mean billions in commissions, interest and “asset appreciation” profits for the finance industry.
- Real estate inflation is the same mechanism as above. Borrow, bid up, sell, keep the profits and interest.
- The US Net International Investment Position declined by $18 billion in the past 10 years. Americans consume more than they produce and pay for it with their assets.
- Ultimately, trade is a barter system, lubricated by money, and there are two ways of paying for what consumers buy – they can pay with what they make or with what they own. Printed US $ paid to foreign suppliers eventually return to the US and inflate real estate (housing costs) and stocks. Paying with what they produce is clear but the money economy makes it possible for the loss of assets and increased debt to remain hidden.
Money is not real wealth, it is a claim on real wealth. Asset inflation is a transfer of real wealth, not the creation of real wealth. By misrepresenting the inflation of asset valuations as real wealth, the finance industry acquired a huge chunk of the nation’s real wealth.
What we have here is a failure to want to communicate
While Trump blamed the looting of America on foreign countries, Sanders made clear this was an inside job. By blaming the usual suspect “greed of corporate America”, instead of the money cult, he smeared all companies, the vast majority of which are productive and assets to their communities.
Sanders can be excused for thinking that exposing a wealth theft greater than the size of the US debt, and something which validated his lifelong quest to end social injustice, would be enough to ignite progressive change. But he wrapped his findings in the political dogma of the downstream fixes of taxation and subsidies rather than offering up structural changes. Consequently, the national conversation devolved further into communist/capitalist labeling, whatever those terms mean to those slinging them.
Framing the issue in ideological terms may vent anger for his base but it turns off broad swaths of the electorate while the disruptor Trump clearly identified root causes such as immigration and globalism/free trade. This left him as the only path to change.
Right Time, Wrong War
Bernie Sanders is a strong political motivator and it’s not that he is fighting the class war wrong, he is, in fact, fighting the wrong class war. Productive Americans, of whatever income level, are not the enemy. In 2026 “working class” means all those who contribute to the production of real goods and services – in effect the productive class – not just the working poor.
To his great credit Sanders developed and raised a vital issue but, despite having the broad populist core of America there for the taking, he couldn’t break out of his ideological straightjacket thus squandering a uniquely powerful uniting issue.
The inability of Bernie Sanders to transform himself from a whistleblower into a broad-based national leader is his greatest failure and one of America’s greatest losses.
** Sanders’ figures are based on a RAND Corporation study which found that $50 trillion was siphoned from the bottom 90% of Americans to the top 1% between 1975 and 2018.
John Erik Meyer Biography
John Erik Meyer is a semi-retired small medium tech business owner with a degree in economics. He has had a number of articles published in Canada’s major newspapers dealing with a range of topics from population, immigration and the environment to the failings of GDP based metrics for social policy formation. He has authored two books, “The Renewable Energy Transition, Realities for Canada and the World” and “The Post-Pandemic World, Sustainable Living on a Wounded Planet” which are published by Springer Nature. Mr. Meyer is currently President of the NGO “Canadians for a Sustainable Society” and building a house in Yarmouth, Nova Scotia which will eventually be energy positive and weather resilient. His primary interests are the changes necessary to achieve a sustainable society, population cycles and the reasons for failed human social structures throughout history.
False advertising as this pic is from 20 years ago.