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Socialist Bernie Sanders aspires to be U.S. Secretary of Labor if Joe Biden wins the Presidency; a situation that could threaten the fundamental principles of free enterprise and private property.
The U.S. Department of Labor is part of the government’s cabinet, and is responsible for working conditions, standard wages and hours of workers; as well as unemployment insurance, job reinsertion services, and some economic statistics. It is precisely this body that Sanders intends to lead.
Bernie Sanders has already stated that taking office would be “very attractive”; the most socialist U.S. Senator would be happy to fight for supposed “decent wages and jobs alike” in the best style of what Hugo Chávez implemented in Venezuela.
“I think something as secretary of labor would be a very attractive position,” Sanders said in an interview with CNN.
“It would give me the opportunity to fight to increase the minimum wage, to a living wage, equal pay for equal work for women, it would give me the opportunity to make sure that workers who are entitled to overtime pay receive that overtime pay,” he added.
The socialist also stated that “I would help workers to organize in unions, so that they can earn decent wages through collective bargaining.”
Bernie Sanders and his socialist initiatives
It was Sanders who altered the waters of U.S. politics by talking in 2016 about “democratic socialism”; his project refers to the New Deal, defending free universities, and supposedly defending workers’ rights. Sanders is one of those who believes that money from Wall Street and big industries has “corrupted” U.S. democracy.
Sanders proposes a national minimum wage and has other progressive demands such as equal pay for women. The Vermont senator has also made it clear that he seeks to somehow limit “indiscriminate corporate profits” and implement re-distributive policies.
A socialist initiative very similar to what Chavismo implemented in Venezuela was the proposal built by Sanders in 2018, the Stop BEZOS Law, which would tax companies for every dollar that employees earn in government health care benefits or food stamps.
The rationale for the legislation was that it would force corporations to increase workers’ wages or pay for the social assistance programs on which their employees depend. A measure similar to that of Chavismo in Venezuela and its Organic Labor Law.
Socialist measures such as those Sanders wants to implement could cause the destruction of enterprises in the United States and somehow violate the freedom of enterprise where each employer makes the decisions of his company depending on his economic capacities.
An article published by Héctor Schamis for Infobae entitled “Bernie Sanders’ Socialist Rant” recalls some facts that were implemented in Venezuela and that led to more corruption, greater state control and more unemployment:
“It is logical that arbitrary expropriations and capricious confiscations, inefficient price and capital controls, and an economy suffocated by regulations generate incentives for renting behavior and the capture of the state by partners in political power. From there to kleptocracy as a system of domination there is only one step. And from there to the criminal State, as in Venezuela, another and very short one”, points out Shamis.
We must remember that with a constant increase in the minimum wage and with arbitrary social laws that only benefit the employees, Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro left 96% of the companies that operated in Venezuela before the arrival of socialism inactive.
Price controls, labor laws, expropriations and threats are, for the most part, the reasons why the industrial sector in Venezuela became a business graveyard: a situation that could begin to be replicated in the United States with such radical measures.
Sabrina Martín Rondon is a Venezuelan journalist. Her source is politics and economics. She is a specialist in corporate communications and is committed to the task of dismantling the supposed benefits of socialism // Sabrina Martín Rondon es periodista venezolana. Su fuente es la política y economía. Es especialista en comunicaciones corporativas y se ha comprometido con la tarea de desmontar las supuestas bondades del socialismo