A Vox poll asked Bernie Sanders supporters how much they’d be willing to shell out to fund his college and nearly universal health-care proposals.
From IJ Review:
The study found that more than half of all supporters would not be willing to pay more than $1,000 annually for his “Medicare-for-All” healthcare, or $1,500 for free college.
The real kicker is that, while many Sanders supporters would be willing to pay a little more for universal healthcare, it is actually less than what they are currently paying to receive employee-sponsored healthcare.
According to a study conducted by the Kaiser Family Foundation, the average individual spends a little more than $1,000 annually in premiums, while the average family pays nearly $5,000.
Some analysts believe Sanders’s health-care plan would cost double the campaign estimate. Paul Krugman doesn’t even think the numbers add up.
The results of this study show that many Sanders supporters don’t actually want socialism, or even a much larger welfare state. They might think socialism is forcing “millionaires and billionaires” to pay for stuff (though confiscating their income entirely would only make a dent in paying off our current spending) or perhaps forcing people above an arbitrarily selected income bracket to foot the bill. But they don’t think socialism is what it is: a theory of social organization marked by state control of the means of production and often the absence of private property. Under such a system your private property is either abolished or at least completely vulnerable to state confiscation and redistribution in pursuit of the egalitarian ideal. Economic leveling can sound pretty good until you realize that on net, the leveling can come at your expense, scraping more off your share than it adds, if it adds anything worth having.