SANDERS: Deserves your vote

Bernie Sanders: “Billionaires should not exist.”

What is the purpose of living in a society where we can buy whatever we want, but the basic needs of our people aren’t being met? That’s the reality for too many in this country, but it doesn’t need to be that way.

Working people, over centuries, built the economic and social infrastructure upon which all wealth and productivity is owed. And the dividend inheritance of that invested labor should be certain basic human rights. Otherwise, what are we collectively striving for at all, if not for progress?

There’s no reason why, in the richest country in the history of the world — though much of that wealth is held by a handful of individuals — that we cannot guarantee health care, tuition-free trade school and a job to everyone who wants one. Other countries are able to easily do it. And if the cost of having that society is that a handful of billionaires will be slightly less rich — with no personal sacrifice on their part in terms of lifestyle — while the rest of society flourishes, then that is a trade worth making.

Bernie Sanders is worth voting for president, because he’s the only one willing to stand up to the powerful special interests — billionaires, fossil fuel companies, media monopolies, the health insurance industry and the pharmaceutical industry — standing between us and a country with all of the benefits that are our right as Americans.

HARVEY MATTERSON

Coeur d’Alene