Gotta Wonder What The Hell Bernie Sanders Is Complaining About

ETFs and index funds? Really?

So Bernie’s talking up his idea of a wealth tax. 5% of the wealth of each billionaire and, as far as I understand it, 5% each year.

He gives us all the usual rhetoric and near all of it is nonsense. Billionasire tax rates are measured by unrealised capital gains and so on. Just abject nonsense where it’s not positively injurious to the economic health of the nation.

But we know all this about Bernie anyway - as well as the fact that this isn’t a serious proposal in the slightest. It’s a bit of election year sloganeering and no more than that for all its stupidity.

For me the stand out line is this:

Four Wall Street firms combined – BlackRock, Vanguard, Fidelity and State Street – are the major stockholders of more than 95% of American corporations.

Bernie’s against mutual funds, ETFs and index funds. For that’s where all that stock ownership is - in funds owned by the investors in those funds which happen to be organised - not owned - by those four companies. Bernie’s against the standard working and middle class investment form that is. Which is a useful insight into Bernie’s thinking.

Of course, it could well be that Bernie’s too stupid to know this. Or the people who write his screeds for him are (I’ve done the political speechwriter/article creator job myself. The headliner doesn't necessarily have much input into the process) that ignorant, stupid or mereticious of course which is no better.

Billionaires must pay a 5% wealth tax because index funds.

Ho well, there were those of us who thought Bernie was living proof of the Peter Principle back when he was mayor of Burlington already. We might even have been right.