Feeling the Bern

I know, typical entitled Millennial. Voting for the Socialist who wants to make college free and tax the ever-loving daylights out of the ultra-rich. I’m such a statistic.

Despite the stereotype of us “selfish, entitled young folk” wanting everything on a silver platter, my affinity for Bernie Sanders is the result of quite the opposite. No, I don’t want tax breaks and I can scrounge up a living working for less than $15 per hour. I have enough opportunities and my family is stable enough for me to make my way, for which I’m eternally grateful.

However, not everyone has the same opportunities that I’ve had.

Sanders has been pushing to assist those with fewer opportunities since he started his career back in the ’70s. He recently identified an old photo of himself being arrested during a protest in South Side Chicago. Since he was a student at the University of Chicago, he was in favor of equality for all and supporting the civil rights movement.

Sanders has also advocated to make health care public, something that will drastically improve American lives by starting at our very basic needs, our physical health.

Perhaps his most well-known push is that for affordable secondary education. This revolutionary (or not-so-revolutionary, as compared to most of the major industrialized countries in the world) proposal would make college accessible for millions of more Americans and even cut already-existing debt by allowing people to refinance their loans.

This proposal has been met with a huge backlash of criticism at the cost. Even without looking at the cost of each part of his proposal, anyone could tell you that the program will be expensive.

But the best part of Sanders’ plan?  Of all his proposals?

He knows exactly how he’ll pay for them.

He may seem like a bit of a quack (that’s how my parents describe him, anyway), but Sanders has a solid, well-paved plan for this country.

In the words of our beloved Smash Mouth, “We could all use a little change.”