Sanders Refuses to Say If Socialism Means More Government ‘in Our Lives’

ROSE: “You’re doing something right, obviously.”

SANDERS: “Yep.”

ROSE: “We want to talk about you and how you define yourself. People talk about socialists and Democratic socialists. For you what does it mean?”

SANDERS: “What it means is we should take a hard look at countries like Denmark, Norway, Finland, other countries around the world which have achieved some enormous gains for the middle class and working families of these countries. We are the only major country on earth that doesn't guarantee health care to all of our people. The only major country that doesn't have paid family and medical leave, sick time for our workers, paid vacation time. Many countries around the world make sure that the young people can get free public college and free tuition at public colleges and universities. We have far more income and wealth disparity than most major countries on earth. While we have seen at recent years, Charlie, are proliferation of millionaires and billionaires, we continue to have the highest rate of childhood poverty of any major country on earth. These are some of the areas that I think we've got to focus on.”

ROSE: “Does it mean a lot more involvement of the government in our lives?”

SANDERS: “What it does mean is that we are going to ask the wealthiest people in this country who are doing phenomenally well, many large corporations that are making billions of dollars of profits and not paying a nickel in taxes to in fact start paying their fair share of taxes, so that we do not continue to see the disappearance of the middle class, do not continue to see 45 million people living in poverty, and bring us a little bit more equality in the country than we currently have.”