At a "Fight Oligarchy Tour' event in Salt Lake City, Utah on Sunday, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) spoke about his proposed economic policies.
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00:00But there is one area where not only have we not made progress, but we have lost ground.
00:12And that is the economic struggle facing tens of millions of working families in this country.
00:19Back in 1944, in a State of the Union Address, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, one of our very greatest presidents,
00:39he said something very profound.
00:42And in so many words, what he said is, you know, we have a constitution, a great constitution, guarantees freedom of speech, freedom of religion, etc.
00:50But what we need to do is incorporate it into our values, the understanding that economic rights are human rights.
01:12We are the richest country on Earth, and new technologies are going to make us even richer.
01:19There is no excuse for children in America going hungry.
01:29There is no excuse for elderly people not being able to afford their prescription drugs.
01:35There is no excuse for 800,000 people sleeping out on the streets.
01:54Now what the establishment does, and that is the media and all of the corporate world,
02:02they want to tell you that you're not entitled to anything.
02:07That life is a struggle, that it's dog-eat-dog, and if you are born poor or working class, tough luck.
02:17Well, I have a different vision for America.
02:20And that is, we have got to end this corrupt campaign finance system overturn Citizens United.
02:33And move to public funding of elections.
02:54Elon Musk should not be funding our elections.
02:57We have got to deal with the grotesque level of income and wealth inequality.
03:08We're not going to give tax breaks to billionaires.
03:11We're going to demand they start paying their fair share of taxes.
03:15We're not going to tolerate tens of millions of workers trying to get by on starvation wages.
03:28We're going to raise the federal minimum wage to a living wage.
03:32All over this country, workers want to join unions.
03:49Because when you're in a union, you get better wages, better benefits, better working conditions.
03:55We're going to pass legislation that stops corporations from acting illegally against workers who want to join unions.
04:11A lot of people in Washington are talking about cutting Social Security.
04:16We're not going to cut Social Security.
04:21We're going to expand Social Security.
04:29Now, some of the young people here may not know it.
04:33But not so many years ago, if you had a job, you would often have what's called a defined pension benefit.
04:41In other words, you worked and part of the benefits were that when you retired, you know you got to check every month for a certain amount.
04:51We got to bring back defined pension benefits.
05:00And when we talk about where we want to go as a country, I want everybody here to understand.
05:07We are the only major country on earth that does not guarantee health care to all people as a human right.
05:20This is not a radical idea.
05:25We are spending twice as much per capita on health care as the people of other nations.
05:38And yet, 85 million and many of you here are uninsured or underinsured.
05:46Large deductibles, yes?
05:47The function of a rational health care system is not to make huge profits for the insurance companies and the drug companies.
06:00We need a Medicare for all single payer program.
06:10All over this country, in Vermont and all over this country, we've got a major housing crisis.
06:28It's not just that 800,000 are homeless.
06:3320 million Americans are spending 50% of their limited incomes on housing.
06:39That's crazy.
06:43Instead of spending a trillion dollars a year on the military, let's build 5 million units of low income and affordable housing.
06:50We live in a competitive global economy.
07:05We need the best educated workforce on earth.
07:09It is beyond absurd that young people who want to get a higher education or go to trade school have to go deeply in debt in order to do that.
07:27Anybody here dealing with student debt?
07:31We need, we need, we need more doctors, more nurses, more psychologists, more dentists, more construction workers, more plumbers, more electricians.
07:48We desperately need them.
07:51People should not have to go into debt to do the work that America desperately needs.
07:57It is not a radical idea.
08:10It is not, you know, a hundred years ago, working class people said, you know what, we want our kids not to be working in factories or in the fields.
08:21We demand public education.
08:23And we got that.
08:25But that stops at the 12th grade.
08:28The world has changed.
08:29We got to make public colleges and universities tuition free.
08:46We want the best educated population on earth.
08:51From childcare to public schools to higher education.
08:55That's what we should be doing.
08:57That's what we should be doing.