Bernie Sanders on Raising Minimum Wage and Corporate Tax Loopholes | Joe Rogan

Every idea Joe, here's the bottom line on this thing. Every idea that I've just talked to you about is supported by a majority of the American people. These are not radical ideas. Well let's take these one step at a time because you mentioned a lot of important things there. Let's go with the minimum wage thing. Now the argument that I've heard about the minimum wage being raised to $15 an hour is that they're entry level positions for high school kids. For people that are just getting their feet wet in the marketplace, they're learning how to work, they're making some money after school, that they – if you charge or if businesses have to pay $15 an hour to people like that, to entry level people, that they won't be able to stay open. Well first of all, they will be competing against – if you're a business, I'm a business and both of us have to raise our wages at the same level, we both have the same burden. So it's spread across. That is what my conservative colleagues will tell you. The truth is – I don't have the numbers right in front of me – that while it certainly is true that young people do work at McDonald's and the minimum wage jobs, a significant and majority of the workers are not kids. They are orphan and I've met them at McDonald's. They are workers who have children themselves. When we work very hard to raise the minimum wage at Amazon and at Disney, we put pressure on both of those companies and they did the right thing. When you talk to the people at Amazon who got that raise, these are not kids. These are people in their 30s. These are ordinary adults who cannot make it on $12 or $13 an hour. So I think the argument that, oh, they're old kids is not really quite accurate. Trevor Burrus Well, not even that all – they're all kids but that if they are kids, what would you think about making a minimum wage for someone who is under 18 that's different from a minimum wage for someone who is a legal adult? John Deeben-Smith I'm not for that. I think we do it and look, many of these young people have their own needs. I just talked to a young woman last night who is working, going to college, working full-time, trying to take care of her family as well. So I think – look, the minimum wage has not been raised in 10 years. It is now $7.25 an hour, which is clearly unacceptable. Most of housing in California, all over this country is rising fairly rapidly. People can't afford healthcare, can't afford college. I don't think it's asking our employers too much to pay at least $15 an hour minimum wage. Trevor Burrus Now, I'm glad you brought up Amazon. One of the things that always freaks me out is when I find out that enormous corporations that make billions of dollars have tax loopholes where they literally pay no money. How is that possible and how do you stop that? John Deeben-Smith Well, it's the same thing as the drug companies. How is it possible that we pay 10 times more for insulin in this country and for other drugs than in Canada or countries around the world? The answer is it's power. So what is the goal of major corporations in America? It's to be deregulated as much as possible so in some cases they can pollute our water, our air, our environment. It's also not to pay any taxes. That campaign, as we recall, he said, my tax plan is not going to benefit the wealthy. It's going to benefit working people. Well, it turns out over 10 years, 83% of the benefit at the end of 10 years goes to the top 1%. That's what these guys – I remember – I'm called the ranking member on the budget committee in the Senate. Some guy came forward representing one of the big business organizations and this is their agenda. Their agenda was to cut Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid and to do away with all corporate taxes. So what you have right now, that's what greed is about. They want it all. So as you indicated, you have a company like Amazon owned by Jeff Bezos who happens to be the wealthiest guy in America worth about $150 billion. Amazon paid zero in federal income taxes and it's not just them. Dozens of corporations paid nothing or very, very little and on top of all of that, you got these guys able to stash all over the world trillions of dollars, trillions of dollars in the Cayman Islands, in Bermuda, in Luxembourg and other tax havens. That is insane and that has got to end. Yeah. How is it legal to do that? Why is it legal? Joe, it is legal because they make the laws. Right. All right. That is what you're touching now on the heart and soul of the tragedy of American politics. How does it happen that on issue after issue, the American people, the working class of this country wants something, nobody pays any attention to it, but billionaires want something and it gets done and that has to do with a corrupt political system. So right now, if you are the Koch brothers or some multi-billionaire, you say to the leadership of the Republican Party and in some cases to the Democratic Party, hey, guess what? We're prepared to put hundreds of millions of dollars into your campaign, hundreds of millions of dollars coming from one or two people. Here is my agenda. I want tax breaks. I want a trade system which will enable me to shut down in this country and go to China or Mexico and pay people there, two bucks an hour. I want to be able to do more pollution because I don't like all of this money I have to spend preventing pollution of the air or the water. That's what I want you to do. And by the way, I'm worried about the deficit. So you may as well cut Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. How many Americans actually believe that we should give tax breaks to billionaires and cut Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid? Very few. That is, talk to Mitch McConnell, get Mitch on the show. That is exactly what he believes. Well, that's ridiculous, right? And it seems that if you just took away those tax breaks, the enormous amount of money that would come from those corporations having to pay their fair share would take care of a lot of the expenses of all these things that you're proposing. Exactly.