The Bernie Card: Bernie Marcus vs. Bernie Sanders
The only thing Bernie Sanders and Bernie Marcus, the founder of Home Depot, have in common is...a first name. Other than that, the two men couldn't be less alike.
Yet both are in public eye these days, the one telling us to trust him, that his socialism will make things all better for us, and the other warning about the sheer awfulness of the same such socialism and how it makes life impossible for innovators and pioneers such as himself.
Cripes, people immigrate to America just to be around Bernie Marcus's Home Depot for the day labor. Meanwhile, the country that Bernie Sanders praises, Venezuela, is driving millions to flee to any place their feet will take them. That tells you all you need to know about the maker and the taker among the two Bernies.
That's what can be drawn from a clever op-ed from Issues & Insights, which compares Bernie Sanders, the bum who wants your money, with Bernie Marcus, the man who created 20,000 millionaires overnight when his wonderful company went public. Get a load:
A pair of Bernies, one running for president, the other a wealthy corporate executive and philanthropist, are on opposite sides of the political spectrum, as well as the cultural divide. One has made life better for many. The other wants to suck the life out as many as he can.
Home Depot co-founder Bernie Marcus, now 90, recently said that Sen. Bernie Sanders, campaigning for president as a Democrat with a Socialist's pedigree, is the "enemy of every entrepreneur." Sanders, who represents Vermont, has made a public career out of vilifying corporations, free markets, and the wealthy.
...and...
Meanwhile, Sanders, who has never started a business, wants to guarantee a job to everyone through government fiat, and has overheated dreams about forcing the country into a Medicare for All system, an impossible-to-pay-for arrangement which no other nation in the world has, not even the Scandinavian countries he says are his models.
That the one who has done so much good for the world with his amazing company can share a first name with a ridiculous socialist backwash who wants to wreck everything is pretty amazing. Yet guess which one is slightly more famous than the other. Guess which one gets the most media ink. Of course you know. Read the whole thing here.
Image credit: Montage by Monica Showalter, with photo by Robert Huffstutter via Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0, Vimeo screen shot, logo, and public domain sources.