Bernie Sanders Net Worth: Feel the Buck
Bernie Sanders was easily one of the most colorful characters in the 2020 Presidential race, and in American politics in general. A self-declared Democratic Socialist, his manic speaking style and pulpit-pounding intensity can’t help but produce a strong reaction – good, bad, or other – in any audience.
As a candidate for the Democratic nomination for President in 2020, Sanders’ platform demanded much higher taxation of the wealthy in order to provide a more comprehensive set of government services and benefits for all Americans than anyone would have dared propose even a decade ago. It’s a message, however, which seems to resonate with many voters – some of whom are still angry that he didn’t win the Democratic nomination over Hillary Clinton in 2016.
Whatever one thinks of his politics, it surprised many people recently to learn that Sanders is not an impoverished comrade standing in line for toilet paper as part of his commitment to the collective. In fact, between his Congressional income, some savvy real estate investments (he currently splits his time between three very nice homes), and a number of best-selling books, Bernie Sanders net worth, combined with that of his wife, Jane, is something in the neighborhood of $2 million.
For some, this still begs the question of whether or not he can truly be as much of a Socialist as he claims. Can some animals on the farm be so much more equal than others, or does that invalidate the entire ideology he so passionately promotes?
CNBC: How Bernie Sanders Became A Millionaire
The American Dream
Sanders was born in Brooklyn, New York, on September 7th, 1941, only a few months before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. His parents were both Polish immigrants chasing the traditional American Dream – move to a new world, learn the language and culture, work endless hours and put forth an unwavering effort, and somehow leave your children in a better position than you were in.
It wasn’t always a smooth journey, as this Politico profile explains:
“Money was a constant source of anxiety,” he told a reporter from the Wall Street Journal in 1983. “Money was something the family, the whole neighborhood, was constantly preoccupied with,” he told the Atlantic in 1985. “The money question to me,” he wrote in a 2010 book titled The Jews of Capitol Hill, “has always been very deep and emotional.”
Nevertheless, they found a way to make it work. Both of Sanders’ parents died before he turned 21, and he was left with a few thousand dollars and the lessons they’d instilled in him to make his way in the world. He married, graduated from the University of Chicago, and purchased (with his wife) eighty-five acres in Middlesex, Vermont. It was a remote tract with no electricity or running water, and while there was no doubt some degree of rustic charm to the experience, it wasn’t enough to satisfy his personal goals or hold together his marriage.
Little could either of them have imagined what Bernie Sanders’ net worth would one day become!
Sanders took a variety of jobs as he found them, from carpentry to freelance writing to part-time gigs as they presented themselves. He developed a passion for local history and began creating his own filmstrips which he then sold to local schools for use in the classroom. He didn’t always have money and couldn’t always pay his rent, but he always seemed to get by in other ways and remained proudly anti-war and anti-corporate America.
Political Career
Sanders began running for political office in the late 1960s and early 1970s and was eventually elected as Mayor of Burlington, Vermont, in 1981 – a position for which he was re-elected three times. During his first year or so in office, he drove the same worn-out old Volkswagen Dasher he had for years. Sanders used to tell about how often he’d receive traffic tickets for having parked in spots reserved for the mayor. Officers who didn’t know better simply couldn’t believe the rusty heap in front of them might actually have been the mayor’s car!
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Sanders ran for and won a seat in the U.S House of Representatives in 1990, where he served for 16 years before running and winning one of Vermont’s two seats in the U.S. Senate – a position he’s successfully held ever since.
Sanders’ political priorities have always been to elevate the “little guy” over corporate power and entrenched wealth. He genuinely believes that not only is it the right thing to do, it’s the necessary thing to do for the long-term financial, social, and political prosperity of the nation. One need not agree with his ideology to be at least a little bit impressed at his intensity, sincerity, and consistency over the years. After all, how many politicians can you point to and say, “Yeah, they’ve pretty much always stuck with that exact set of priorities no matter who they were speaking to or who was in the majority at the time”?
What Would Marx Say?
Sanders’ defenders point to the source of his wealth as the key to the question of whether or not his words and his actions present voters with a contradiction. As one committed socialist explains in a recent Buzzfeed profile of Sanders:
It’s all about a pretty fundamental economic concept: There’s a big difference between the money people earn from their labor and money they earn from capital.
There are lots of ways to make money. But as Karl Marx put it, all income can effectively be divided into those two categories. Labor — work — is how most people make money. Whether you’re running the drive-thru at McDonald’s or developing software at Google, you sell your work to someone who pays you for it.
By this definition, Bernie Sander’s net worth has come largely from his labor – his service in public office and his writing. The first is part of the essential social contract, they’d argue, under which we choose leaders to handle certain governmental functions so the rest of us have law and order. The second is the same sort of honest work as planting crops or working in a factory. Or so the argument goes.
Income from capital is a totally different animal. It’s the money you make from owning something valuable — capital — whether that’s a block of rental apartments or an oil field. For a capitalist, the goal is to sell or rent their capital for more than it cost to acquire it — that is, to turn a profit. To do that, they need to pay workers less than the value created by their labor. This puts capitalists at odds, in a fundamental way, with the interests of the people who work for them.
The socialist vision of society doesn’t rest on the impoverishment of everyone, but the comfort of everyone — we all enjoy the benefits of our work. That Sanders is lucky enough to work two jobs that actually pay something like the fair value of their labor is simply a reminder that most people’s work is massively undervalued, and some work, like homecare and childcare, often pays nothing at all.
In other words, Sanders’ supporters would say, the issue isn’t having money. It’s how the money was earned. A politicians net worth is less important than how that worth was netted.
How Bernie Made Big Bucks
Sanders’ first meaningful income came from his time in political office – especially once he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1990. The average salary of a Representative was around $100,000 per year. That’s far less than most comparable roles in the private sector, but still, a fairly healthy salary compared to most of us hoping to be represented for this amount.
Moving to the Senate would have meant a jump to something in the area of $165,000 per year – again a modest figure compared to corporate America, but certainly enough to manage a nice home and some planning for the future. There’s no denying that a solid income stream from his time in office is a critical part of Bernie Sander’s net worth.
First Permanent Home
Bernie’s first permanent home was a row house in D.C., within walking distance of his job at the Capitol. (For those of you who don’t live in a crowded city, a ‘row house’ is simply a home that’s part of a long row of housing, generally sharing walls and without yard or space between units.) Being D.C., even a relatively modest dwelling like this one cost him $489,000.
Second Residence
A second residence is in Burlington, a four-bedroom colonial-style residence he purchased in 2009 for $405,000 and recently paid off. Having homes in both D.C. and one’s home state isn’t all that uncommon, given the demands of political life, so neither the row house nor the colonial number in Burlington drew many comments, even when purchased by the avid socialist.
Third Home
It was after Bernie’s loss in the 2016 primaries that he drew negative attention for home number three. He purchased a $575,000 summer home on Lake Champlain in Vermont – four bedrooms and three bathrooms. There was no scandal about where the money was coming from. Sanders at that point had written several books and had just received a large advance on another, and his wife had some retirement savings she threw into the mix. The issue was that Bernie had just spent a year campaigning largely on the abuses of the wealthy and how out-of-touch they were with normal Americans.
Senator Sanders
Sanders ran for and won a seat in the U.S House of Representatives in 1990, where he served for 16 years before running and winning one of Vermont’s two seats in the U.S. Senate – a position he’s successfully held ever since.
Sanders’ political priorities have always been to elevate the “little guy” over corporate power and entrenched wealth. He genuinely believes that not only is it the right thing to do, but it’s also the necessary thing to do for the long-term financial, social, and political prosperity of the nation. One need not agree with his ideology to be at least a little bit impressed at his intensity, sincerity, and consistency over the years. After all, how many politicians can you point to and say, “Yeah, they’ve pretty much always stuck with that exact set of priorities no matter who they were speaking to or who was in the majority at the time”?
The Sanders' homes, taken together, account for a solid chunk of Bernie Sander’s net worth. It seems that real estate still has the potential to be an essential element of long-term financial security. Besides real estate and investing, it is extremely important to know how to save money and protect your wealth.
The Book Deals
Cover of a book by Bernie Sanders, Where We Go from Here
Image source: amazon.com
Finally, of course, are the book deals. For whatever reason, people love to buy books by politicians. Former Presidents like Bill Clinton and Barack Obama have multiple income streams, but by far the most lucrative is the hunger with which the public devours anything they choose to write. Obama is a particularly fascinating example, with a current net worth estimated to be around $48 million – largely from his writing!
It’s probably a bit humbling, actually, for someone like Joe Biden – the current President. He’s not exactly struggling to keep the lights on with his current estimated net worth of $9 million, but clearly, his book sales aren’t keeping up with those of his former boss!
To Conclude,
Then again, Sanders and his ilk would most likely argue that while entertainers are entitled to whatever people wish to pay them, they find value in what they're doing, and what they write about in their best-selling books, and what they preach to willing audiences. The millions are certainly nice, no doubt. But the feeling that they’ve come in doing what you care about? Well, that’s probably worth something pretty important as well. Maybe Bernie Sander’s net worth is about more than the money?
Not that he seems eager to give it up anytime soon. $2 million is still a lot of money!