Bernie Sanders Was Asked About Growth — and His Socialism Fell Apart

At a Stanford town hall on AI held on Friday, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) was handed a serious question about economic growth. Not inequality. Not redistribution. Not morality.

Growth.

Here is the question exactly as asked:

Senator Sanders likes to explain what’s wrong in society, which is valuable. But today when I asked him what caused American prosperity in the first place, he had little to say. You cannot sustainably redistribute prosperity if you don’t understand what creates it to begin with. https://t.co/fwECwUJZ3A pic.twitter.com/H6EJMBvsXs
— Sid Gundapaneni (@MacroscopeEcon) February 21, 2026

“Despite similar levels of education and development, Europe has produced almost none of the world's largest frontier tech firms, while the United States dominates global tech innovation. I want to ask, what institutional or economic features do you think explain this difference? Earlier, Congressman Khanna said that government dollars led to AI. Why haven't European government dollars led to such innovation? Are our congressmen, like y'all, so much smarter investors than them, or is it that our entrepreneurs face a better set of incentives at the margin than them? In short, I'm asking you to explain not why we have inequality, but why we've had so much growth over the last two decades.” (Sanders AI transcript)

That framing could not have been clearer. The student separated inequality from growth and asked about incentives, institutions, and the structural reasons the United States outperforms Europe in frontier tech.

Sanders did not engage the structure.

He pivoted.

“In most European countries, all people have health care as a human right. In most European countries, it doesn't cost $80,000 a year to go to college. In most European countries, they have strong child care systems…” (Sanders AI transcript)

When pressed again, specifically “What has led to our growth?” he moved even further from the question:

“We got 800,000 people are homeless. 60 percent of our people living paycheck to paycheck in the wealthiest country in the history of the world.” (Sanders AI transcript)

Healthcare. Tuition. Homelessness.

Everything except the mechanism that creates the wealth he wants to redistribute.

And that omission is not incidental. It is the point.

The European model Sanders invoked does include universal healthcare and subsidized higher education. It also included decades of aggressive wealth taxation, the kind of redistribution-first policy Sanders routinely champions.

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As reported, France’s “Solidarity Tax on Wealth” targeted assets above 1.3 million euros and remained in place for much of the period from the early 1980s until 2018. Over that span, capital did what capital does when it is punished. It left. From 2000 to 2017 alone, roughly 60,000 millionaires departed France. One estimate cited in the reporting placed total capital flight tied to the policy at €200 billion between 1988 and 2007, potentially trimming annual GDP growth.

France’s own finance minister warned that “overtaxing capital” had driven investors and wealth creators away. President Emmanuel Macron ultimately repealed the broad wealth tax in 2018, citing concerns about competitiveness and investment.

This is not a philosophical disagreement. It is a case study.

Capital moves. Incentives matter. Growth follows the rules you write.

The Stanford question was simple. If Europe has comparable education levels and government investment, why does the United States dominate frontier innovation?

That answer necessarily involves venture capital depth, founder upside, risk tolerance, and institutional flexibility, features of American capitalism that Sanders has spent his career attacking. The growth engine runs on incentives. It always has. Pretending otherwise will not make it disappear.

Sanders had a clean chance to explain why America dominates frontier innovation. Instead of talking about incentives or capital, he reached for the redistribution script.

That wasn’t an answer. It was a dodge.

When asked what built American prosperity, he changed the subject, because the real answer, that capitalism rewards risk and fuels innovation, collides head-on with the socialism he’s selling.

Socialism is very good at describing inequality. It is terrible at explaining growth.

If you want to redesign the American economy, you should at least understand why it works.

At Stanford, Bernie Sanders didn’t just dodge the question.

He proved he doesn’t.

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