A little more than a month ago, a wondrous thing happened: Democratic Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders (I-VT) admitted to Stephen Colbert (another person who handles economic truths interestingly) that health care was a service/good provided on a market and was therefore *trumpets blow* not free.

“Is health care free? No, it is not,” Sanders told host Stephen Colbert. “So what we do is exempt the first $29,000 of a person’s income. You make less than $29,000 you pay nothing in taxes. Above that, in a progressive way with the wealthiest people in this country paying the largest percentage, people do pay more in taxes.”

This came on the heels of a sparring match between Democrat candidates at a July debate who struggled to explain whether or not taxes to fund health care programs like Sanders’ Medicare For All would require a new tax on the middle class.

The socialized healthcare plan proposed by Bernie Sanders includes a new, $3.9 trillion, 4 percent payroll tax on workers.

This tax kicks in for families earning $29,000 or more, far below former President Barack Obama’s definition of middle class of $250,000 in annual income.

This is likely the tip of the iceberg when it comes to tax increases on the middle class because the Sanders raises $14 trillion in new taxes, roughly 40 percent of the cost of his Medicare for All Plan, which would require $32 trillion and $36 trillion in higher taxes over the next decade.

For anyone that missed that when it happened (and I admittedly did, especially since, at the time, Sanders’ website entry detailing his plan “contain[ed] no mention of a tax increase on the middle class”), Sanders reupped his plan to bleed people dry Monday — even people making close to the poverty level for a family of four — to pay for his socialized medicine plan. The best part? It was part of a worker appreciation brunch tour. Oof. Talk about a misnomer.

.@BernieSanders says he will raise taxes on anyone making over $29K to fund Medicare-for-All
pic.twitter.com/VFFylnV3LH

— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) November 25, 2019

There are really only two ways to understand this, given that Bernie has always asserted his intent is to tax the rich  and protect the middle class and working poor: he either thinks 30K a year falls under some definition of rich; or his goal — as he began admitting as far back as January — is less about protecting the economically disadvantaged of the nation like some socialized Santa Claus and more about getting his big government programs passed regardless of how those same people suffer.

Can’t wait to hear his explanation of how paying an extra 4% is actually benefitting people at the lower end of the economic spectrum because it ensures access to sub-par, bureaucratic, painfully slow, government-provided health care.

Bernie has a master plan to equalize the classes, it would seem, by making them all poor through taxation.