Michael: The RAND Corporation, a pretty sober research group, found that in the last 50 years, a staggering $50 trillion in wealth has been transferred from the bottom 90% of Americans to the top 1%. Kevin: Fifty trillion? With a T? That’s not a rounding error. That’s like the entire country’s GDP for two years just… migrating upwards. Michael: Exactly. And the core argument of the book we’re diving into today is that this wasn't an accident. It wasn't just the market 'working its magic.' It was a design feature. And it’s okay to be angry about it. Kevin: A title that doesn't exactly bury the lede. We are, of course, talking about It's OK to Be Angry About Capitalism by Senator Bernie Sanders, co-written with the journalist John Nichols. Michael: And it’s a book that’s been both widely acclaimed and, unsurprisingly, controversial. It hit bestseller lists immediately, but it’s also been criticized by some as idealistic or overly aggressive. Kevin: Well, Sanders is a fascinating figure to write this. He's been an independent, a self-described democratic socialist, inside the halls of power for decades. This isn't a book from an academic in an ivory tower or an activist lobbing grenades from the outside; it’s from an insider who’s seen how the sausage gets made... and is now telling us it's mostly gristle and it's poisoning us. Michael: That’s the perfect way to frame it. And the book argues that the anger shouldn't just be about the numbers, that $50 trillion figure. The anger is fundamentally a moral response. Which brings us to the book's most provocative claim.

Michael: The book states, pretty bluntly, that billionaires should not exist. Kevin, what’s your gut reaction when you hear that? Does it sound like simple envy, or is there something deeper at play? Kevin: Honestly, my first reaction is a little bit of a jolt. It sounds so… absolute. We’re so used to celebrating billionaires, right? The innovators, the philanthropists. The immediate counter-argument that pops into my head is, "Well, don't people like Bill Gates do a lot of good with their money?" The book is saying that’s the wrong question to even ask. Michael: It is. Sanders argues that focusing on the good deeds of a few billionaires is a distraction. The real issue is the existence of a system that allows for that level of wealth accumulation in the first place, while millions of people can't afford healthcare, housing, or even food. His point is that a society that produces billionaires alongside widespread poverty is a society with a profound moral sickness. Kevin: A moral sickness. That's strong language. It’s not an economic argument, then, it's an ethical one. Michael: Precisely. And to make that point, the book doesn't just use statistics. It tells stories. The most chilling one is about the Sackler family, the owners of Purdue Pharma. Kevin: Ah, the architects of the opioid crisis. Michael: The very same. The book lays it out in excruciating detail. In the mid-90s, they launched OxyContin with an incredibly aggressive and deceptive marketing campaign. They knew from their own focus groups and internal data that the risk of addiction was severe. They had reports of people crushing the pills and snorting them almost immediately after launch. Kevin: And they just… ignored it? Michael: They did more than ignore it. They actively concealed it. They trained their sales reps to lie to doctors, telling them the risk of addiction was "less than one percent." They created a speaker's bureau of doctors, paying them to travel the country and sing the praises of OxyContin. All of this was driven by one of the Sacklers, Richard Sackler, who pushed the company to sell, sell, sell, no matter the human cost. Kevin: Wow. And the human cost was staggering. Hundreds of thousands of lives lost. Entire communities hollowed out. Michael: And the Sackler family made billions. Billions. They were eventually fined, yes, but no member of the family ever saw the inside of a jail cell. They got to keep a huge chunk of their fortune. The book uses this as the ultimate example of its thesis: this isn't "just business." This is a system where the pursuit of profit is so detached from morality that it can knowingly produce mass death, and the perpetrators are rewarded with unimaginable wealth. Kevin: That’s where the anger comes in. It’s not about someone inventing a better smartphone and getting rich. It’s about a system that protects people who profit from human misery. But how is that even possible? How does a system allow that to happen without any real consequences for the people at the top? Michael: That’s the million-dollar—or rather, billion-dollar—question. The book argues it’s because that same wealth is used to capture the political and regulatory systems. The line between capitalism and, as you put it, criminal behavior gets blurred because the people with the money are the ones drawing the line. Kevin: So the existence of billionaires isn't just a symptom of the problem; their wealth becomes the shield that perpetuates the problem. Michael: Exactly. It's a feedback loop. And that loop extends into every part of our lives, which is where the book gets even more personal and, frankly, more infuriating.

Michael: That moral decay we saw with the Sacklers isn't some rare, extreme case. The book argues it's the logical endpoint of a system designed for profit above all else. And it shows up in places we can't escape, like our own healthcare. Kevin: Right, this is where it stops being about abstract billionaires and starts being about my own medical bills. Michael: And the book has this incredibly powerful, simple story to illustrate the point. During one of his campaigns, Sanders chartered a bus and took a group of people with Type 1 diabetes from Detroit, Michigan, across the border to Windsor, Canada. Kevin: I think I remember this. Why? Michael: To buy insulin. These were people who were rationing their insulin in America because they couldn't afford it. One young man on the bus had almost died because he was trying to stretch his supply. They get to a pharmacy in Windsor, and they buy the exact same insulin, from the exact same company, for one-tenth of the price. Kevin: Hold on. One-tenth? Not 10% cheaper. 90% cheaper. Michael: Ninety percent cheaper. The book makes the point that this isn't a market failure; from the perspective of the pharmaceutical companies, this is a market success. They can charge whatever they want in the U.S. because the government is forbidden by law from negotiating drug prices on behalf of its citizens. In Canada, the government negotiates, so prices are lower. Kevin: That is just fundamentally broken. You're telling me the only thing standing between life-saving medicine and a 90% discount is an invisible line on a map, and a law written to protect corporate profits? Michael: That's precisely what the book is saying. It's a rigged system. And the rigging doesn't stop with the laws. It extends to the information we get. Sanders recounts a moment in a 2019 CNN presidential debate. He's making the case for Medicare for All, and the moderator, Jake Tapper, starts challenging him, using a classic Republican talking point about how it would force people off their "good" union health plans. Kevin: Okay, a tough question, that's what debates are for. Michael: But Sanders's response was fascinating. He didn't just answer the question. He turned it back on the moderator and the network. He said, "Jake, your question is a Republican talking point," and then he added, "And by the way, the healthcare industry will be advertising on this program." Kevin: Oh, that's a bold move. Did it land? Michael: The audience applauded. And sure enough, during the next commercial break, there were ads from pharmaceutical and insurance lobbying groups arguing against a "one-size-fits-all government insurance system." Kevin: So the media isn't just reporting the news, they're setting the boundaries of the debate. And those boundaries are conveniently sponsored by the very people benefiting from the broken system. It’s like watching a boxing match where the referee is being paid by one of the fighters. Michael: That’s a perfect analogy. The book argues that this is the core problem with corporate media. It's not necessarily "fake news." It's about what gets covered and what doesn't. It's about the questions that are never asked. The system protects itself by controlling the narrative. Kevin: Okay, I'm angry. The book has definitely succeeded on that front. But anger without a plan is just yelling at the television. It feels hopeless. What's the 'fight back' part of this? What's the actual plan to fix a system this rigged?

Michael: That's the crucial pivot in the book. After chapters of indictment, it shifts to a message of hope, but it's a very specific kind of hope. It's not about waiting for a political savior. The core philosophy is encapsulated in the campaign slogan: "Not Me, Us." Kevin: I always thought that was just a good slogan, but the book treats it as a genuine theory of political change. Michael: It is. The idea is that real, transformational change never comes from the top down. It comes from the bottom up, when millions of people stand together and demand it. And he offers his own 2020 campaign as a kind of proof-of-concept. Kevin: How so? Michael: Through fundraising. While other candidates were holding high-dollar fundraisers in billionaires' mansions, the Sanders campaign made a deliberate choice to reject all of that. Instead, they built their entire war chest on small-dollar donations. The numbers are incredible. They raised over $45 million in a single month from more than two million individual donations. The average donation was just $18.50. Kevin: Eighteen dollars and fifty cents. That's less than two movie tickets. And they ran a national presidential campaign on that? Michael: They did. It was a revolution in campaign finance. It proved you could compete at the highest level without being beholden to corporate PACs or the billionaire class. It was a living example of the "Us, not me" idea. Power to the people, literally. Kevin: That is an amazing story. It shows there's a different way. But... let's be real. He didn't win. And the book itself talks about the failure of the Build Back Better agenda, which was the big legislative push to enact a lot of these ideas. Michael: It does, and it's brutally honest about it. The Build Back Better bill would have been the most significant piece of legislation for working families in 80 years. It included things like expanding the Child Tax Credit, which had cut child poverty by nearly half. It had provisions for climate change, healthcare, and education. It was hugely popular with the American people. Kevin: So what happened? Michael: It was killed. Not by Republicans, but by two Democratic senators, Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, who were showered with money from corporate lobbyists—from the pharmaceutical industry, from Wall Street, from the fossil fuel industry. The entire corporate establishment mobilized to kill it, and they succeeded. Kevin: So the system won. That's the takeaway? It feels like the grassroots power you mentioned, the $18 donations, just slammed into a brick wall of corporate money. Does this bottom-up revolution actually stand a chance? Michael: This is the most important and subtle point in the book. Sanders argues that winning isn't just about passing one bill or winning one election. The 2016 and 2020 campaigns, even in losing, fundamentally changed the conversation in America. Ideas that were considered "radical" and "fringe" five or ten years ago—a $15 minimum wage, Medicare for All, the Green New Deal—are now mainstream pillars of the progressive agenda. That shift in consciousness, he argues, is a massive victory. It's the long game. It's about building a movement that can eventually overcome that brick wall.

Michael: So the book really charts a journey for the reader. It starts with a moral awakening—giving you permission to be angry and showing you that the system is producing outcomes that are objectively indefensible. Kevin: Like the Sackler family profiting from an epidemic. Michael: Exactly. Then, it shows you the machinery of that system—how corporate power rigs the rules in everything from drug prices to the news you watch. Kevin: The insulin trip to Canada. The CNN debate. It connects the abstract to the concrete. Michael: And finally, after all that, it offers a path forward. It’s not a guaranteed win, and it’s not a simple 5-step plan. It’s a call to join a fight, a political revolution from the bottom up, powered by the principle of "Not Me, Us." Kevin: It leaves you with a really powerful question. The title says it's okay to be angry. But the book's real challenge is: now that you're angry, what are you going to do about it? And more pointedly, which side are you on? Are you on the side of the working class, or the corporate class? The book argues there's no neutral ground anymore. Michael: It’s a question worth thinking about, and the book makes a compelling case that the answer will define our future. We'd love to hear your thoughts. Find us on our social channels and let us know what resonated with you, or what you pushed back on. Kevin: This is Aibrary, signing off.