From Bernie's website:

1. Demanding that the wealthy and large corporations pay their fair share in taxes. As president, Sen. Sanders will stop corporations from shifting their profits and jobs overseas to avoid paying U.S. income taxes. He will create a progressive estate tax on the top 0.3 percent of Americans who inherit more than $3.5 million. He will also enact a tax on Wall Street speculators who caused millions of Americans to lose their jobs, homes, and life savings.

2. Increasing the federal minimum wage from $7.25 to $15 an hour by 2020. In the year 2015, no one who works 40 hours a week should be living in poverty.

3. Putting at least 13 million Americans to work by investing $1 trillion over five years rebuilding our crumbling roads, bridges, railways, airports, public transit systems, ports, dams, wastewater plants, and other infrastructure needs.

4. Reversing trade policies like NAFTA, CAFTA, and PNTR with China that have driven down wages and caused the loss of millions of jobs. If corporate America wants us to buy their products they need to manufacture those products in this country, not in China or other low-wage countries.

5. Creating 1 million jobs for disadvantaged young Americans by investing $5.5 billion in a youth jobs program. Today, the youth unemployment rate is off the charts. We have got to end this tragedy by making sure teenagers and young adults have the jobs they need to move up the economic ladder.

6. Fighting for pay equity by signing the Paycheck Fairness Act into law. It is an outrage that women earn just 78 cents for every dollar a man earns.

7. Making tuition free at public colleges and universities throughout America. Everyone in this country who studies hard should be able to go to college regardless of income.

8. Expanding Social Security by lifting the cap on taxable income above $250,000. At a time when the senior poverty rate is going up, we have got to make sure that every American can retire with dignity and respect.

9. Guaranteeing healthcare as a right of citizenship by enacting a Medicare for all single-payer healthcare system. It’s time for the U.S. to join every major industrialized country on earth and provide universal healthcare to all.

10. Requiring employers to provide at least 12 weeks of paid family and medical leave; two weeks of paid vacation; and 7 days of paid sick days. Real family values are about making sure that parents have the time they need to bond with their babies and take care of their children and relatives when they get ill.

11. Enacting a universal childcare and prekindergarten program. Every psychologist understands that the most formative years for a humanbeing is from the ages 0-4. We have got to make sure every family in America has the opportunity to send their kids to a high quality childcare and pre-K program.

12. Making it easier for workers to join unions by fighting for the Employee Free Choice Act. One of the most significant reasons for the 40-year decline in the middle class is that the rights of workers to collectively bargain for better wages and benefits have been severely undermined.

13. Breaking up huge financial institutions so that they are no longer too big to fail. Seven years ago, the taxpayers of this country bailed out Wall Street because they were too big to fail. Yet, 3 out of the 4 largest financial institutions are 80 percent bigger today than before we bailed them out. Sen. Sanders has introduced legislation to break these banks up. As president, he will fight to sign this legislation into law.

Bernie will fight for some things apparently but clearly fighting for something doesn't get the job done in governing. In fact fighting for something is pretty meaningless. Be that as it may, Bernie apparently believes that this agenda will raise income levels to the point of lifting more Americans above the poverty line and increasing median incomes. To what degree I don't know what Bernie is claiming. My view is that it would probably put more Americans below the poverty line but that's me.

Since Bernie seems to be gaining support what are the most important policy initiatives in Bernie's agenda to bring about more income equality?

A tsunami of nonsense. To start, minimum wage should be $23.50.

Bernie's ideas are nonsense in your view. Fair enough.

Yes... Lesser Americans should know their betters... Sanders is clearly against that. ... Thus, nonsense.

Forget the minimum wage. If he really wants to help the poors why not but a cap on housing? A regular 3 bedroom home in decent shape built in the 60's is not worth half a million bucks. In some areas, real estate is just plain over valued.

^ lol.... but, but... it's an INVESTMENT buttressed by the notion of infinite growth!! ...don't you poo poo an "asset!!"

Well those kind of homes don't sell for that kind of price in very many places either, mostly a lot, lot less. Perhaps the government should help people move to areas where housing is a lot more affordable? Oh wait they do, sorry. I mean you can deduct moving expenses for taking a new job in another city. Then of course people have to have the requisite skills to be hired in another city and given the low UE rate of people with 4 year degrees perhaps Bernie's free higher education idea isn't so bad after all.

Free higher education? Everyone who goes to college and studies hard should be paid. They're sacrificing several years of income to get an education and will pay higher taxes if they can find a job. Good luck with that unless the government creates jobs.

Well Bernie has a lot of ideas about creating jobs.

This old socialist geek geezer isn't ready for prime time. Is this really what the left has come to, this old fool? Talk about desperate, Jesus.

what's the advantage in having high income inequality in america?

seem to be ressourceful on how to reach 100tril debt too

If Americans were smart they would vote for Bernie, but most Americans are dumb as ****. Not talking about the Americans that post here.

Actually he lines up with the Donald on a few things. Notably single payer healthcare and protective type policies on trade.

Nothing much really. The point of this "policy" is to create a wedge issue. Notice that any quantatitive measure of what constitutes fair and why it is fair is left out of the proposed "policy" like always. If you actually achieve "fairness" in quantitative terms the issue is removed from the discussion. So there is actually no incentive to actually get the proposed "policy" implemented correctly because it is more useful for politicians to keep it out there as an issue. Put another way, it is a way for political parties to marginalize their base.

Well in a place like NYC this is loltastic really and in many impoverished rural areas well this is just silly. The trend of local and state governments handling this to me is a very welcome trend. Bernie doesn't have the political chops to persuade Congress folks anyway so many of his policy proposals are just not ever going to happen if he was elected.

Define high income inequality quantitatively please.

Yeah pretty much.

I didn't expect you to come up with any advantages

GINI index (World Bank estimate)

Gini index measures the extent to which the distribution of income (or, in some cases, consumption expenditure) among individuals or households within an economy deviates from a perfectly equal distribution. A Lorenz curve plots the cumulative percentages of total income received against the cumulative number of recipients, starting with the poorest individual or household. The Gini index measures the area between the Lorenz curve and a hypothetical line of absolute equality, expressed as a percentage of the maximum area under the line. Thus a Gini index of 0 represents perfect equality, while an index of 100 implies perfect inequality.

so we need to create more poverty to compete with the countries that already have so many impoverished people, because there aren't enough worker drones to exploit right now

So your view is that an equal distribution of income == income equality. I don't hold that opinion tbh, especially in the USA. That is a crazy idea actually but probably close to how Bernie sees it.

bill gates would agree it's a crazy economic system, that's why he's taking it upon himself to redistribute his wealth. he knows it's morally wrong for one person to have 50 billion dollars. i don't see an argument for why ultra rich people are necessary for the economy.

i can see how a lot of wealth concentrated in the hands of a small group can cause a lot of harm by exploiting the work of the proletariat and manipulating free markets for the ultimate gain of making themselves even more fabulously wealthy. but i don't see the drawbacks of having fewer ultra poor people and slightly fewer ultra rich people. germany, norway, sweden, denmark.. these societies are thriving, it's not a brand new untested idea to tax rich people more than we're doing right now in america.

This is very likely bull****. I don't think Gates would say it is "morally wrong" for anyone to have any arbitrary amount of money and he would likely agree that it is silly for anyone to think that way. I would say that, after doing everything possible to acquire that amount of wealth, he now realizes that it pleases him more to give a lot of it back to charity and he is also VERY specific about where HIS money is going.

so if ronald reagan made so much money making movies this year that he's reached a 90% tax bracket, maybe he could do a lower budget movie just because it's a good movie and just be an actor practicing his craft instead of choosing a job just because it pays the most. maybe society would benefit from having more thoughtful introspective ronald reagan movies.

maybe hedge fund managers would work hedge funds for 2 months a year and spend the rest of their time, energy and brain power on something else. you might think they'd be resentful and just sit at home watching tv and smoking weed out of spite, but some of them might use their abilities to contribute to society in new and unexpected ways. and there would be 6 times as many hedge fund managers.

maybe our system that's set up in such a way that there's no ceiling for the "winners" incentivizes something totally useless: accumulation of unnecessary wealth.