A second viral post pops up about Bernie Sanders’ minimum wage, tax plans. It’s just as wrong

Let’s be clear. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., wants to raise tax rates on wealthy Americans. And he wants to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour (and pay for universal health care, among other things).

But Sanders isn’t proposing huge tax increases on low-wage workers to make the math work.

A Facebook post on "Bernie logic," gets the details wrong.

"Bernie Logic," the post reads.

"Nobody can live on $7 an hour. We must raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour. Also we must raise the tax rate to 52%. 

"$15 an hour * 52% = $7.80. $15 an hour - $7.80 = $7.20. 

"$7.20 an hour!!!"

Sanders does support a new federal minimum wage to $15 an hour. What he doesn’t propose is raising tax rates to 52% for those low-wage earners.

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stated on September 20, 2024 in an X post

First lady Jill Biden led a Cabinet meeting for President Joe Biden and her signature appears on presidential stationery.

Instead, Sanders has proposed increasing the tax rate for the country’s highest earners to 52%; the new tax rate would apply to income earned only above $10 million. 

That’s a significant increase over the current top tax rate of 37%. The Sanders campaign says the increase would generate an additional $700 billion in tax revenue over 10 years. ]

But the tax rate wouldn’t affect minimum wage or low-wage workers, whether they earned $7.25 an hour, $15 an hour or $200 an hour.

That’s logic. This post is False.