A Taste of Socialism in Every Scoop of Ben and Jerry's Bernie's Yearning Ice Cream
Ben and Jerry’s co-founders Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield aren’t just ice cream entrepreneurs… they are big backers of democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders… so much so that they have dedicated a flavor in his honor.
Under the lid, it may seem like regular ice cream, which consists of a solid milk chocolate disk with mint ice cream underneath, but each flavor has a specific meaning.
“The solid disk of chocolate represents… all of the wealth that’s gone up to the top one percent and underneath is the rest of us, and the way you eat is just [to] whack it up into a bunch of little pieces and move it around and there you have it,” Cohen said to the FOX Business Network’s Maria Bartiromo.
The two founders also shared their views on socialism.
“We have a program in the U.S. called social security that puts people ahead of profits essentially. All Bernie’s talking about is making health care a human right and making access to education something that’s available to everybody regardless of how much money you have,” said Cohen.
“It’s Democratic socialism. What it means is that government will work for all the people and not just for the few at the top and for the corporations and we are going to pay for it by having [everyone] pay their fair share,” said Greenfield.
With social security expected to go bankrupt by 2034, Ben and Jerry believe that if everyone pays their fair share, the program will be “in good shape.”
Meanwhile, although the current tax code has the top earners paying the most in taxes, Cohen also argued they are using loopholes to shelter their income in offshore tax havens.
“Plus you have all these really profitable corporations that end up paying zero tax and that’s not fair, that’s not what [everyone] wants,” added Greenfield.
While Cohen and Greenfield couldn’t provide which tax bracket they fell into, they don’t believe they would have to shell out Sanders’ proposed 92% for top earners.
“It’s the marginal tax rate, so up to a certain amount you pay 50%, over the next amount you pay twenty-something percent… and so you’re only paying your highest rate when you’re making over, I don’t know, $300,000, $500,000, a million dollars. It’s not 92% of your entire income,” explained Greenfield.
He also explained why turning to socialism is more beneficial than reforming the tax code.
“The real problem is the influence of big money in politics -- and that’s really what determines what kind of tax code we have, what kind of laws we have, because the way the system is, is both [political] and [economical], all the benefits go to the top one percent, to the ultra-wealthy, and to the corporations, so we need what Bernie calls a political revolution,” Greenfield noted.
Although the two founders aren’t sure what the tax rate should be, they believe taxes should be higher.