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When Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who calls himself a democratic socialist, appeared on "The Late Show With Stephen Colbert" in May, Colbert asked him: "Why is socialism cool again, Bernie?"

"I think people are looking at this country today and they are seeing incredible greed," Sanders responded, "and they are seeing that -- in the richest country in the history of the world -- so few have so much and so many have so little."

Since then, CBS has announced it will be canceling Colbert's show as of next May.

Sanders, meanwhile, is currently taking in an annual salary of $174,000 from a federal government that is $37 trillion in debt. His most recent financial disclosure form also revealed that last year, while serving in the Senate, he earned $148,750 in book royalties.

Yet, Sanders presents himself as a common man, defending his fellow commoners against a pernicious elite.

Recently, he has visited North Carolina and West Virginia on what he calls his "Fighting Oligarchy Tour." While on this tour in West Virginia on Friday, he taped an interview with Dana Bash for CNN's "State of the Union."

Even Bash saw the disconnection between his message to West Virginia and the fact that President Donald Trump won 70% of the vote in that state last November.

"We're in Wheeling, West Virginia," Bash said to Sanders, "and it's so fascinating that this is part of what you call your Fighting the Oligarchy Tour, because this is a state where Donald Trump got 70%."

"Really?" said Sanders.

"Look, this is a working-class state," he later told Bash. "It's one of the poorest states in the country. People are hurting. And they want candidates to come before them to stand up for the working class and take on the oligarchs, who have so much economic and political power."

"In my view, the current political system in the United States of America is broken and corrupt," Sanders said in this interview.

"The fundamental problem facing America is that you have got a handful of oligarchs who have enormous wealth, enormous economic power, enormous political power and they want even more," said Sanders. "That is the fundamental issue."

One of the most recent steps Sanders has taken in his democratic socialist campaign is to reintroduce his Pay Teachers Act, which is co-sponsored by eight other Democratic senators. This act, according to its summary, "requires states to establish a minimum annual salary of at least $60,000 for full-time teachers that increases with experience." It would also require states to adjust teachers' salaries for inflation every five years.

"No public school teacher in America should make less than $60,000 a year," Sanders said in a statement released last month when he reintroduced the bill.

"Far too many of our nation's public schools are under-funded, under-resourced and in major need of repair," he said. "Far too many of our public school teachers are under-paid, under-appreciated and overwhelmed."

But is that truly the case?

According to a report published by the National Education Association, the average salary of a public school teacher in the United States in the 2023-24 school year was $72,030. California -- where the average teacher salary was $101,084 -- had the highest paid teachers in the 2023-24 school year. New York was second at $95,615; and Massachusetts was third at $92,076.

The lowest average teacher salary, according to the NEA, was in Mississippi, where it was $53,704.

In 2023, according to the Census Bureau, the median income of "nonfamily" households headed by a female was $42,140. For a "nonfamily" household headed by a male, it was $57,200. A public school teacher in Mississippi, making that lowest-average salary in the country of $53,704, would still be making more than a nonfamily household headed by a female.

A teacher making the mandatory minimum starting salary of $60,000 that Bernie Sanders would like to legally mandate nationwide would be making more than the median income of a nonfamily household headed by a male.

The median income for a married-couple household in the United States was $119,400 in 2023. A married couple who were both public school teachers and earned the 2023-24 average annual teacher's salary of $72,030 (and, thus, a combined salary of $144,060) would be making about 20.65% more than the $119,400 earned by the median married couple household.

Public school teachers in the United States are neither poor nor underpaid.

But they do underperform.

As this column has recently noted, the National Assessment of Educational Progress long-term trend tests administered by the Department of Education to 13-year-olds show a very small decline in reading scores since 1980 and a very small increase in math scores.

The NAEP math and reading tests taken by fourth and eighth graders, as this column has also noted before, consistently show Catholic school students outscoring public school students.

What does Bernie Sanders want to do about this?

He adamantly opposes school choice programs because he wants the government to be the oligarch of education. "These private school voucher policies do not represent the interests of most voters," Sanders claimed in a report he released last year when he was chairman of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. "Rather, the attacks on public education are driven by the wealthy for the wealthy."

As a democratic socialist, Sanders would rather have failing government schools own the future of this nation's children.

To find out more about Terence P. Jeffrey and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators webpage at www.Creators.com.

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