And so on Monday, America’s senior socialist scold, 81-year-old Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.SSR), seized the opportunity of Labor Day to make a proposal that, if implemented, would throw millions of Americans out of work and send untold numbers into abject poverty. Hey, that’s what socialists do.

Sanders took to the pages of the UK’s socialist flagship, The Guardian, to proclaim that “Never before in American history have so few owned so much and has there been so much income and wealth inequality.” Bernie’s solution to this rampant greed was simple: force the avaricious plutocrats to fork over some of their ill-gotten wealth in the form of more leisure time for Americans, with no loss of income. “It’s time for a 32-hour work week with no loss in pay,” proclaimed Sanders. “It’s time that working families were able to take advantage of the increased productivity that new technologies provide so that they can enjoy more leisure time, family time, educational and cultural opportunities — and less stress.” That’s great in theory. As always with socialism, reality would be quite different.

Sanders’ picture of greedy capitalists exploiting disadvantaged American workers is enormously tendentious. He shows no awareness of the fact that there are huge numbers of American businesses that are not raking in massive profits on the backs of their put-upon employees, but are barely getting by amid an enormous tax bite, forests of regulations, and a post-COVID non-participatory workforce that can still enjoy a comfortable living at the expense of those who have gone back to work.

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One of the many basic lessons of economics that eludes Sanders is the fact that when business expenses rise, it is generally the employees who suffer. Bernie’s 32-hour work week won’t penalize the corporate billionaires of Big Tech or other massive conglomerates; it will penalize the workers who get laid off so that cash-strapped small and medium-sized businesses can meet rising costs. If employers have to pay their employees for a 40-hour work week but only get thirty-two hours of work, considerable numbers of people are going to find themselves out of jobs.

Other businesses, particularly small businesses, will simply go under, unable to cope with the increased expenses. Thus the cumulative effect of Sanders’ recommendation, if implemented, will be to concentrate wealth further in the hands of those large, greedy corporations that he so despises. They’ll be able to absorb the new expense and pass it on deftly to the consumers, resulting in large-scale price hikes, and they won’t be in any danger of economic ruin. Only those who are much closer to the edge will face that ruin.