Some of America’s highest-profile advocates for socialism live quite luxurious lifestyles compared to average, working-class Americans. The average income for individual Americans is $35,977; for a household, it’s $68,703.
Socialism has become a more popular political ideology in recent years in the U.S., particularly among young people. One reason may be the advocacy of major celebrities and public officials. Here’s how comfortably some of them are living:
Independent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders
Bernie Sanders burst into the national consciousness in 2016 when he ran for the Democratic presidential nomination against Hillary Clinton by railing against millionaires and billionaires. He’s since dropped the “millionaires” part in many of his speeches and proposals, perhaps in part due to the fact that he is one himself.
Sanders released tax returns in 2019 which confirmed he is a millionaire, and his income spiked substantially after his fairly successful run for the White House. “These tax returns show that our family has been fortunate,” Sanders said at the time. “I am very grateful for that, as I grew up in a family that lived paycheck to paycheck and I know the stress of economic insecurity.” (RELATED: Bernie Sanders Loses It When Bloomberg Calls Him The ‘Best Known Socialist’ Who ‘Happens To Be A Millionaire With Three Houses’)
Black Lives Matter Co-Founder Patrisse Cullors
Cullors was an original co-founder of Black Lives Matter, and she’s a self-described Marxist.
Despite her devotion to the father of socialist theory, Cullors had no issue making up to $20,000 per month as the leader of a Los Angeles-based jail reform group, and she’s purchased at least four homes worth a combined total of more than $3 million across the country since 2016.
Cullors stepped down from her role with BLM following extensive reporting from the Daily Caller News Foundation last month. (RELATED: EXCLUSIVE: BLM PAC Paid Nearly Triple The Market Rate For Disastrous Live Stream Event, Industry Experts Say)
‘Hanoi Jane’ Fonda
Jane Fonda has been a prominent hard-left activist for decades. She infamously earned the nickname “Hanoi Jane” after touring North Vietnam during the Vietnam war and posing for a picture on a North Vietnamese anti-aircraft gun.
Fonda, who once said she hoped her daughter would grow up in an “unpolluted, Marxist, socialist country,” has appeared in films grossing hundreds of millions of dollars over the course of her career and has produced a number of high-selling workout videos. Her net worth is reportedly in the tens of millions of dollars.
Nicole ‘Neekolul’ Sanchez
Sanchez went viral for a TikTok video in which she mocked baby boomers and expressed support for Sanders. She’s now a famous Twitch streamer and progressive influencer.
In a new YouTube video posted this week, Sanchez showed off a tour of her new apartment. It’s worth roughly $2,000,000.
Actress and Failed Gubernatorial Candidate Cynthia Nixon
Nixon ran for Governor of New York in 2018 as a self-avowed democratic socialist. Nixon and her wife earned more than $1.3 million in 2017, and her net worth is reportedly somewhere in the neighborhood of $60 million.
She’s most famous for her role in the hit series “Sex and the City,” and has expressed support for Medicare For All and called ICE a terrorist organization.
Actor Mark Ruffalo
When he isn’t busy making Avengers movies, Ruffalo has campaigned on behalf of Bernie Sanders and said things like “Capitalism today is failing us, killing us, and robbing from our children’s future.”
It’s time for an economic revolution. Capitalism today is failing us, killing us, and robbing from our children’s future. https://t.co/OnNm6CYrWK
— Mark Ruffalo (@MarkRuffalo) December 1, 2019
Ruffalo has been the lead actor in movies grossing more than $400 million, and movies in which he has been a part of the lead ensemble have made almost $10 billion worldwide. In 2017, he sold his fancy Brooklyn townhouse for more than $3.1 million.
Seattle City Councilmembers Kshama Sawant and Tammy Morales
Sanders isn’t the only millionaire politician who describes himself as a socialist; they also exist at the local level. (RELATED: Over 200 Seattle Police Officers Quit In The Last Year, Citing Anti-Police Climate)
Morales and Sawant have been part of an increasingly leftward drift of the Seattle City Council. Sawant isn’t even a Democrat. Instead, she’s a member of a Trotskyist political party, the Socialist Alternative.
It was recently revealed that Sawant and Morales have a combined net worth of around $3.5 million. For those keeping track, that’s more than one Ruffalo townhouse.