Bernie Sanders would be a better president than libertarian, Gary Johnson

Although it is the Con's intro, I will remind that the topic is the platform of the candidates being the best for this country, and being "off-putting" is not really relevant. But for your arguments, while yes, more wealth created does benefit the poorest marginally, when 58% of all new income is going to the richest in this country it is not helping them enough to make a case in that regard. And yes everyone was getting richer, but no one got richer than the top 1% grew, which grew over 250%, while no other class grew more than a 100% [ http://www.cbo.gov... ] . And while quality of life has increased, this is not just because of an increase in income. It is largely due to government programs such as social security. Before social security the poverty rate among the elderly was 50%, it is now down to 10% [https://berniesanders.com...]. This greatly increased our standard of living and it is something Gary Johnson pledges to cut in order to obtain a balanced budget, while Bernie Sanders has pledged to expand social security without creating a larger deficit by lifting the tax cap on social security. And it is a false claim, when Johnson became Governor in 1995, the debt in New Mexico was $42 billion, when he left in 2003 it was $57.8 Billion dollars [http://www.usgovernmentspending.com...]. While unemployment did go down in New Mexico during the same term. So how is it that Johnson's state debt went up and unemployment went down when you just said,"Increased government debt means productivity is stifled, the economy does not grow and people lose jobs"? While Johnson would end subsidies, his state is one of the largest to collect them, due to their poverty rate being one of the largest in the United States. They are one of the largest collectors of food stamps, and are getting back nearly three times the amount in subsidies that the states residents give in federal income taxes [http://www.theatlantic.com...]. The rich are not just accused of hiding their money off shores, they are hiding their money off shores. The best way to try to and balance the budget is not to cut the programs that millions of american's rely on, but instead make everyone pay the share they should have to under a progressive tax code. For years private firms have lost the pension plans of millions of American's and shifting Social Security to a private system would only increase this burden. The solution is not to weaken social security, it should be to strengthen it. And I would challenge anyone to find the flaw in Social Security, it has enough funds to last another 19 years as of right now, assuming all funding was cut off. It is the only form of retirement that has consistently never missed a payment on individuals even in times like the economic crisis of 2008 , which proved private companies could not be trusted to safely handle citizens money. For environmental protection, it is untrue to say that companies would simply pass the cost on to consumers, by taxing their carbon use, it is the most cost effective method to reducing carbon consumption [http://www.c2es.org...]. Also these programs have been both cost effective and effective, The Clean Air Act has shattered all expectations, for the environment it has led to a decrease of 41% emissions of the six principle air pollutants. The EPA also did a cost analysis to see if the Clean Air Act actually does save money. It was found that the benefits far outweighed the cost. From 1970 to 1990, the cost of CAA was $523 billion, while the benefits were $22 TRILLION [http://grist.org...]. This illustrates that the "burden" has been very effective in the climate change fight.