Outsider in the White House

The financial hardships of Sanders’s upbringing taught him how greatly economics can affect people’s lives.

Bernard Sanders was born in 1941, in the Brooklyn borough of New York City. During his childhood, money was tight; his family managed to stay above the poverty line, but Sanders’s parents often fought about the best uses for the little money they had.

These conditions, however, taught Sanders the value of money.

From his mother, Dorothy, for example, he learned the importance of being thrifty. One day, instead of shopping at an inexpensive supermarket, Sanders bought groceries from a smaller, local store. When he got home, his mother scolded him, stressing the importance of frugality.

Sanders’s father, Elias, had lived through the Great Depression, so he knew what it was like to get by in hard economic times.

Originally from Poland, Elias worked hard as a paint salesman to provide for his family, and his strong work ethic sometimes led to conflicts between father and son.

For instance, when Sanders first applied to college, his father initially opposed the idea. Elias thought it wiser for Sanders to start making money rather than continuing his education.

It was Sanders’s older brother, Larry, who helped turn their parents’ common-sense economics into concrete political ideas.

At Brooklyn College, Larry was a chairman in the Democratic Party’s liberal-minded Young Democrats group, and every once in a while he would bring young Sanders along with him to meetings. During this time, Larry also introduced his brother to progressive political literature and newspapers.

So, by the time Sanders entered Brooklyn College, in 1959, he was well informed and keenly interested in politics, economics and history.

These interests and ambitions continued to blossom a year later when he transferred to the University of Chicago to study political science. Sanders immersed himself in literature in the school’s basement library, spending countless hours reading everything he could get his hands on.