I’m curious, where is that from?

'the parable of the workers in the vineyard', one of the weirder and more radical ones. It's a real hard thing to think about, which is probably why it sticks in my mind. It takes every normal rule about sensible economic practices and just stomps on it.

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+20&vers...

Jesus [0]. Now if that 1.6T was the money that Bernie Sander's himself had loaned out to students, I could see the connection here.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_Workers_in_the_...

Where else? The Bible. Jesus is trying to point out that it doesn't matter whether you were pious all your life or came to it late. You still get to enter the Kingdom of Heaven

and the Kingdom of Heaven does not have to have anything to do with “what happens to you when you die”.

Along with “son of man”, it’s one of the more undefined but well known phrases from the NT.

I tend to think it’s got vastly more to do with improving the life we know than it does with anything about “getting to go to heaven if you’re good”

The parable literally starts saying "The Kingdom of heaven is like"... so you can't really escape from that context.

What I mean is that the phrase itself is not well defined. Certainly the parable is meant to tell us something about its character, but not necessarily its nature.

Until I was in adulthood I figured it meant “heaven”; that is not at all clear, actually.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingship_and_kingdom_of_God#...

But in Sanders' case 1) it isn't his money (and no, that money doesn't just appear because he wants to spend it), and 2) it sets the expectation of future cancellations, promoting excessive borrowing (moral hazard).

I'd be interested in opposing views, as there must be some, judging by the reaction, but the above seems very apparent to me - I don't see why people would disagree or consider it controversial. Sanders wants to tax high earners to fund the debt forgiveness, and even if that would be sufficient, those funds would not be available for other spending (e.g., medicare for all, or the next "should be free for all" program - "housing for all", etc.)