Jeff Bezos and the $28 million space ride triggered Bernie Sanders

When Blue Origin, the space launch company owned by Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, announced that someone had won an auction to ride into space on the company’s New Shepard rocket, a lot of bandwidth was expended on social media about what appeared to be a case of conspicuous consumption. The amount of money, $28 million, paid for a few minutes in space, seemed, to many, to be excessive.

Sen. Bernie Sanders, the “democratic socialist” from Vermont, was especially bothered. He said so on Twitter: “Space travel, heavily funded by taxpayers, should not be a plaything for the very rich.”