You know what's irresponsible? Making assumptions.
1. Sanders doesn't know what her books look like. He tried to make that clear. 'I don't know anything about hairdressing salons in Ft. Worth.' He doesn't know if this woman, who owns 5 stores, is making 150k a year, 50k a year, or 500k a year. Fair enough, it's a difficult dollar value to estimate.
2. He isn't exactly in a position to ask how much gross income her business reels in.
3. He's not a business advisor to her. Theoretically, the 'simple answer' is that either cutting wages or raising prices would have an impact. It's not his job to determine that -- that's her job. It's definitely not his job to make that recommendation if he has no idea what kind of money she deals in.
All in all, she still brings up a fair point. Is the number 50 some arbitrarily chosen number that was nice and round? Or was research placed to determine that number? Should that number be a function based upon location? (Probably). He didn't come off with a robust answer on that question, but to his credit, he didn't pansy around the question like Cruz does, and he didn't flat out lie to her (like plenty of other politicians would). He missed a chance at getting points, but he hardly looked stupid in the face of an incredibly generalized scenario that requires far more information to be able to answer.
