Moving the Wealth Around

I’ve noticed lots of people grabbing onto the mantra “Obama is a socialist”  and “look how he wants to redistribute the wealth.”

Why does it only count as redistributing when a Democrat wants to change the status quo?

Why doesn’t it count as redistribution when a Republican wants to mantain things?

Here’s the bottom line for me: every economic decision we make takes money from some people and gives money to somebody else.   To make the point more concretely: Yes, Barack Oboma seeks to raise taxes on businesses which make over $250,000.  Yes, he is moving wealth from the businesses to others.

But here’s the thing: Mccain is also redistributing wealth.  Choosing to not tax someone is effectively asking somebody else to pay more.

There are several responses to this criticism.  I don’t think that they are valid.

The first response is that it’s redistribution in Obama’s case and not in Mccain’s case because the money of the wealthy is not the government’s to take.  The problem with this line of reasoning is that the money of the non-wealthy isn’t either.  Mccain shifting tax burdens around doesn’t solve this problem.  

The second response is that it’s redistribution in Obama’s case because Obama is the one making the changes.  The problem here is that Obama is not reversing some trend that’s written in the constitution.  He’s simply reversing the excess of a couple decades.  Taxes under Obama’s plan look a lot like taxes under President Nixon’s plan. 

The third response is that it’s not redistribution if we lower government spending and lower the taxes on everybody.  The problem is that this is not what happens.  The last several decades demonstrate a pattern.  Presidents who campaign on promises to cut taxes have been unsuccesful.  But they haven’t succeeded in cutting the budget proportionally.  They have simply taxed like stereotypical Republicans and spent like stereotypical Democrats.  In the short term, this has made everybody quite happy.  It’s a bit like a family with enough credit cards.  In the short term, they can make as little as they want and spend as much as they want.

Living on a deficit is still redistributing wealth.  It is distributing from the future into the present.  It wouldn’t be any different, really, if we had a time machine, took it into our children’s future, threw much of their wealth inside it, and then took it back to our time so that we could use their wealth.  Perhaps even more disturbingly, it puts us in a very unwise relationship with countries like China who buy up our debt.

Even if Mccain succeeded in cutting taxes without running a deficit there is still a problem.  That problem is that those who are wealthy currently have risen to their positions of wealth and power within the current system.  The current system has major problems.  I have said before and I will say again that the playing field is far from level.

It is real socialism and a very bad idea to try to give everyone equality.  We can not and should not give everyone the same ammount of money.

It is justice and the best things about this country to give everyone equality of oppurtunity.  We have an obligation to give everyone an equal shot.

Leveling the playing field is a legitimate use of tax dollars.  It might be the most legitimate use of tax dollars.

Someone who is currently wealthy was able to rise to this position because the playing field was level enough to allow them to rise to the “top.”  At some point in this person’s past (or his family’s past), wealth was distributed in a way which benefitted him.

Perhaps it was public education.  Perhaps it was food stamps.  Perhaps it was government-funded financial age to college.  Perhaps it was WIC when the person was a baby.  Perhaps it was some sort of business loan or home loan that was backed by the government.  Perhaps it was simply that his money was safe because it was backed by the FDIC.

There are other reasons for many of these programs.  But one good reason for them is that they promote equality of oppurtunity.

There are basically two possibilities for anyone who is currently rich:

A) Some of the wealthiest people (or their ancestors) benefitted from this equality of opportunity.

or

B) We have so little equality of oppurtunity that it actually hasn’t changed anything at all. 

If A) is the case, then these people benefitted when wealth was distributed to them.

if B) is the case then that’s all the more reason for us, as a society, to get our priorities straight.

 

I’m just about ready (as you can probably see) to start talking and writing about political stuff.  I’m probably going to blog at some point soon about this little sabattical I’ve taken and some of the things I’ve learned.

More on the contrast between Obama and Mccain

In a post I wrote this morning, I observed that the symbolism that’s shaping up in the current presidential election.  Here is an article which puts a different spin on the same information.  I read it a few hours after writing that post.  The statement from the Republican around the contrast with Mccain as a “war hero” and Obama as a “poster child for the anti-war movement” struck me as particularly relavant.

I think the first thing that’s worth noticing about all this is that it at first looks like an unbiased observation.  However, the terms “hero” for Mccain and “poster child” certainly carry emotional weight. 

Compare the statement above with reversing things, “Obama is a hero of the anti-war movement, Mccain is the poster-child of someone who has been in war.”

At the risk of beating a dead horse, I’d like to return to the theme of that prior post: Why do we assume that Mccain’s experiences in Vietnam more adequately prepared him for the role of President?

I am not denying that the man is a hero as stated in the last post.  I believe that the hatred and scare tactics promoted by our current president have given power to a double standard.

We are all so afraid of the future, and outsiders, and other countries, that we’re desperate for a father figure, a face that looks like most of the faces we saw playing the wise old dad growing up on sit-coms.

I don’t consider it surprising that people create paranoid and hate-filled emails about Obama.  That happens to everybody in the public eye.  But the fact that people take this seriously is evidence, I think, for this phenemona.  If both of Barack’s parents were of European lineage, if skin was white and his eyes were blue, nobody would be getting mileage out of him not putting his hand to his heart during the national anthem. 

When people are afraid they are at their worst.  If we weren’t living in such a fear-filled time I think that these delusions wouldn’t be treated as so credible… Seriously, do we really want a president who gives more thought to his lapel pin than his positions on the issues?  Because that’s what we’ll end up with if we make accesorizing a political issue.

A bunch of reasons why I’m voting for Barack Obama

For whatever it’s worth, here’s the reasons that I think it’s worthwhile to vote for Obama.  I’m putting a special focus on reasons that put to rest the narrative that Obama is a starry-eyed idealist with no real experience of specific plans.

(The following reasons are in no particular order.)

#1) He’s basically the only candidate who has the record to claim that he was opposed not only to the specific execution but also the general theory of invading Iraq. 

#2) He can move from sweeping, philosophical generalizations to down-in-the dirt, nitty gritty plans.  Because nitty-gritty doesn’t play well in our sound bite culture, people miss this… He has mind-numbingly detailed plans on issues like health care.  See his website (http://www.mybarackobama.com) The site gives you the option to see his views on outlines in either broad strokes or specific reports.  The one on health care, for example, is enomorous.  Frankly, I got lost in places.  I think it’s fair to say you don’t agree with him.   But to claim that he doesn’t have a specific view is foolish.

#3) He gets education.  One of his strengths in general is to see that many debates which get played as either/or are really both/and.  For example, the debate about education gets played as “accountabality or support for needy students/ districts.” Obama gets that real accountabality (not pseudodata from inapropriately interpreted standardized tests) AND support are necessary.

#4) He is a supporter of real diplomacy, international engagement, and recovering America’s ruined repuation around the world.

#5) He’s the first presidential candidate that could be fairly seen as a representative of the Christian Left.  His speech in June to an audience of evangelicals was more than brilliant, it was also courageous.  The man didn’t simply spout platitidues he knew that audience wanted to hear.  He fairly assessed the good and bad news about politics and religion.  He proclaimed the truths he sees and admitted the ambiguity and struggles he feels.

#6) He hasn’t accepted any interest groups money.  Is there any other “top tier” candidate who can claim the same thing?

#7) He’s a bazillion times more electable than Hillary Clinton.  He’s also three times as charismatic and  eight point five times more charactered.  (By the way, how does Hilary get to play the experience card over Obama?  Are they allowing us to put our spouses information on our resumes now?)

This of course could go on… and if anybody sees things differently I invite them to share there perspectives.