Redistribution

[Anonymous]

Help me out on this. A "bombshell" has been discovered in which Barack Obama, as a state senator, said in a radio interview that the civil rights revolution was incomplete because it did not solve the problem of economic inequality. Is it going to harm him that he thinks it wrong for there to be a permanent racial underclass? Correspondingly, is it socialist to want to "redistribute the wealth" and have women paid the same as men for the same work? Can a campaign based on spun soundbites work? [I admit to doing my own spinning in the previous paragraph.]

Here is the soundtrack of the interview, titled "Obama Bombshell Redistribution of Wealth Audio Uncovered" on Youtube. Spin is added via captions.

[Anonymous]

. . . is it socialist to want to "redistribute the wealth" and have women paid the same as men for the same work?

Are you seriously asking if it is "socialist" for women who perform the same work as men to also earn the same wage as men? I think it is actually just, you know. . . fair.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

. . . is it socialist to want to "redistribute the wealth" and have women paid the same as men for the same work?

Are you seriously asking if it is "socialist" for women who perform the same work as men to also earn the same wage as men? I think it is actually just, you know. . . fair.

OP here. That was meant to be irony, implying that if Obama is a socialist for wanting to erase the economic disparity between the races, then anyone for equal pay for women (me, for example) is also a socialist.

[jsteele]

I think that Obama's words were misconstrued. Granted, he used words such as "redistribution", but he never spelled out exactly what that means. In the one example he mentioned -- increasing funding in poor school districts -- "redistribution" does not appear to mean what the video's producers would like you to believe that it means.

At any rate, we have various types of "redistribution of wealth" going on all the time. When middle class tax payers pay taxes which are turned into bailouts for Wall Street, that's a redistribution. People should lose their fear of particular vocabulary words and begin to focus on the substance below the words.

[Anonymous]

The problem with critics of "re-distribution of wealth" is that they conveniently elide the issue of the initial distribution of wealth, and pretend that the inequalities we see today result from value-neutral policies, the invisible hand, and a government acting at arms length. This is patently false. Our largest tax expenditure is the mortgage interest deduction, which is not only extremely regressive (Uncle Sam subsidizes the home equity loan that I used to buy my car, but a renter pays full price to finance the vehicle she needs to commute to a lower paying job; the more expensive the house you buy, the bigger the subsidy), but is also directly responsible, along with our balkanized school taxation system, for suburban sprawl, which increases opportunity inequality, environmental degradation, and infrastructure costs.

Also left out of the current micro-debate on whether Obama's own policies are socialist is the fact that his tax "increase' on the top 5% results from removing the tax cuts that Bush handed them in his first term, which constituted such a massive wealth redistribution that Senator McCain opposed it, stating that wealthy people should shoulder a larger burden.

The fact is, the government has been in the business of distributing and re-distributing wealth since there was a government.

And political scientists often define politics itself as "the distribution of scarce resources."

"Wealth redistribution" is a click shy of red-baiting, which at this point is all the McCain campaign has left. Don't mistake it for a legitimate policy discourse.

[Anonymous]

Listen, the republicans have no problem redistributing wealth, the difference simply is where it gets distributed. Republicans will eagerly redistribute my wealth to big business without any controls. The big businesses can then gamble for huge profits which they then invest not in jobs here in the US or healthcare for their employees but high risk financial ventures. If they gain they win. If they lose, we pay.
Don't forget that the Republicans have redistributed a significant amount of middle class wealth invading Iraq on the basis of weapons of mass destruction. I wouldn't mind seeing some of wealth that they were taking for these unsound practices start going to education, healthcare, and building jobs in the US.

Its a reality that the mass working class pays the majority of the taxbase and this division has grown greatly over the past years. Everyone is hurt by the economic disaster but I suspect that the multi-millionaire who gambled on hedge funds can live on the few millions he has left. The same is not true for working class retirees dependent on their 401K or middle class families who don't know how to pay for college. When the middle is hard hit they need to immediately start cutting back in all areas and this has a much more profound impact on economic growth and small business.

Lets pretend that Joe the plumber doesn't just make 40K, actually could qualify for a business loan to buy a small business, and actually could run it (a leap here). His business will not benefit from a McCain tax cut because it will not survive without middle class consumers being able to buy Joe's services.

You saw in the 80s that the rich got richer and the very poor got poorer. This time around there has been an even sharper divide with the super rich getting even richer and the middle class dropping down. Forget altruism on what is morally right and wrong and realize that an improvished middle class is a disaster for the economy and the US position in many spheres.

[Anonymous]

Oh, all this fake protesting about redistribution just makes me ill. Do you know how many ways our country redistributes wealth, with the full support of Republicans and Democrats? What do you think social security is? Do you think it's a personal savings plan? No. You get more than you pay in. The young get their money taken and given to the elderly. Same goes for Medicare, grants to states (some states get much more than their people give).

What this really comes down to is whether economic and gender inequality should be addressed by the government. It is not socialism vs. libertarianism. It is a question of what values the government should support in law and in budget.

[Anonymous]

The "Controversy" is silly, manufactured as a last-gasp, desperate measure to prevent McCain's loss - kind of like the "October Surprise" eligibility controversy.

Obama is not talking about repossessing your land and giving it to the descendants of former slaves. He is talking about equal opportunity, equal school funding, equal pay for equal work, and fair taxation on the rich and businesses.

It is a tragedy that there are still places in AMERICA where you wouldn't want to send your kid to school, you wouldn't want to drive at night, you wouldn't want to be in the local hospital.....

So yes giving the under class, and the middle class, a break here and increasing taxes on entities earning $250k and above sounds like the right redistribution recipe to me. Reprioritizing the federal budget so that we don't end up as a society of Lords and Serfs is probably a good idea.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
So yes giving the under class, and the middle class, a break here and increasing taxes on entities earning $250k and above sounds like the right redistribution recipe to me. Reprioritizing the federal budget so that we don't end up as a society of Lords and Serfs is probably a good idea.

Agreed. A society of Lords and Serfs would not be a strong democracy! You need a strong middle class to preserve democracy.

[Anonymous]

No administration in modern history has been more/most socialist than the current Republican administration with the bank and insurance company bailout of $700 billion and $85 billion to AIG and $25 billion "loan" to GM & Chrysler. A month after the initial $25 billion announcement, GM & Ford have learned that they will be out of cash in 12 months. What to do? Another government cash infusion to prop up companies that have flawed strategies and management? Corporate socialism is alive and well. Somehow this socialism needs to trickle down to the middle classes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It is a tragedy that there are still places in AMERICA where you wouldn't want to send your kid to school, you wouldn't want to drive at night, you wouldn't want to be in the local hospital.....

Yes, and sometimes you can throw all the money in the world at those problems and they won't necessarily go away. DC spends A LOT of money per pupil and the schools have been a disaster for years now. Why??? Because of a bloated bureaucracy, because of fraud, etc. If my taxes go up, I want to see some accountability and efficiency in government. Also, I want to hear Obama say something about personal responsibility. Some people out there have genuinely fallen on hard times and need help. And then there are many others who are where they are in life because of the poor decisions that they have made.

[Anonymous]

"Also, I want to hear Obama say something about personal responsibility. "

He has made statements on personal responsibility. During the primaries Obama stook a stance on personal responsibility and it really ticked off Jesse Jackson.

IMO children shouldn't always just suffer because of the choices or circumstances of their parents. Programs that support children doing better in school, receiving adequate healthcare, and having a chance to get beyond their circumstances help all of us.

$$ spent per student should be higher in improvished areas because you often don't have the same parental support that you see in more affluent suburbs.Lets remember that money toward education doesn't just go to inner cities. There are many schools across the country in rural and suburb areas that didn't experience the windfall in the real estate boom that are still suffering with an unfunded no child left behind mandate. Many schools in even affluent areas will begin to suffer as the revenue derived from property taxes which is a key funding source dries up.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It is a tragedy that there are still places in AMERICA where you wouldn't want to send your kid to school, you wouldn't want to drive at night, you wouldn't want to be in the local hospital.....

Yes, and sometimes you can throw all the money in the world at those problems and they won't necessarily go away. DC spends A LOT of money per pupil and the schools have been a disaster for years now. Why??? Because of a bloated bureaucracy, because of fraud, etc. If my taxes go up, I want to see some accountability and efficiency in government. Also, I want to hear Obama say something about personal responsibility. Some people out there have genuinely fallen on hard times and need help. And then there are many others who are where they are in life because of the poor decisions that they have made.

One-quarter of the DC school budget goes to send a little over 2000 kids to private school because of a court order requiring DCPS to pay for private schooling for kids who need special education and can't get it in DCPS. (My guess is that there is a disproportionately large group of these kids who are middle and upper income because their parents are better at working the system because there are still thousands of special ed kids in DCPS.) So the actual amount of money that actually is spent on the average student is lower because of this special arrangement. I wish some of these families who can afford it would take the personal responsibility to pay for their own private school education.

[Anonymous]

I just wish all of this had come out sooner. The Republican campaign has been a disaster.