>> By taking from the rich to give to the poor via the tax code. I'd >> like to hear your Clintonian parsing of the difference between this >> and wealth redistribution. > > And I'd like to hear where this is any different from what we've been > doing since 1913, when progressive tax rates were introduced.
I should amplify on this. You speak as if there is something new or radical about what Obama said, but there is not. The ideas behind what he said go back centuries--and have been embedded in our tax code since 1913. Ain't nothing Marxist about it. It's just common sense: economies don't work very well if wealth is concentrated in the hands of a small number of very wealthy people. It isn't good for anyone, including, in the long run, the wealthy ones. Here is what Adam Smith said in 1776 in "The Wealth of Nations" (and, d'oh, I keep saying Keynes when I mean Smith--Keynes on the brain): "The necessaries of life occasion the great expense of the poor.... The luxuries and vanities of life occasion the principal expense of the rich, and a magnificent house embellishes and sets off to the best advantage all the other luxuries and vanities which they possess.... It is not very unreasonable that the rich should contribute to the public expense, not only in proportion to their revenue, but something more than in that proportion." Warren Buffet says the same thing, only more directly: "[The wealthy] have this idea that it's "their money" and they deserve to keep every penny of it. What they don't factor in is all the public investment that lets us live the way we do. Take me as an example. I happen to have a talent for allocating capital. But my ability to use that talent is completely dependent on the society I was born into. If I'd been born into a tribe of hunters, this talent of mine would be pretty worthless. I can't run very fast. I'm not particularly strong. I'd probably end up as some wild animal's dinner. But I was lucky enough to be born into a time and place where society values my talent, and gave me a good education to develop that talent, and set up the laws and the financial system to let me do what I love doing-and make a lot of money doing it. The least I can do is help pay for all that." Very few economists take exception to this position, and it is the foundation of progressive taxation, which is exactly what our existing tax code implements. So, in fact, what Obama was talking about is simply what our current income tax already does. Nothing radical or Marxist. The conservative media fixated on the one statement that "when you spread the wealth around, it's good for everybody" (as if this were somehow new, or evil socialism, or different from what we've been doing since 1913), but it's just common sense and has been known for a very long time. Was the choice of wording unfortunate? Yes. If he had instead said, "when the wealth is spread around, the economy works better, and it's good for everybody", it would have been unexceptionable. But this wasn't a prepared speech, it was an off-the-cuff chat with a voter. If you really listen to the whole thing (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BRPbCSSXyp0), you'll find that there really isn't much there that can be easily disagreed with. One can certainly quibble about a few percentage points in the tax rates here and there, but the basic idea is sound, well understood, and not radical in any way. ************************************************************************* ** List info, subscription management, list rules, archives, privacy ** ** policy, calmness, a member map, and more at http://www.cguys.org/ ** *************************************************************************
