Jeff Fink wrote:
Part of Obama's plan to balance the budget is to subject that 1 1/2% to social security payments as well! It is part of his plan to redistribute the wealth. . . .
The majority of people endeavor to conduct their lives in such a manner so as not to be a burden to others. They are the targets of this redistribution.
Over the past eight years the wealth of the United States has been redistributed to a larger extent than ever before in our history. Redistributed upward, that is, by Republican tax policy and their failure to regulate markets properly. The gap between the rich and the poor has not been this large since 1929, and it is that gap -- and the lack of purchasing power -- that causes depressions. In an industrial society, the people who make things must have enough money to buy those things.
From 1945 until the late 90s, the US, the EU Japan and the rest of the developed world had policies of redistributing wealth downward, with higher taxes on wealthy people. This worked well. Some wealthy people complained, but most wealthy people realize that it is better for them to pay a higher percent of their income if it means we can all live in a prosperous, happy, stable society.
After the Great Depression we have never been in serious danger. Under Democratic administrations the economy has always grown faster and more equitably than Republican administrations, but both parties have maintained the responsible, pragmatic approach. Call it socialism if you will, but it worked splendidly 70 years, there is no reason to think it will stop working. It is a hybrid capitalist-socialist system, with some strengths and weaknesses from both. I am a conservative pragmatist so I favor doing what works, with adjustments as needed, as technology and conditions change. Who cares if it is not pure capitalism? It works.
In 2000 Bush threw our system out, abandoned wealth distribution and regulations, and now we are back to where we started in 1929!
Some poor people seek jobs while others milk the system.
Exactly right! And who has milked the system? Wall Street and big banks! Now they want $700 billion more. Perhaps you are thinking of "welfare cheats" but the banks have stolen more than all the welfare cheats in history.
If the job creators are plundered by the government, where will the jobs come from? When the haves are reduced to havenots, we will all be losers. We cannot advance the economy by punishing the hard working successful.
That is correct. That is why we must reward working class and middle class people, and take from the wealthy. Ordinary working people are the ones who create wealth: not speculators on Wall Street; not monopolists such as Bill Gates; not corporate CEOs who earn $200 million per year; not the shysters at Enron and Halliburton; and certainly not people who drag the country into unnecessary wars and starve the poor and middle class while rewarding wealthy people.
You so-called "conservatives" have the right instincts but your facts are upside down. Democrats such as Clinton and Obama preserve our system and reward work. Bush is the one who has cost us trillions of dollars.
This is the wrong season for you or McCain to criticize the hybrid modern economy, or rail about socialism.
- Jed
