I don’t know how anyone can deny Obama’ economic plan is socialism. To paraphrase Hank Jr., if my kid gets an A in class and the other kids get C-, why should my kid get a C- also just to distribute the grades evenly? He earned an A; the others didn’t.

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Unfortunately terms such as “Socialism”, and “Christianity” for that matter, have been co-opted to automatically communicate snap judgments that a policy is “bad” or “good”, regardless of how it is applied. Principals and their application vary widely.  Are building roads or investing in education inherently “bad” because they involve a taxing authority and central planning to benefit many people ?

Our country has been engaged in “spreading the wealth around” for a long time. We tax and spend. Despite the criticism leveled at legislators who do this, taxing and spending is necessarily the activity of government. But how do we tax and spend ? This transfer of wealth has unfortunately been from the lower classes to the super-rich. One current and stunning example would be the $700 billion dollar bailout fund. The previous best example was tax cuts for the wealthy under the guise of “trickle-down” economics.  But somehow this activity escapes the pejorative term “socialism” when the money so generously flows to business that are “too big to fail” or to no-bid contracts for billion-dollar weapons systems . What has happened to our rabid free-market boosters & critics of “socialism” when it comes to such an incredibly massive transfer of wealth ?

What we have is socialism for big corporations and “devil-take-the hindmost” rugged capitalism for the rest of us poor working stiffs. As a culture, somehow we have all been duped into thinking that privatizing the profit and socializing the debt is a “free market” and that this is somehow not a transfer of wealth, or it is somehow not class warfare.

Hey, I’m not for free hand-outs for lazy people who won’t make the effort, which is why I am against CEO pay that is 400 times the average workers pay. If the current economic crisis is any evidence,  our Wall Street financial geniuses are not 400 times smarter, nor do they work 400 times as hard as ther rest of us. They are engaged in a rhetoric that is 400 times more manipulative. And you and I get to pay for it. Who is the welfare cheat here ?

Yeah, as long as we are already into the transfer of wealth, how about a little bit of that socialist concern for the rest us while the fat-cats are stealing us blind ? I’m not talking about the examples of previously failed fascist governments that pretended to be socialist, I’m talking about the humane kind of “transfer of wealth” that is represented by countries whose citizens may complain about high taxes but enjoy a better standard of living, better education, better health care etc.etc. etc. - Sweden, Denmark, France…

I don’t want a hand-out. I want adequately funded education and I want health care that is free. Yeah - “socialized” medicine ! oh my God ! Sure, people can complain ( boy people can complain everywhere) and everything can be improved, but by and large, free universal health care works in France, England and Canada.  These are not “socialist” disasters.

And to those who might suggest that I move to one of those countries; I’d love to, but I love my country as much as you do and feel just a little duty here. There are plenty of things that are great here, but our collective understanding of socialism, the current state of wealth transfer, and our willingness to intelligently discuss these things isn’t our strong point. So,  I feel that I should stick around and make the effort to try to improve the parts of this great country that need a little help.

Transfer of wealth ? you betcha.

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P.S. Obama’s tax plan will not raise “just about everyone’s tax rate” 

And as to the percentage who pay no tax at all, many of these can barely put food on the table while working minimum wage jobs and then quite a few who pay no tax at all are very very rich by enjoying the benefits of convoluted tax shelters. This is why the Alternative Minimum Tax was instituted; because too many very rich were getting away with paying no tax at all because they paid expensive accountants to find the loopholes. (granted, perhaps the AMT limit should be raised due to inflation)

What’s wrong with playing fair ?

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