BulletMagnet wrote:But any redirecting of wealth to the top is NEVER labeled as such - it's not so much any specific number that irks me so much as the knee-jerk labeling, which is NEVER questioned.
Pundits and critics with The New York Times, DailyKos, Media Matters, Reddit, Digg, ABC, CBS, CNN and MSNBC questioned this quite thoroughly. And again, you are starting with the premise that the wealth is the government's to be redirected.
However, Vice President Joseph Biden infamously said that it was a patriotic duty for wealthier people to pay higher taxes, that "We want to take money and put it back in the pocket of middle-class people." As if this isn't currently being done. Such blunt statements are the pinnacle of the charges of socialism.
And they are socialist - our government has a myriad of socialist policies in place right now! I believe the problem we both have is using the term to inspire fear in the population. They need to be educated to understand exactly what this entails. As an ardent capitalist, I even find the class divisions Marx described as a more or less accurate way to describe historical economies - The Bourgeoisie, The Proletariat and The Lumpenproletariat. America can still be described this way more or less, but with a unique Western blend of Bourgeoisie and Proletariat that is unrivaled in history, and a strict upper class that is richer than he could have ever imagined. Things aren't nearly as bad as Marx had them out to be 150 years ago - I believe that of Marx's ten demands of Western society he outlined in The Communist Manifesto, we already have five of them in place - it's been eons since I wrote that paper in college, though.
Essentially, to
further redistribute wealth and power more evenly - that is the Obama plan.
On that note, hopefully getting out of Iraq will free up at least a bit of money.
Obama will be able to remove soliders from Iraq due to the increasing security of the country. Between the surge and the 100,000 militiamen on the U.S. payroll, things are going relatively well there.
Obama has also expressed interest in boosting the troop levels in Afghanistan, which would nullify most, if not all, of the savings gained from lowering the American presence in Iraq. On a side note, I can't believe the inconsistency of supporting a surge in Afghanistan when he denies that the surge in Iraq was responsible for any of the gains in security in Iraq. Not directed at you, I just realized this irony while typing this up.
The trouble starts when you get into the details - is a universal health care system "for the greater good," or is "redistribution" of ANY kind patently "un-American," and thus not "the greater good?"
For clarification of terminology, redistribution of wealth is an essential task of government. Socialism redistributes wealth for the express purpose of smoothing out inequalities in wealth, power, and production among the population. The "greater good" didn't accurately describe my thoughts, and only reminds me of the movie Hot Fuzz now.
I wrote out a great deal more, and deleted it. Skip everything if you please. Cliff notes: We're already socialist in many areas, Obama simply wishes to expand.
Of all the things I've lost, I miss my mind the most.
But I don't think I will be able to catch up to you any time soon.
