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Don't Spread Wealth. Create Wealth

October 23, 2008 RSS Feed Print

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My friend and superblogger Ross Douthat has been posting about the political appeal of Obama's "spread the wealth" philosophy. My two cents: I am a big believer in creating wealth, as are my fellow Americans. Consider this: During the 1980s, the economy notched 19 quarters of 3.5 percent GDP growth or better. In the 1990s, the economy also notched 19 quarters of 3.5 percent growth or better. So far this decade? Just eight. Or look at the number of quarters of "hypergrowth"—5 percent or better. (This was JFK's GDP goal in the 1960s, by the way.) There were 12 in the '80s, eight in the '90s. So far this decade? Just a single quarter, the third quarter of 2003.

When people think true prosperity is unattainable, then they will settle for mere alleviation of their misery. As JFK said in 1961: "The potential of the American economy is constantly expanding. The labor force is rising by 1.5 percent per year. Output per man rises annually by 2 percent as a result of new and better plants and equipment, modern technology, and improved human skills. These increases in manpower and productivity provide the base for a potential annual growth of 3.5 percent in the nation's total output. This is not high enough. Our potential growth rate can and should be increased." I agree!

Tags:: economic growth,; wealth,; economics,; 2008 presidential election,; Barack Obama

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While I too would like to see my tax money being spent domestically on programs that are both effective and necessary (two concepts with which Obama is unfamilar), that will not happen with Obama's loosely organized economic plan and unfair tax propositions. Also, Barack Obama has not hesitated to attempt to throw MILLIONS of taxpayer money in the direction of campaign supporters, without the approval of Congress: upwards of 3.3 million in some single instances. Where McCain spends his voluntary campaign contribution money is his business; where a President plans to spend my hard earned tax dollars is mine.
Obama has in no way come up with any ways with which to generate enough revenue to put his plan to "spread the wealth" around into action. It is going to take much more than stopping the Iraq War and taxing the wealthy--who are already taxed just as much, proportionately, as everyone else--to pay for his $800 billion plan. Like always, the remainder of the bill will fall to average Americans. That does not sound like a change to me.

Lindsey of NJ 7:35PM November 02, 2008

The Republicans and "Free Market" Capitalist love to talk about the free market and how it creates wealth. The problem with the author's examples is that we now know how the past three decades of economic growth was achieved.
1) The economy is now globalized. This means that everyone has to compete against people from other countries who has the same skill set, yet has a lower cost of living. This translates into lower labor costs for companies and layoff for people who live in the most developed country (USA).
2) As jobs were shipped overseas, the US consumer decided that cheap goods were great, but didn't realize that meant money created in the US was leaving the US as cheap goods are now made in other countries.
3) The decades of economic growth was fueled in large part by ever growing US Consumer spending fueled in turn to expanding use of managed debt. i.e. Easy Credit via credit cards and home equity loans.
4) Now that we (US Consumers) have debts beyond our means to payoff, the US Consumer must spend less. This means less shopping and spending to pay off those credit cards. This means the economy will be contracting until some or most of the debt is paid-off. This in turn means the US is heading into a long recession.
Good luck America, we did this to ourselves by electing people who only cared about their campaign donors (Large Multinational Corporations).

Jae of MD 1:48PM November 02, 2008

It's sad to people saying Obama is a socialist. bush and the wall street boys are the ones who profited during the last 5 years and then used ours and future generations of taxpayer dollars to fix this mess that will ruin the U.S. Shame on you for trying to shift bush's problems to Obama.

mike of IA 8:35AM November 02, 2008

Don't Spread Wealth. Create Wealth

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