Don't Spread Wealth. Create Wealth

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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

Patrick,
Obama will distribute your wealth to the global economy as he said in his speech in Germany. It will feed the poor that is probably as important as peace in the middle east, but you wour world will become the third world when he is done distributing the wealth. Of course the truly wealthy and the big coroporations do not need america. They will be long gone to countries who cater to them.
I'm with the top poster, the more I make the more they take... already giving about 50%

cindi of CA 4:50PM October 28, 2008

The famous free market capitalist, Alan Greenspan, gave up the ghost last week that the lassiez faire brand of capitalism he's been preaching is a failure, based on the assumption that businesses/institutions will operate in their own self interests. Greenspan seems to be sayin that the greed of corporations has gotten to the point where they will commit suicide to get that buck, companies will throw away the whole enterprise to achieve a profitable quarter (and an king's ransom in executive bonuses). The model is broken, the theory is squashed, and hanging on to the threads of reactionary knucklehead economics isn't going to help anyone going forward.
The illusion of creating wealth while amassing a almost insurmountable public debt is a joke. Nobody is laughing.
So now a generation has run the country into debt to line their own pockets - the republican mantra has been borrow and spend, spend and spend, and at the first word that someone would ask that they pay as they go, it is the squirrelly conservatives who would cut and run.
Americans have had to bail themselves out republican Depressions before, and it high time to get started by kicking out these flim-flam con men like Bush and McCain.

Pablo of WA 12:08PM October 26, 2008

You must be kidding. All you can do is talk about fashion and Cindy? Wake up! Stop drinking the kool-aide. Everyone works hard for their money. Barack will definetly spend your money, don't worry. I'm with "jane" the plumber. I already plan to cut my days of work. I refuse to let someone tax me and "spread" it around. I'm not he only one thinking this. Everyone will get a lassiez faire attitude. No one will be proud of their achievements. It will cut our sense of entreprenurial guts to take a chance. Why? Why bother.

MP of FL 4:08PM October 25, 2008

Over the years, each political party has tried to redistribute the wealth of this nation. The Republicans want to distribute it upward - the Democrats downward. The former leads to an excess accumulation of capital and the creation of evermore incomprehensible and idiotic financial vehicles for investment. This is not capitalism in the classic sense because the money doesn't do anything real - it doesn't pay for the expansion of manufacturing capacity and it doesn't create new jobs. If the wealth is redistributed downward, there is an expanded demand for goods that should lead to a legitimate focus for capital investment. Since the captial accumulation has been inhibited by the taxation that allows for the downward redistribution, such expansion doesn't take place and we have Stagflation. There has to be some well thought out point of balance that creates a functioning economy and society. In this type of society, nobody wins big -but everybody wins

Eugene Ostreicher of 11:05PM October 24, 2008

Cut the garbage. Your spin is hogwash.
Just like Greenspan, you basically don't have a clue what's going on in the economy.
Its obvious anymore that America has been devastated by 8 years of this Republican President and the 12 years of the Republican Congress - these guys have destroyed any wealth average Americans have.
Expect the pendulum to swing back the other way from the excesses of these Republican goons. Basically Republican Socialism sucks, redistributing the wealth to the top 5% by a rigged bogus capitalism that is privatizing the profits and socializing the losses. The American people have been screwed by Bush/McCain, and we ain't going to take it lightly. We are witnessing the demise of a corrupt criminal regime unprecedented in Modern US History, and the American people need to see someone's held accountable.
McCain/Bush have been a disaster, and we don't need some conservative megaphone to give us some economic fairy tales of how great the economy is thanks to knucklehead Republican economics.

Pablo of WA 2:38AM October 24, 2008

I don't consider myself a very well educated person as I only with difficulty obtained my BA in Communications. My husband left me with seven little children but I worked hard to raise my children, with my mother and sister's help. I did not receive any aid, food stamps or anything else--I worked to raise my kids. I worked my way through night school, and succeeded in buying my own home. Obama's belief in "spreading the wealth" is a belief even Ronald Reagan had, unfortunately, McCain has selective memory. Adam Smith wrote in his, "The Wealth of Nations," "The subjects of every state ought to contribute towards the suppport of the government, as nearly as possible, in proportion to their respective abilities; that is, in proportion to the revenue which they respectively enjoy under the protection of the state." For those who have difficulty understanding what that means, it means that as McCain himself said, the Bush tax code as written was "skewed" to benefit the rich. McCain has ranted many times on the campaign trail about the enormous fortunes raked in by the oil industry, defense contractors, bond holders and the whole host of modern capitalists under the protection of the current administration. The dishonesty of McCain's rants about what Obama proposes, to restore tax rates on the wealthy to the same level during the Clinton administration, so families making less than $250,000 do NOT taxes is not a radical idea. When McCain goes on about Obama's "redistribution of wealth" and equates an income tax rebate for working people with "welfare" it is such a ridiculous statement that you have to be a real dummy not to see through these baseless statements. Let's leave aside the racial subtext of those stupid remarks, it's hard to say whether they display ignorance, dishonesty or both. The American tax system, like all other taxation in modern nations, ha always redistributed wealth. whether it's upward to the rich or at very few times downward to assist the poor. During the current Bush administration the "distribution of wealth" went upward to the rich and to the pockets of corporate executives. To cast socialist aspersions on a tax refund to working families whose incomes are too low to pay income taxes points a finger at McCain's supposed idol--Ronald Reagan. Ronald Reagon praised the "earned income tax credit" as the best "anti-poverty" and pro-family legislation ever. It must be troubling for Republicans to learn that according to McCain, Reagan was a socialist, too.

Ann M. of IA 9:48PM October 23, 2008

By limiting the number positions in medical schools, the AMA has successfully limited the number of docs, creating a medical shortage in many parts of the country and making our medical system the most expensive in the world and our doctors the most highly paid.
Free markets? Not in medicine!

Dan of MD 6:11PM October 23, 2008