Redistribution of wealth under Obama
October 18th 2008 17:17
Redistribution of wealth is a hot topic these days in America. From Joe the "plumber" to Sarah the "pit bull," the righties and conservobots are screaming about how Barack Obama wants to take your money and give it to some welfare queen or crony. Wake up, oh ye misinformed. Barack Obama doesn't want to begin massive redistribution of wealth, he wants to end it. A massive redistribution of wealth has been going on since Reagan, and accelerated under Bush. Only the "welfare queens" are the corporate elite and the cronies are in boardrooms and country clubs.
When Forbes Magazine published it's list of the 400 richest Americans in 2007, the "entry level" mark was 1.3 billion. Don't even try to knock on the door of that club if you're only a mere multi-millionaire. They join an increasingly parasitic group from around the world that are getting extraordinarily wealthy off the backs and sweat of everyone else.
One in seven people in the world are faced with hunger on a daily basis. The U.S. Census Bureau in figures for 2006 reported 36.5 million Americans living in poverty, 18 million of them children. The poverty level for a family of three for 2006 was placed at 16,079.00 dollars. How many of you would like to make it on that a year? How about the estimated one billion people worldwide who live on one dollar a day or less? In my humble opinion, in a world where children die from lack of food, a billionaire is only slightly different from a mass murderer. But that's just me. What Obama proposes will just slow the transfer of wealth to the top, not reverse it.
While America is caught up with Joe the full-of-shit plumber, the very wealthy are set to score even bigger if John McCain were to become president. He wants to not only keep the Bush tax cuts, but to cut the taxes of the wealthy even more. Conservobots are quick to describe Barack Obama's proposal to get rid of the Bush tax cuts to the rich as a redistribution of wealth but are blind to the reality that those tax cuts were exactly that. Redistribution of wealth is something the conservatives have done very well, thank you very much.
Natural disasters, foreign policy, the overall economy, all are well-known debacles of the Bush Administration. Fact is, Bush is only partly an idiot. The plan all along was to destroy government's ability to be socially responsible while piling more money on those who need it least. He and his party have been quite successful there. But the foolish idea that to make the very rich incredibly rich will somehow "trickle down" has been exposed as a sham of historic proportion.
Real earnings for the average American are down around 2,000 dollars in America since Bush took office. In just 2004 alone the top one percent of Americans saw their income rise by 12.5 percent. Still, the average American is wealthy compared to a good part of the world. Forbes in 2007 counted 1,125 billionaires worldwide with combined wealth of 4.4 trillion. That's up from 946 billionaires worth 3.5 trillion in just one year. That represents a morally defunct system that allows far too much to be in too few hands. I'm not religious, so I'll ask any Christians that might read this - what would Jesus think of that?
In America infrastructure is in bad need of repair. From falling bridges to weak levees, the lack of investment for decades is coming home to roost. Health care has become a national embarrassment. Add on the housing downturn and rising unemployment, and it's easy to see the government needs more money. The idiocy of the free-market conservobots who decry government is their supposed reliance on the market to fix everything. The market, by it's very nature, has no interest but self interest. And that just doesn't cut it.
The time is now for us to begin to bring a real sense of social justice to the world. It won't happen with what Obama is proposing, but we have to start somewhere. The big changes we need might take generations. To continue to allow the travesty of wealth redistribution to the very top is to allow for our own ultimate demise in an unsustainable downward spiral.
When Forbes Magazine published it's list of the 400 richest Americans in 2007, the "entry level" mark was 1.3 billion. Don't even try to knock on the door of that club if you're only a mere multi-millionaire. They join an increasingly parasitic group from around the world that are getting extraordinarily wealthy off the backs and sweat of everyone else.
One in seven people in the world are faced with hunger on a daily basis. The U.S. Census Bureau in figures for 2006 reported 36.5 million Americans living in poverty, 18 million of them children. The poverty level for a family of three for 2006 was placed at 16,079.00 dollars. How many of you would like to make it on that a year? How about the estimated one billion people worldwide who live on one dollar a day or less? In my humble opinion, in a world where children die from lack of food, a billionaire is only slightly different from a mass murderer. But that's just me. What Obama proposes will just slow the transfer of wealth to the top, not reverse it.
While America is caught up with Joe the full-of-shit plumber, the very wealthy are set to score even bigger if John McCain were to become president. He wants to not only keep the Bush tax cuts, but to cut the taxes of the wealthy even more. Conservobots are quick to describe Barack Obama's proposal to get rid of the Bush tax cuts to the rich as a redistribution of wealth but are blind to the reality that those tax cuts were exactly that. Redistribution of wealth is something the conservatives have done very well, thank you very much.
Natural disasters, foreign policy, the overall economy, all are well-known debacles of the Bush Administration. Fact is, Bush is only partly an idiot. The plan all along was to destroy government's ability to be socially responsible while piling more money on those who need it least. He and his party have been quite successful there. But the foolish idea that to make the very rich incredibly rich will somehow "trickle down" has been exposed as a sham of historic proportion.
Real earnings for the average American are down around 2,000 dollars in America since Bush took office. In just 2004 alone the top one percent of Americans saw their income rise by 12.5 percent. Still, the average American is wealthy compared to a good part of the world. Forbes in 2007 counted 1,125 billionaires worldwide with combined wealth of 4.4 trillion. That's up from 946 billionaires worth 3.5 trillion in just one year. That represents a morally defunct system that allows far too much to be in too few hands. I'm not religious, so I'll ask any Christians that might read this - what would Jesus think of that?
In America infrastructure is in bad need of repair. From falling bridges to weak levees, the lack of investment for decades is coming home to roost. Health care has become a national embarrassment. Add on the housing downturn and rising unemployment, and it's easy to see the government needs more money. The idiocy of the free-market conservobots who decry government is their supposed reliance on the market to fix everything. The market, by it's very nature, has no interest but self interest. And that just doesn't cut it.
The time is now for us to begin to bring a real sense of social justice to the world. It won't happen with what Obama is proposing, but we have to start somewhere. The big changes we need might take generations. To continue to allow the travesty of wealth redistribution to the very top is to allow for our own ultimate demise in an unsustainable downward spiral.
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