On our republic and the “transfer” of wealth
Sometimes a seemingly random word or two can be very instructive, if you want to know what a person really thinks. That is the reason I (and so many others) paid quite a bit of attention to a couple of revealing moments leading up to the election.
One was Obama’s “spread the wealth” comment to Joe the Plumber. While some might say it was just a single insignificant phrase uttered during an impromptu give-and-take, I would respond that no one would express such a thought unless it matched his/her internal concept of the world and how it should function.
In other words, it was a moment in which Obama’s carefully constructed mask slipped.
The same was true for the surfacing of a tape in which Obama calmly said that his energy policies were intended to bankrupt coal plants and cause the price of electricity to “skyrocket.” Prior to this, we all know he was an environmentalist. But the radical nature of his “solutions” had not been so nakedly revealed.
I wrote this post in the week before the election, entitled “Will the real Obama please stand up?” In it, I quoted Tony Blankley on the subject of Obama’s true intentions as opposed to his facade.
It made chilling reading then. But it makes prescient reading now:
But of course, throughout history when dangerous, radical men have offered themselves up for leadership, their moderate supporters have rationalized their early support by hoping that the dangerous man is really a sensible man like them and doesn’t believe some of those wild things he has said to his more fervent followers.
But as the campaign clock ticks down to its last days and hours, prudent people have to consider the possibility that beneath that easy manner and calming voice is the pulsating heart of a genuine man of the radical left.
That brings us to a telling remark Obama made during his February 24, 2009 speech to a joint session of Congress. It slipped right by me at the time. But Jacob Sullum, writing in Reason, has kindly underlined it.
In the sentence in question, Obama doesn’t mention Bush by name. But it appears fairly clear that he is speaking of the beginnings of the Bush administration, when Bush inherited a budget surplus from President Clinton (let’s leave aside for the moment the interesting question of whether it was technically a surplus or not; we can certainly agree it was at the very least a greatly reduced deficit). Obama said:
A surplus became an excuse to transfer wealth to the wealthy instead of an opportunity to invest in our future.
Sullum points out:
Whatever you think of the wisdom of Bush’s tax cuts, they amounted to taking less from people, not giving more to them. Obama makes it sound as if there is no meaningful difference between robbing Peter to pay Paul (which is what he has in mind when he talks about “rebalancing the tax code”) and leaving Peter alone (or, more accurately, robbing him less thoroughly)””except that the latter option is, in Obama’s view, morally inferior.
I believe that this, more than any other statement Obama has made, underlines the deeply radical Leftist underpinnings of Obama’s thoughts about wealth and capital. By labeling the act of allowing people to keep more of the money they have already earned as a “transfer of wealth to the wealthy,” he indicates that he actually doesn’t think that money belongs to them in the first place.
Now, you may think the tax code isn’t progressive enough. You may think that the rich should be paying an even bigger share than their already substantial portion of the tax burden. But the idea that a reduction in a still-high tax rate, that allows the rich to keep more of the money they have earned, represents an actual transfer of wealth to them is a very odd—and hugely telling—notion.
The second part of the quote is interesting, as well. Obama says the wealth transfer has been a substitute for “an opportunity to invest in our future.” But wait—do not the wealthy “invest in our future,” by starting businesses, growing the GNP, and employing people in a myriad of ways? Of course, not all of their money goes to this purpose. They keep quite a bit (are allowed to keep quite a bit?) to furnish their lavish homes, and to buy their yachts and other playthings. But some of that surplus owned by the wealthy (yes, they do own it) is put in the service of driving the engine of our economy for us all.
Does Obama not realize this? Perhaps—but I think he does actually know it. I just think that, when he says “our future,” he’s envisioning a different sort of future.
What is this “future” in which Obama would have us invest? It appears to be one in which government makes the decisions as to who should own wealth, because that wealth actually belongs to the people as a whole. One in which that wealth can be redistributed by the government according to its own ideas of fairness. A government which, under Obama, will come to resemble either a social welfare state of the type popular in Europe, or perhaps even a socialist state approximating Venezuela under the reprehensible Hugo Chavez.
Think it can’t happen here? Think again.
Obama’s proposed tax structure will have an interesting effect. According to Michael Boskin, writing in the WSJ:
New and expanded refundable tax credits would raise the fraction of taxpayers paying no income taxes to almost 50% from 38%. This is potentially the most pernicious feature of the president’s budget, because it would cement a permanent voting majority with no stake in controlling the cost of general government.
And that, in turn, reminds me of this thought, attributed (perhaps falsely) to Alexander Fraser Tytler:
A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, followed always by a dictatorship. The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations has been 200 years.
Now, I’m not sure about the word “always.” And it also seems there are democracies that have lasted more than 200 years. Also, of course, we can quibble with the word “democracy” because we are a republic.
But it seems true that it would take a very stalwart and unusual group of people to stop voting funds for themselves from the money machine our government has become. I’m not sure we are that people any more. And the quote dovetails nicely with another thought, this one attributed to Ben Franklin:
When the people find they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic.
Far from being naive about money and taxes and their effects on the general public, I see signs that the Democrats and Obama are very sophisticated indeed. It’s not that their goal is to destroy the republic. But I’m not sure that they care all that much if it happens. It may just be an unintended consequence of their drive for power.
A few quotes
George Bernard Shaw…..
“A government with the policy to rob Peter to pay Paul
can be assured of the support of Paul.”
And from de Tocqueville (a pretty interesting man who had both good and bad things to say about our “budding democracy”)
“A democratic government is the only one in which those who vote for a tax can escape the obligation to pay it. ”
“The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public’s money. ”
and the one that seems to have the most relevance to the “class envy” as an agent for change as put forth by the liberals of today.
“Americans are so enamored of equality that they would rather be equal in slavery than unequal in freedom. ”
Liberals have actually condemned many minority members to a slavery worse than their progenitors suffered. Now their spirits and intellects are enslaved – and the worst part is they have handed the plantation owner the whip and the chains.
I find it disturbing that part of these trillions of dollars of “spending” in the stimulus and budget plans are tax cuts.
Since when did letting people KEEP the money they earned equate to the government “spending” the money it has the “right” to collect?
Obama is a con man–always has been, always will be. His leftism is window dressing–his schtick. Tell the lefty dopes what they want to hear. It pays–scholarships, book deals, senate seats.
Whose got a mansion in Hyde Park? Whose eating $100 a pound steak?
His socialism is no less damaging because it’s a con, but a con it is. Watch the money. See who gets richer. It won’t be us.
I’m not at all convinced Obama is just a con. This is not so much fleecing the suckers as it is a sense of entitlement. Obama sees himself as someone who can get things done and true to the Chicago Political Machine’s labor theory of value (my time, my presence, my interest, my help all have value) will enrich himself directly or indirectly. Even true blue socialists can live the high life.
If you do a phenomenology of how socialism actually works in real life, it is never the ideal that is sold to the people in the universities, schools, the media, and other venues. In reality, it is just another form of feudal oligarchy. A small group of elite control it all, and throw crumbs to the people. This new oligarchy hates the old order because they believe by their superior minds and educations that they should rule, not the actual people who build things, finance them, and spread the wealth that they have created. All of the socialist intellectuals from The Terror on through the Paris Commune, through Marx and Engels on down to Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Ho, Pol Pot, Castro, Chavez and a whole host of academics and political leaders resented the fact that they were not the natural leaders of their countries. They felt themselves superior, and so they used vile, polluted ideas and violent actions to seize power and loot.
Obama is right in that tradition. He has been groomed for this role in life since he was a boy. Marxist grandparents, Communist natural father, Marxist mother, former Indonesian Communist father who abandoned Communism for Islam (to save his life and get a job), Communist mentor, Communist and Marxist college professors, Marxist pastor, Communist friends like Ayers. The circle was very tight and he is thoroughly a man following Marx’s blueprint for the new oligarchy.
Marxism and Islam are now in a symbiotic relationship to destroy our civilization, loot it, and pick over its bones. They have a lot in common as well as a lot not in common. But they absolutely share the blueprint of supplanting the existing order and creating a paradise where the looters get to divide the spoils… unevenly and in their favor. We have seen that every socialist society has failed and does not produce wealth. Islamic caliphates and kingdoms were prosperous when there was kafir/dhimmi loot to grab and divide. But then they wither on the vine.
The gang in power now knows only how to hustle a con story to the unwary, while hiding the feral nature that will kick open the door, threaten, murder, control, and plunder.
Alas, rent-seeking is hard-coded into human nature. Consider the long history of piracy: it is as old as trade itself, and most historians point out the somewhat hazy distinction between pirates and merchants.
However, a system with only rent-seeking that can’t recognize the difference between meum and tuum is destined to deteriorate into a world where lives are nasty, brutish, and short.
Seems to me the creators and producers hold the trump card in this whole scenario. We see it being played right now. Capital going on strike is already positioning itself for a submission hold on socialism.
We haven’t seen the likes of govt revenues plunging like we’ll see these next 4 years.
We haven’t seen the likes of govt revenues plunging like we’ll see these next 4 years. That might very well be true. But they are more than willing to borrow or print whatever they want to spend, so how much would it really matter to them that revenues go down?
I don’t think we will really understand what’s going on in Washington as long as we continue to try to think like Americans do: a whole different breed is now in charge.
I wrote on Feb. 17, the day Obama signed the Porkulus Bill, that he had become the anti-Lincoln: “transforming government of the people, by the people, for the people into government of the government, by the government, and for the government.”
The President Signs the Gargantuan-Government Porkulus Act Today
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/v/vladimir_lenin.html
Interesting.
http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quotes_by/vladimir+ilyich+lenin
A couple swell ones in here, too.
“It’s not that their goal is to destroy the republic. But I’m not sure that they care all that much if it happens. It may just be an unintended consequence of their drive for power.”
That may be true of most Democratic Party legislators, as well as many Executive Branch players, but I’m not sure I believe it is an unintended consequence for BO himself. Fred’s comments are well coined. I’m “only” repeating myself here, but it is no exaggeration to suggest that BO is a moslem communist posing as a Christian Democrat. However, as the days past he appears to be “posing” less. This is an incredibly dangerous group of people, I wouldn’t have thought what is happening could be possible….
Is it redistribution of wealth or of income?
davidt,
Both. The federal estate tax will be back into use by 2012, if not sooner. The term “wealth” is sort of used interchangeably, which is imprecise but it is what it is. Certainly, Obonga considers income over $250K to merit the term “wealthy.”
where did all the pre-election dirty, dirty leftists go?
Thanks Fred. I’ve always thought of Wealth as being that which you already have, while Income as being that which is, well, coming in. Blurring that distinction is obviously helpful to the leftists. I would call the estate or inheritence tax a tax on income, since it is a tax on something one is recieving. I would call property taxes a tax on Wealth, and thus a redistribution(of sorts) of Wealth. But to actually redistribute what wealth people actually have would reqire seizure, which already does happen in cases of tax delinquency, and mortgage or other loan delinquencies. As the Dems raise taxes, and lower tax revenues by stifling the economy, the rate of these delinquencies, and seizures, will increase. Then comes the redistribution.
Spot on commentary Neo.
This excerpt:
New and expanded refundable tax credits would raise the fraction of taxpayers paying no income taxes to almost 50% from 38%.
I want to comment on that.
Why dear liberal is it ok for the top 10% of income tax payers to pay 71% of the income taxes and the bottom 50% of income tax payers to pay 0% of the income taxes.
Yes, I know the answer, because they can afford it.
Can you consider dear liberal that said policies of increasing the pain on entrepreneurs and investors and job creators makes sure that there is less investment, less jobs and less risk taking. If you want us all to be subservient and dependent on the government there MUST be somebody (private sector) to TAKE from before you can give to the HUGE dependent class that you like to create.
If you want less pain and misery you need to think of policies that reward investment, savings and business ownership.
Why would this country with the second highest corporate tax rate respond well to Obama’s tax rate increases everywhere else. Why would anybody want Obama to succeed in destroying people’s lives?
Fred’s comment outshines the scintillating Neo. Well said, Fred. Thanks.
Gray, perhaps they are experiencing buyer’s remorse.
Only an armed people can be the real bulwark of popular liberty
Good Lord! I am agreeing with Lenin! Oh well, this time around we get to play the bolsheviks.
To the soon to be 50% that don’t pay taxes: Guess what?
You don’t get to vote either.
When are people going to understand that all money is relative. You can no easier get rid of the poor as you can get rid of rich.
I did a post on this whole tax the rich crap and how in the end its all worthless
Its all Relative
Adgny,
But they do get to vote. That’s the problem.