New Zeal has a Penn and Teller video about Obama and his tax plans. Obama is featured telling a detractor facing higher taxes that he believes, "When you spread the wealth around it's good for everybody."
And guess what? I agree.
But spread the wealth through jobs and supportive relationships. NOT through taxation and handouts.
Because wealth spread through jobs and mutually dependent relationships between individuals is wealth spread voluntarily and for mutual gain. The incentives stay right. People have to work at their jobs and their relationships and they are rewarded.
But when the state takes it upon itself to direct money to people who do neither, it distorts incentives. It rewards the very actions that would be fruitless in a society reliant on goodwill, trust and mutual gain.
So it is with a sinking sense of disbelief that I hear Barack Obama making this sentimentalised statement when he fully intends to try and achieve the 'sharing of wealth' the wrong way.
Where's Ronnie Reagan when we need him most?
Fiscal failure and indifference
1 hour ago
2 comments:
Wow, trickle down economics! I seriously did not believe anyone really believed that stuff any more. It was so clearly and demonstrably shown to be wrong in the 90s. The whole supply side/liberal argument has been completely and utterly tarnished. You're sounding like some Hawkish Yank screaming about Russian Commies after the Berlin Wall had come down. Besides, now the financial crisis has revealed the Emperor really does not have clothes but is parading about dressed only in fraudulent derivatives, we will see some real redistributive policies. You think the current social democratic policy settings are anathema? Well, get ready for some big ass new New Deal. The globe has woken up to the dangers of unfettered, selfish capitalism.
Well put Lindsay.
Unfortunately, I fear that anonymous is right. New Deals are coming and we are heading into a horrible depression. On this score note that Obama has also said some economically illiterate things about free trade.
N.B. anonymous; Capitalism never has been and never can be unfettered. 'Unfettered capitalism' is an oxymoron. If we eliminated the massive intervention into and regulation of markets which characterise modern economies, consumers would take command, capitalists would have to bend to their will to have any hope of thriving.
Dave Christian
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