The latest ridiculousness, featured in a screaming headline on the Drudge Report and described under the title "Shame" on the National Review website, involves some remarks made by Obama on public radio in 2001.
In that interview, Obama was discussing efforts, in the 1960s and 1970s, to redistribute resources through the federal courts. Obama said that the Warren Court was not so terribly radical, because it "never entered into the issues of redistribution of wealth, and sort of more basic issues of political and economic justice in this society." He complained, not that the Court refused to enter into those issues, but that "the civil-rights movement became so court-focussed,"
In answering a caller's question, he said that the court "is just not very good at" redistribution. Obama added, with approval, that the Constitution "is generally a charter of negative liberties."
Obama's principal claim--about the institutional limits of the courts--was made by many conservatives (including Robert Bork) in the 1960s and 1970s: Courts should not attempt to guarantee "positive" rights, or interpret the Constitution to redistribute wealth. Obama is squarely rejecting the claim that was made by many liberal lawyers, professors, and judges at the time--and that is being made by some today.
Apparently, though, some people are thinking that Obama is displaying his commitment to redistribution, at least in principle. We have to make some distinctions here. The word "redistribution" is easily politicized, but, in terms of actual policy, it seems to include the Social Security Act (which redistributes wealth), the Americans with Disabilities Act (which also redistributes), educational reform that would improve schools in poor areas, Head Start programs, statutes allowing parental leave, the Earned Income Tax Credit, the progressive income tax, and much more. Almost all candidates for public office (including Senator McCain) favor significant forms of redistribution. With his court-skeptical statements in 2001, Obama was referring to the sorts of claims being made in courts in the relevant period, for which the word "redistribution" has often been used. (Those claims involved denials of education and medical care, and discrimination in welfare programs.)
It is true that Obama supports the Earned Income Tax Credit (an idea pioneered by Republicans). It is also true that Obama supports the minimum wage. It is true too that Obama is centrally concerned with decent education for all -- and the right to education was at stake in perhaps the most important case that Obama is discussing. It is true, finally, that Obama wants to make health care available for all. But it is truly ridiculous to take Obama's remarks in 2001 as suggesting that the nation should embark on a large-scale redistributive scheme.
Cass R. Sunstein
recommend this
email
print
link to this page
Comments: 13
The whole argument is just a game of word association. It's just like all the other strained attempts of guilt by association.
Obama offers pragmatic solutions to improve America. He is a pragmatist. And the conservatives counter with simplistic labeling. They are ideologues.
And anyway, chances are that Wilma will have 3 times the tax cut under Obama compared to McCain.
In a real discussion mentioning socialism would imply a spectrum of economic
systems. At one end would be privatization and at the other would be
socialism.
The example of privatization at its peak would be something like Saudi Arabia,
where one man, the King, in the case of SA, owns everything. In another
country it could be the richest man, for instance Iran, Ahmadinejad is the
richest or one of the richest men in iran, or in another country it could be the
most charismatic, say Nazi Germany, where Hitler convinced a country to
follow him.
At the other extreme might be a place like Sweden, where if you get a traffic
ticket in order to distribute the same amount of punishment to rich and
poor, they pro-rate the fine according to your income, which I think is a fine
idea.
The way I see it, the world should be very much more wary of the extreme
private economies because that is almost where all of the war, crime, misery,
inequality, desperation, slavery, etc ... comes from. These ultra private
economies almost always let the leaders go off the deep end in some kind
of fantasy or another and lead their countries to ruin.
On the other hand, the price you would have to for that not to happen is
that you have to pay relatively high taxes if you are rich in a socialist
economy. But since there is a basic level of quality of life assured,
people in general are more productive, more educated, less stressed,
and more free.
By Matthew Benjamin
Dec. 13 (Bloomberg) -- Americans overwhelmingly say the growing gap between rich and poor has become a serious national concern, a sentiment that may bolster Democrats' plans to narrow the income divide when they take control of Congress.
Almost three-quarters of Americans believe inequality is a major issue, versus 24 percent who don't think so, according to a new Bloomberg/Los Angeles Times poll. Most of the concern is among Democrats and independent voters, though a majority of Republicans -- 55 percent -- also called the situation serious.
``Income inequality is widening quite rapidly,'' said Alice Rivlin, a former vice chairwoman of the Federal Reserve who's now a public policy professor at Georgetown University in Washington. ``It does matter to people that there are such unequal chances to get ahead.''
A month after Republicans lost their majority in Congress, poll respondents generally expressed optimism about the economy, with about three in five saying it's doing well. They were divided over how effectively President George W. Bush is managing the economy, with almost half saying they approve of the job he's doing and about the same number saying they disapprove.
There's little concern about a housing-market collapse, with only 15 percent of respondents saying they expect home values in their neighborhoods to fall during the next six months. And while more than a third expect to spend less money on gifts this holiday season, 68 percent called their personal finances secure.
Anxiety
Still, anxiety about the growing rich-poor divide unites Americans, crossing income and political divisions. Among those earning less than $40,000 a year, 84 percent called the gap a serious problem, with more than half saying it's ``very serious.'' Among those earning more than $100,000, more than three in five said it's a serious concern. Those in the middle- income group making between $40,000 and $60,000 were almost as concerned as the least wealthy.
``The ultra rich and the rich continue to have mechanisms to make money like the stock market and executive salaries,'' Kevin Godsea, an employee with the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, said in a follow-up interview. ``And the wages of middle class workers are stagnant,'' said Godsea, 30, a registered Republican in Fort Myers, Florida, who considers himself middle class.
Rich Get Richer
Income growth has begun to pick up, with average hourly wages gaining 4.1 percent over the last 12 months, the biggest increase since February 2001. Still, Census Bureau data point to a long-term trend of the rich taking home a larger slice of U.S. income every year.
The portion of national income earned by the top 20 percent of households grew to 50.4 percent last year, up from 45.6 percent 20 years ago; the bottom 60 percent of U.S. households received 26.6 percent, down from 29.9 percent in 1985, according to the Census Bureau. Meanwhile, average pay for corporate chief executive officers rose to 369 times that of the average worker last year, according to finance professor Kevin Murphy of the University of Southern California; that compares with 131 times in 1993 and 36 times in 1976.
``We are creating have and have-not classes in this country,'' said Jane Huntley, 77, a retired elementary school teacher from Brunswick, New York.
Democrats are considering proposals to shrink the income gap, such as boosting the minimum wage, scrutinizing executive pay, increasing tax credits available to the poor, and making health care and higher education more affordable.
Stagnation
Several of those ideas, if implemented, can provide immediate relief to the working poor, said Gene Sperling, a former economic adviser to President Bill Clinton and now a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, a Democratic research group in Washington. More difficult, he said, is dealing with the ``insecurity in the middle class. People want to know where the new middle class jobs are coming from,'' said Sperling, who is a Bloomberg News contributor.
Americans have become more optimistic about the state of the economy, with those saying it's doing well rising to 61 percent from 54 percent in September. That may reflect the drop in gasoline prices in the last several months and the burst of wage growth, analysts say.
Marks Improving
Bullishness rose with household income, with more than three-quarters of those earning more than $100,000 a year saying the economy is doing well. Those earning less than $40,000 were the only group in which a majority said the economy is doing badly. About seven in 10 respondents said they expect the economy to be about the same six months from now.
The poll of 1,489 adults was taken Dec. 8 to Dec. 11 and had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.
Bush's marks on the economy also improved since September, with 48 percent of respondents saying they approve of how he's handling it, up from 43 percent three months ago. An equal percentage said they disapprove, down from 51 percent in the last poll.
``I don't take issue with his domestic policy, just his foreign policy,'' said Jon Jackson, 32, of Raleigh, North Carolina.
Jackson, a registered Republican who works as an operations manager at a snack food company, said he will spend less this holiday season than last year on gifts, mostly because he's got a new baby and health-care costs are crimping his budget.
About one in five of those surveyed said they expect to spend a lot less money on gifts this year. Almost half said they will spend the same amount and only 15 percent said they plan to increase spending.
``It's time to be really, really careful with our money because the economy is overrated,'' said Francisco Garcia, 50, a computer systems architect in Houston and an independent voter. ``With so many jobs that have been outsourced, the only thing I can compute is that a lot of people are just spending on credit cards, and that's going to cave in.''
To contact the reporter on this story: Matt Benjamin in Washington at mbenjamin2@bloomberg.net
Last Updated: December 12, 2006 18:35 EST
Terms of Service | Privacy Policy | Trademarks
If you take my money to build a road for you, it is redistribution. It's been redistributed to another purpose. Whether the money goes to pay for defense, health care, sewage systems, utilities, it's being redistributed.
The guilt by association is to take a snippet of what Obama said, then strain to associate that with a much broader word that has is pejorative and has negative connotations and implies much more than what Obama has ever meant or said. If Bush supports wiretapping, and wiretapping is what communists do, I can call Bush a communist (which is a bad thing, right?) and then we can make assumptions that since he's a communist, he'll do the other things communists are known for, we can look for ways it appears he's trying to hide it, and so on.
As for word games, McCain is using the simplistic and inaccurate labels like socialist, which not only is inaccurate, but is just used for it's negative connotations and to suggest other related but unwarranted assumptions about Obama. However, pragmatist is an accurate label for Obama. It is not simplistic or any kind of word game. It's just an accurate descriptor.
Finally, Obama is not what people think of as an ideologue. Pragmatism would normally be considered the opposite of an ideology. Pragmatism is doing whatever works best for the situation, no matter where on the ideological spectrum it falls. Examples of of ideology would be a laissez faire free market ideology, supply side economics, or communism which put narrow-minded theories ahead of evidence.