The New Republic

I'm not sure why Obama used the phrase "spread the wealth", because he clearly didn't mean redistributing income via tax collections and transfer payments. What he meant was policies that promoted a (somewhat) more even distribution of income, sort of like the distribution that existed in the high growth period following WWII. For the forgetful, the maximum marginal income tax rate when Kennedy came into office was 90%. Does anybody believe Obama wants such high marginal tax rates. No, he doesn't even want marginal tax rates as high as those Eisenhower supported. This is another example of the right's success in moving the bar, to where the new normal leaves no room, none, for policies that were acceptable to Republicans in the "good old days" that the right supposedly reveres.

- rayward

April 12, 2010 at 10:03am

Of course we should want to spread the wealth, these asshole Republicans love to say we are a Christian nation (Ie. one family under God) but at the same time shout me, me, me, mine, mine, mine. What kind of family is it where some members hoard all the wealth, pay slave wages and exploit other family members, are perfectly willing to let them die from disease, etc. Look, I get tough love where you kick the ass of the family member who wants to lie around the couch all day, but we did that when we reformed welfare. Now for all the atheist Ayn Randians out there, fine, you want to live in a world of selfishness and egoism so I understand your saying bullshit to Christianity. At least you own up to your vile nature, but the vast majority of Republicans claim Christianity. At the end of the day they are anti-Christian. By the way what the hell does this mean: We thought he would try to change the demographics of that district How the hell could he change the demographics of the district? Tear down the flood walls and drive the remaining blacks out? And Chait left out this line by this nitwit Kim Hasney: You know, supporting things that would get them out of the ghetto." OK, puta. To where? Certainly not your lily white neighborhood. And there is this line: "I'm not just talking about black people," she said. "The Vietnamese people flourish in that area because they're workers." Wow, extraordinary this stupid puta is so willing to be quoted so easily with her racism in full display. Yes, I am sure she knows how well the Vietnamese do "in that area" God I hate Southern whites, just too much inbreeding for too many generations.

- blackton

April 12, 2010 at 10:56am

- Huey Long's Every Man a King Every Man a King Radio Speech to the Nation 2-23-'34. Yes, I'm on the record so my opinion of Long as a dangerous demagogue hasn't changed. But I agree that Joe (in photo) and the majority of Tea Party types would have been more energized by Huey in '34 than an Ayn Rand construct of the world. The audiences, a particular white demographic, have retained the same self interests over eighty years so it is perplexing that they would make the dramatic shift to the other end of the right - left spectrum. I submit that there's more in play than a racial component. The current protesters have benefited from the social contracts dating back to The New Deal. The number of Social Security and Medicare recipients in the crowds means their fears must be qualified by the payments they receive, they wish to keep that. I think their anger is rooted in the Reagan era when he was able to ignore the progress liberal policies allowed over forty years. Rather than address the many reasons the middle class was stagnating, it was easier to blame government for creating a ceiling on their progress. Another simple example Reagan ignored: It wasn't a global economy but organized labor that drove away jobs. While racial resentment may be real, it's also a convenient and easy way for the right to continue to distract the middle class from the true source of their misery. But the left is also surrendered the high ground by not insisting a more satisfied middle class should still be invested in the broader moral implications of social justice. It's as if the GOP convinced the middle class they had something to lose and the left failed to challenge them with how much more the had yet to gain.

- michael

April 12, 2010 at 11:16am

A little testy, are we today, Blackie? Puta?

- butchie b

April 12, 2010 at 4:00pm

I was shocked to learn that "spread the wealth" had come to mean "income redistribution." Once upon a time this was an uncontroversial notion that simply meant that economic progress should provide positive benefit for everyone in the economy -- workers as wells as capital, the young and asset-less as well as the more established, and most especially, the vast majority of Americans without substantial inherited assests as well as those with them, etc., etc. I really don't believe that the Conservatives who feign offense at the President's use of the term believe he meant taking from some to give to others (most especially minority others). I think they find a fair distribution of wealth (that is, workers benefitting from their labor enough to become property and asset owners and educate their children, average wages and ample opportunity that help the poor rise into the middle class, etc.) JUST as objectionable. The short term profit they have reaped over the last few decades from the losses borne by American workers -- wage stagnation, loss of stable benefits, lessened security and economic and political representation, etc. -- and the credit and banking scams aimed at the lower middle class and poor, etc., etc. has been phenomenal. The rest of us, of course, have mostly experienced loss, in many cases substantial loss, rather than profit from the intentional destruction of the middle class and the world's most vital consumer market that greedy, phoney "conservative" and false "free market" policies, that have ruled for the last 30 years, have led to. The financial interests that have reaped this profit at the expense of everyone else and our nation's economic health and security, have gotten away with because people like Joe the Plumber aren't smart enough to know who to blame. If, out of ignorance and racism, they blame minorities, that is no accident -- it is what they are being encouraged to do by the financial interests, and the politicians who serve them, who are laughing at them all the way to the bank.

- esmense

April 12, 2010 at 4:12pm

It's also odd how the 1950s, seen by many conservatives as an American golden age before the 60s came along to poison everything with their hippies and feminists and black power activists, had the least spread between rich and poor in modern American history. If ever there was a period that could be identified with income equality, it was the late 40s and early 50s.

- ironyroad

April 12, 2010 at 6:05pm

Some of us still think of "spread the wealth" in terms of the collectivization of agriculture in Ukraine, which killed more people than the more famous "Holocaust". Including a fair number of Black Americans who understand how their families and communities were decimated by well-intentioned government programs that rewarded self-destructive behaviors and punished personal accountability.

- Robert Powell

April 13, 2010 at 8:34am