Obama the socialist?
By Nick Ragone | Related entries in News
The “Obama as Socialist” storyline seems to be gaining momentum, mostly because he’s said some stupid things on the topic, such as telling Joe the Plumber that he wants to redistribute the wealth.
His remark has given the McCain campaign a slight opening, and they’ve done everything they can to keep this narrative going.  McCain’s people know it’s probably the only issue left for him, and they’re going to ride it into the sunset one way or the other.
But politics aside, I must confess that this notion of Obama as a socialist is laughible. I mean, is he going to raise taxes? Yes. But then again, pretty much every Democrat since Woodrow Wilson has raised taxes, so Obama’s in good company. Does he believe in a robust social safety net? Of course — but that’s not unusual, either, for a liberal Democrat. Is he a union guy? Absolutely.
But let’s keep in mind that two weeks ago, the United States government semi-nationalized our banking system. And two weeks before that, they took an equity position in one of the largest companies in the world, AIG. And a few months before that, they orchestrated an unprecedented bailout of Bear Sterns, making it possible for JP Morgan Chase to purchase the bankrupt investment bank.
As one conservative commentator put it, “we’re all big government conservatives now”.  There’s no escaping that Keynsian economics is trampling free-market capitalism, at least for the time being. And there’s no denying that free-market capitalism will continue to lose ground to Keynsian policy under an Obama administration.
But let’s be fair — this hardly makes him a socialist. We were already well down that path long before Obama came around.
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October 24th, 2008 at 7:01 am
Giving tax “rebate” checks to individuals with zero tax liability is socialism. It just is Nick. Some people believe socialism is good, well whatever. It is what it is. It is simply Orwellian to change the meaning of the word that way.
October 24th, 2008 at 7:27 am
Thank you Nick.
October 24th, 2008 at 7:35 am
Jimmy,
No offense, but I think you’re stretching the definition of socialism here. Yes, wealth transfer is a part of socialisim, but Obama is hardly proposing it on the kind of massive scale and broad range you would need to classify his program as socialism. The wealthy will still hold on to the vast sums of their money and the less well-off will not see much improvement. Not that I want to defend Obama’s plan, I just think calling it “socialist” is hyperbole. As Nick points out, our government’s recent seizure/purchase of banking assets is FAR more socialistic.
October 24th, 2008 at 8:00 am
If you actually look at, say, Brian Moore or who ever’s running on the Socialist ticket this year, you’ll see what real socialism is. Calling Obama a socialist is just a rehashed scare tactic. They called Clinton a Commie in 1992.
I’m not too sure why people hate on Keynes so much. Is his theory flawed? Yep. But it’s a theory deeply rooted IN capitalism. A Socialist platform essentially eliminates capital. We lost true “free market” capitalism long ago. In fact, I dunno if there’s really a “free market” as market’s have rules they operate with.
October 24th, 2008 at 8:16 am
And, of course, Jimmy’s talking about people with zero income tax liability, not zero total tax liability. The payroll tax alone is a pretty big deal to us low-income types.
October 24th, 2008 at 8:29 am
You get the payroll tax back when you retire. Unless you make a lot of money, and then you don’t. That is another form of socialism, thanks for reminding me.
There are a lot of European political parties with “socialist” in their titles. What’s the big deal? Call a spade a spade (oops, can I say that in this election year?). Socialists here simply euphemize because America has traditionally rejected socialism and it sounds like a dirty word (which it should).
Its like when people say “path to citizenship” for illegal aliens. Call it amnesty if you want because that is what it is. I happen to support amnesty if and only if illegal human trafficking stops.
It is not “laughable” to call Obama a socialist, particularly when you look at the organizations he has affiliated himself with in the past, whether it be ACORN, the New Party, Trinity Church, ect… I bet he has never read a book about free-market capitalism that wasn’t a critique of it.
October 24th, 2008 at 8:57 am
Let’s all understand…cutting taxes for the wealthy is, in essence, raising taxes on the middle class. McCain’s promise is essentially raising taxes.
Why wasn’t there more outrage when W redistributed the wealth up the income ladder with his tax cuts years ago?
October 24th, 2008 at 9:15 am
Maybe this time this web site will actually write MY comments. Here goes again:
First the link proving that Nobama actually IS a socialist.
http://worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=78945
and some points:
The New Party, formed by members of the Democratic Socialists for America and leaders of an offshoot of the Community Party USA, was an electoral alliance that worked alongside the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN. The New Party’s aim was to help elect politicians to office who espouse its policies.
The party’s Spring 1996 newspaper boasted: “New Party members won three other primaries this Spring in Chicago: Barack Obama (State Senate), Michael Chandler (Democratic Party Committee) and Patricia Martin (Cook County Judiciary). The paper quoted Obama saying “these victories prove that small ‘d’ democracy can work.”
There you go. You can read the FACTS for yourself.
A vote for nObama is a vote against your freedom. You decide.
October 24th, 2008 at 10:10 am
Mike, yeah, gotta call foul on that assessment too. It’s not redistributing wealth to allow rich people to hold on to more of their EARNED money. Bush did not pick the pockets of the middle class and transport that money to the wealthy. You could make a long argument that his policies led to wealth transfer by shutting off avenues of wealth creation for the middle class while opening avenues for the wealthy, but that’s a difficult argument to prove. It’s true that the rich have gotten richer but it’s also true that the wealthiest Americans pay a massive percentage of the taxes in this nation.
October 24th, 2008 at 11:36 am
If you did, you would be wrong.
October 24th, 2008 at 11:59 am
This is entirely nonsense.
First of all, the entire “tax credits is welfare/socialism” argument is moot in regards to whether you plan to elect McCain or Obama. McCain has no plans to end EIN tax credits and he has his own (health care) tax credit for citizens, regardless of whether they pay income taxes or payroll taxes. Not only that, McCain believes in EIN tax credits and his commercial is just one hypocritical attack:
In fact, in 1999, Mr. McCain opposed efforts to change the earned-income tax credit, which gives payments to the working poor, and called it a “much-needed tax credit for working Americans.” And in this campaign, he has proposed to use the tax code to do more such “wealth-spreading.” Mr. McCain’s health-care plan provides for “refundable” tax credits. (from the WSJ article “Scare Talk on Taxes”)
Secondly, were we a “socialist” country in 2000? No.
Under Obama’s plan, only the top two tax brackets will rise and those will rise by 3% and 6% respectively, rolling by the Bush tax cuts from ‘01-04 back to where they were in 2000.
What does McCain really think about that?
McCain himself opposed the Bush tax cuts of 2001. He said, “I cannot in good conscience support a tax cut in which so many of the benefits go to the most fortunate among us, at the expense of middle-class Americans.” (WSJ, Oct 18)
Less than 1% of all Americans are wealthy enough to see their taxes go up under Obama’s tax plan, yet so many poor are clamoring to defend the “tax burden” Obama’s tax plan would put the rich under (to their own financial detriment), under the guise that Obama’s is a “tax and spend liberal”. However, both the Tax Policy Center and The Tax Foundation (both non-partisan) have found that McCain is the big spender between the two candidates. McCain has both promised to cut taxes and create a ton of new programs and the total cost of his promises (based on the tax proposal submitted to the American public and promises he has made in his stump speeches) would increase the national debt by 50% over Obama’s plan (which would also decrease the value of the dollar).
Both trickle-down economics and supply side economics theories are basically academic explanations for why we should continue to allow the rich to get ridiculously rich, theories that rich people tend to biased towards. But those easy-for-the-rich-to-swallow theories have failed us poor people. In the past decade, on average all families whose net worth was over $1 Million have doubled their worth (ie, families worth $20 Mill are now worth $40mill, etc). Two years ago, the difference between the richest people in America and the poorest reached a record not seen since the 1920s. (Ironic, eh?) The rich did get richer, but the wealth failed to “trickle down”.
For all of the discussion about Obama’s tax plan and how it will affect small businesses, I don’t think people understand how business taxes and costs operate. Obama’s provisions for $3k for each full time job we provide and a 50% tax credit for employer provided health insurance more than makes up for the 3% tax increase. Last year, we paid more in employee health insurance than we paid in business taxes. Recently General Motors relocated one of their plants from Detroit to Canada because health care costs here are so high that it costs more than $1k more to hire an American worker than a Canadian one because of our health care costs. I wonder how many corporations have moved out of the US for the same reasons. The situation is out of control and McCain doesn’t have a clue.
Other proposals Obama has made that made me just jump up and down is his proposal to end tax breaks for companies that send jobs overseas. Our competitors, the companies that go overseas, they have a massive advantage over us on price (lower wages, no expectation of benefits, no payroll taxes) and it has angered me for years that our government has been rewarding those companies with our tax dollars to employ non-Americans. McCain hasn’t mentioned outsourcing issues at all. I have wondered if he’s been super-rich for so long, and has had “hired help” to take care of money issues that he is out of touch with the things that matter to people like Mickey and me. Obama on the other hand, his grandmother was a bank manager, his mom was a social worker, he’s been a wealthy ($200k/yr) adult, but still much closer to us in lifestyle and the plans that he’s outlined on his website show a deep insight into a lot of issues that seem to be entirely off McCain’s radar.
October 24th, 2008 at 6:46 pm
Wow. It still surprises me that some people think that WorldNetDaily can actually present facts.
October 24th, 2008 at 8:11 pm
David,
Consider just for a moment that the way the NP newsletter screenshot is worded. When it said “New party members won three primary seats” do you think that that may have been the New Party endorsing candidates of *other* parties? That when the phrase “New Party Members” was used, it was used in a “we” context referring to victories of said endorsements?
Guys, raising taxes isn’t socialism. Raising and lowering taxes have been a fundamental part economics since ancient Egypt.
October 24th, 2008 at 10:14 pm
James,
Agree, raising taxes isn’t socialism. Raising taxes as a mechanism to directly redistribute wealth into what amounts to a new, unmanaged welfare program is.
And everyone in support of this program, I challenge you to give up one meal a week and give that money to a poor person somewhere. You don’t have to use the government to make a social statement–or a difference in someone else’s life. And if you can’t make that small sacrifice, why should someone else?