Obama starting to reveal himself as a — tax & spend liberal. Surprise! *UPDATE*
Bookworm on Feb 13 2008 at 8:50 pm | Filed under: Barack Obama, Economics
Obama is going to revitalize our economy by having more government control over the economy and by ending the Bush tax cuts for upper earners. increasing taxes on the middle class. If by “revitalize,” he really means “Carterize,” I guess he’s right. Otherwise, I have grave doubts about the wisdom of his recycled Leftist economic beliefs. Indeed, I can only ask myself how a guy billed as so “brilliant” can be so dumb?
UPDATE: Thanks to DQ for pointing out a factual error I made (and, as you see, corrected). In my defense, I’ve been working 15 hour days and one of my kids has been home sick. The volume of blogging — shabby blogging, apparently — is my equivalent of a water cooler break when the work I’m doing gets too boring to be borne.
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6 Responses to “Obama starting to reveal himself as a — tax & spend liberal. Surprise! *UPDATE*”
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I guess what my question remains to be is, exactly how rich do you have to be to be considered “middle class”?
I remember a discussion that took place in a Sunday School class, when I was a teenager. I have no idea why we were having this particular discussion, but the question came up as to what class we were. The teacher pointed out that while most of us thought we were middle-middle class, we were really upper-poor class.
The US has had many economic dips and rises since then, but I still wonder just who’ll be taxed. Can middle class people afford to pay more taxes? Will it mans they can’t afford another boat? Or are we talking about upper-poor class, who truly struggle now? Just what are we talking about?
However, on a global scale, poor and middle-class Americans easily fit into the “top 1%” of the world’s wealthiest individuals. One of the best comments regarding poverty made to me by an international economist is that “poverty is a state of mind”. The following link is to a study by a Swedish think tank that compares poverty in the U.S. to standards of living in Sweden and concludes that what we define as “poor” in America would qualify as comfortable middle class in Sweden.
http://www.timbro.se/bokhandel/pdf/9175665646.pdf
The real question should be, “how did we get here?”. We certainly didn’t achieve our high standard of living through the politics of envy and government efforts to confiscate peoples’ disposable income, thereby to make them wards of the State, as they did in Sweden and most of the rest of the world.
People should stop worrying about whether the person next to them has more or less than them and focus more on what they, personally, are doing to improve their lives and to be grateful for all that they have (many immigrants to this country “get” this). However, it is getting increasingly more difficult to take this approach in a society where half the country embraces a political ideology that breeds resentment, defines people into groups to be pitted against one another (divide and conquer), and preaches that everyone is a victim.
The Dems like to characterize all of their candidates as brilliant or smart, and then characterize all Republicans, especially the candidates, as stupid, conniving, canny, sneaky, etc.
Obama is not brilliant. He may well be very smart. But it can’t show as long as he’s still a racist - read his autobiography, “Dreams from my Father,” and you will see his lingering Black Nationalism - and still clings to the disproved fantasy of Socialism. He’s a Pol. Nothing more. And he’s not the honest person he tries to portray.
Hello Bookworm,
I watched an Obama speech the other day with a crowd of 20,000 or so, and it was incredible. He is promising people the moon and the stars and the women behind him in the crowd was weeping, swooning and throwing themselves into rapt hysteria. It was like watching a rock concert; people were looking up at him as though he was the messiah, come down out of the clouds to bring peace, unity and enlightenment to all. “Yes, WE CAN!!!”
While all this hysteria was going on, people don’t quite get the stark contradictions he saying. He said he wanted to sign Kyoto and reduce carbon emissions and such, and he simultaneously wanted to create jobs and stop the outsourcing.
The crowd roared, cheered, fainted at his brilliance. I could only shake my head.
By enacting environmental legislation like those proposed by Al Gore et al and, in effect, laying a heavier tax burden on this shaky economy, it’s like committing national suicide. You can’t increase taxes, destroy the middle class and expect jobs to sprout like self-replicating cells out of thin air. The two proposals, save the environment and increase jobs, in this economy is like an oxymoron.
Brilliant? Balls to that (pardon my French).
I’ll give that he’s a brilliant speaker. Charisma he’s got in spades. But one is not intellectually brilliant by having a deep, sonorous voice and for doing the correct intellectual pose on stage. So much of what people are calling “brilliant” in Obama has more to do with his charisma than his brains. He does all the correct stances. He lifts up his chin at just the right inclination to where he can almost always look down on his audience.
I’m not saying that this man isn’t smart. He is. It takes quite a bit to rock the Clinton machine on its heels and keep them there.
I hope he’s a patriot to the United States rather than its executioner. Tony Blair rode to office on the same kind of movement. Youth and change (Blair called it “Modernizing”). Under that smokescreen he destroyed all the traditions of Britain into that maudlin, hysterical isle we still call Britain, even though it no longer exists.
I hope Obama is the patriot he portrays himself and not our Blair. I really, really do. But if not, I hope our checks and balances hold…
I believe the last famous politician to combine such lofty Utopian rhetoric with vapid charisma went by the moniker “Il Duce” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benito_Mussolini)…or was it Evita?
I really like your new digs BW.
In case you have not seen this yet, it is the official obama spendometer at http://www.gop.com/obamaspendometer.htm.
As of this writing the total stands at 874.35 billion dollars.
It would be fun if the GOP would make a widget of this so the blogs could keep count.