Obama critiques

I have recently gotten a few positive notes from people (rare indeed!) appreciating criticism from an obama supporter.

I have to say that it is scary to witness the level of rabid blind support for obama. Many other O supporters have confided the same odd feeling of being in a cheering crowd and missing any content. Any time large groups stop questioning leaders and worse squash those few that do, we risk moving to dangerous extremes.

Today it seems uncool to question why obama has no coherent economic or tax policies. The nytimes mag story on 'obamanomics' failed to name one logical policy. Instead the author gushed about how young and hip the new candidate was.

Why is it that I cannot find one major media outlet doing a deep dive on the whole concept of 'just taxation' - taxing the rich not to raise govt revs but to better equalize income disparities. I'm having the same out of body experience as 7 yrs ago when we actually engaged in a dialog about what kinds of torture were ok and when. Nuts! Where was the outcry from pulpits to press that we would have zero tolerance. Google and read the arguments on this blog.

Today we talk about taxing the rich and equalizing incomes as if it too is a normal 'moral' idea. Is there a proven history around this policy as there is with reagan's supply side economics?

At the risk of being the heretic (sp?), I will state what is painfully obvious and not discussed. There is no proof that raising taxes will help the poor. Even the IRS reports that increasing cap gains tax will decrease govt revs.

Lately, I've asked people whether they would prefer a system that generated greater wealth for all but came with a greater spread from richest to poorest. Surprisingly, all have said no. They'd prefer less wealth with more equality. Well, why not just move to a socialist country? Who are you helping? Shouldn't we be trying to provide the greatest std of living to the most?

I've also pointed out that the majority of our country wants to be 'rich'. Nobody tunes into 'who wants to be equally poor?'.

Why is it that every election forces us to vote with our wallet or our conscience? Crazy old white men who won't fuck with our economy or raging liberals who mistake our desire for better social policies to be a mandate for socialism.

When will someone start a viable third party that offers the libertarian values so much of us truly believe in? When will someone democratize democracy?

Comments

[RS]

I am glad to see you take this on. I am not an Obama supporter and this is one of the main reasons. The government cannot solve our problems, we have to do that for ourselves. Passing capital through the government is an incredibly inefficient way to try and influence economics. Your other post on this is coherent as well. We need to realize that the only way to raise people out of poverty is to educate them and then employ them in the private sector. It is such a fallacy that because those with capital have grown their capital then that had to be at the expense of everyone else. The top 1% subsidizes the government for the bottom 40% already and Obama thinks a higher subsidy is going to make difference?