Video: Barack Obama on the Redistribution of Wealth
October 27, 2008
Here is a video from a radio interview Barack Obama did in 2001 that shows us that Barack Obama’s “spreading the wealth around” comment was not only a casual throw away line to “Joe the plumber, but a political policy that he intends to try to implement as president.
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America's Watchtower 
I don’t understand what is supposed to be objectionable in this video. All he is saying is that the proper venue for redistributing wealth (on a societal basis) is the legislature rather than the courts. Well, it is hard to argue that, since it is congress that has the power to levy taxes, so that seems obvious. If the scandalous part is about redistributing wealth, then that is not really news either. Every tax (and tax break) affect different taxpayers differently, the only question is which formula is going to benefit the whole society the most. If you look at the GNP over the last 75 years, the Democratic administrations (which tend to equalize income) have done significantly better than the GOP administrations. The reason for that is pretty clear: if you give $1000 to someone making $300k/year they are not going to do anything with it that is going to change their earning potential. If you give the same $1000 to someone making $20k they could buy a cheap car, or a computer, or take a class, all of which could change their (and their kids) lives. Even if all they do with the money is buy more or better food with it, the benefit to their health means less chance of emergency room visits, and more chance of them being healthy enough to work. All of those benefits have a domino effect, affecting people all around the beneficiary, as well as taking some burden off of social services.
If I were making $250K I would not mind paying more taxes to live in a society that is trying to help the less fortunate, and if helping those less fortunate helps them become wealthy enough to become my clients, that is even better.
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Michael…
Boy, I’d love to live in the “ideal” world you live in where all we must do is give those who have less more so they can easily do better in life. Why haven’t we just done that before? Oh, that’s right…we did, national welfare programs to help all those who had less. I seem to recall that instead of boosting them up it kept them stagnate and even helped push them down further.
The key to what you said is that “if” you made $250,000 you wouldn’t mind paying more taxes. Well why don’t you strive for that and then see how you’d like it? Go ahead and work your butt off to make that kind of money, improve yourself and sacrifice to do it and then see just how you feel when the government tells you they want to take it so they can give it to people who don’t work at all and pay no taxes.
I’d venture to say that you won’t be so happy go lucky about it then. There is no evidence, other than this psychological feel good crap that I keep hearing from liberals, that giving someone a free ride makes them wanna do better for himself.
Here’s an example:
Pavlovian…
You put a mouse in a cage and make them go through a maze in order to eat…they must work, struggle, exert in order to obtain food.
Take the same mouse…give it an option to just hit a button so the food falls at it’s feet…
Which will it do?
Of course, the second. The path of least resistance.
Making things easy for someone does NOT make them try harder. What person ever got that notion has not lived in the human world apparently. Sure, if you give a man a bit of bread, some clothes, a warm place to stay during a hard time, hopefully, he will be appreciative and go on and try and make things better for himself. But if you tell him he no longer needs to worry about his final outcome…that you’ll take care of his problems FOR him, well, there he’ll sit and wait for more to come. It his just human nature, unless you strive against it.
Most Americans are against redistribution of wealth, even those who might benefit. Do you know why? Because it’s immoral. Joe the Plumber just said the other day on FoxNews that he wouldn’t want the money…that if someone who had worked harder and been luckier than him had to give it up, then he wouldn’t want it…to each his own. He said he’d be fine, that he was ok with his life and would improve himself through his own hard work and determination.
That is what this country was built on. But if the government keeps insisting on fixing people’s lives and taking care of them, they are breeding a culture of depedence that will be our downfall.
Here’s a lofty goal…why not let Americans be the masters of their own charitable cause? Why not make it a place where they can have the freedom to strive to be better, earn more and thrive and then be able to give of themselves more, of their own choosing? What a concept, making them the masters of their own destiny.
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