The GOP News Channels along with the traditional media have been making a big deal over Obama’s “Spreading the Wealth Around” comment he made to Joe the plumber. So it only figures I was asked by my favorite Republican neighbor about what I thought about Obama’s comment. This is basically what I said except with better sequence:
Think about what's happened over the past eight years. Americans have gone through the greatest re-distribution of wealth the country has ever seen. Under Republican policies beginning in the eighties with Ronald Reagan and shifting into second gear with the “Contract with America,” and culminating with the George W. Bush tax cuts, the wealthiest have gone into over-drive confiscating more wealth than ever before, the poor have gotten poorer, while the wages of the middle have remained flat during a time when costs for commodities such as health care and energy have gone through the roof. The fact is, the income gap between the rich and the poor is wider now than ever before. More people live in poverty. This is not success.
In addition to the obvious, the Bush tax cuts coupled with GOP-led spending, legislative loopholes and deregulation have shortchanged our Treasury tremendously, causing the nation’s debt to double over a period of just eight years, for what previously took 225 years to accumulate. To top it off, the majority of American corporations pay no taxes. Something here tells me we need to reverse direction.
Our wage scales are upside down when workers performing the hardest labor over long hours with few benefits are paid the least. So in my view, a successful national economic stimulus plan should be an anti-poverty policy first and foremost, creating jobs from the bottom up. I also think any legislative action or policy that can reverse the top heavy wealth distribution trends of the past twenty years will go a long way to restoring the great American promise of equal opportunity and prosperity for all people including Joe the Plumber. Others can call Obama’s “spread the wealth around” tax policy comment a re-distribution of wealth and a step towards Socialism if they must, I call it an investment in our country.
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