Obama's been called a socialist because he wants to "spread the wealth" in a redistributive way.
That's not socialism, as John McCain points out
while defending his own preferred redistributive income tax policies.Sarah Palin, of course, is also a huge fan of income redistribution. She told the New Yorker that oil companies need to "share the wealth." If Obama is a socialist, so is Sarah Palin.
All politicians in both major parties (except maybe Ron Paul) favor wealth redistribution. The Medicare prescription drug plan, ethanol subsidies, the farm bill -- wealth redistribution is pretty much the whole point of each of those programs and many more.
While most socialists favor wealth redistribution, most non-socialists do as well. Wealth redistribution is not the hallmark of socialism.
Socialism, rather, means that the government controls the means of production. (Or in some versions, workers collectively control the means of production.) How much of which products to make, what inputs to use, etc., are determined not by market forces, not by the investment decisions of those with capital, but by some form of central planning.
The United States Postal Service is, to some extent, a socialist enterprise even though it has very little to do with wealth redistribution.
I think most FFAers already know that it's factually inaccurate (and wildly so) to call Obama a socialist, or at least any more of a socialist than McCain or Palin are. (I think they all favor keeping the postal service nationalized.
)
But a lot of non-FFAers out there are badly misusing the term, and it's not surprising that such a widespread and blatant error is being made in a political context. This is kind of overlapping with another thread I hope to get around to starting at some point, but it seems to me that people tend to make their worst factual and analytical errors in the contexts of: (1) politics, (2) religion, and (3) sports fandom.
(And if you want to see an example of a major news organization being stupid because of politics, go here. Which brings me to another topic, although one probably not worth starting a new thread about. The media are biased, mostly to the left. The major networks other than Fox I think do have a left-leaning bias, in general. But is Fox merely a mirror image of that in the opposite direction? I don't think so. On a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being totally biased to the left and 10 being totally biased to the right, I'd say that most major networks are probably around a 4, while Fox is a strong 9. [i'll give my reasons for this impression later if someone asks. Although maybe not until tomorrow since I won't have much time to spend in the FFA today.] And I suspect this is largely because the left-leaning bias of most major networks is subconscious and unintentional, while the right-leaning bias of Fox is calculated. But anyway, this whole last paragraph is just an aside.)
That's not socialism, as John McCain points out
while defending his own preferred redistributive income tax policies.Sarah Palin, of course, is also a huge fan of income redistribution. She told the New Yorker that oil companies need to "share the wealth." If Obama is a socialist, so is Sarah Palin.
All politicians in both major parties (except maybe Ron Paul) favor wealth redistribution. The Medicare prescription drug plan, ethanol subsidies, the farm bill -- wealth redistribution is pretty much the whole point of each of those programs and many more.
While most socialists favor wealth redistribution, most non-socialists do as well. Wealth redistribution is not the hallmark of socialism.
Socialism, rather, means that the government controls the means of production. (Or in some versions, workers collectively control the means of production.) How much of which products to make, what inputs to use, etc., are determined not by market forces, not by the investment decisions of those with capital, but by some form of central planning.
The United States Postal Service is, to some extent, a socialist enterprise even though it has very little to do with wealth redistribution.
I think most FFAers already know that it's factually inaccurate (and wildly so) to call Obama a socialist, or at least any more of a socialist than McCain or Palin are. (I think they all favor keeping the postal service nationalized.
)But a lot of non-FFAers out there are badly misusing the term, and it's not surprising that such a widespread and blatant error is being made in a political context. This is kind of overlapping with another thread I hope to get around to starting at some point, but it seems to me that people tend to make their worst factual and analytical errors in the contexts of: (1) politics, (2) religion, and (3) sports fandom.
(And if you want to see an example of a major news organization being stupid because of politics, go here. Which brings me to another topic, although one probably not worth starting a new thread about. The media are biased, mostly to the left. The major networks other than Fox I think do have a left-leaning bias, in general. But is Fox merely a mirror image of that in the opposite direction? I don't think so. On a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being totally biased to the left and 10 being totally biased to the right, I'd say that most major networks are probably around a 4, while Fox is a strong 9. [i'll give my reasons for this impression later if someone asks. Although maybe not until tomorrow since I won't have much time to spend in the FFA today.] And I suspect this is largely because the left-leaning bias of most major networks is subconscious and unintentional, while the right-leaning bias of Fox is calculated. But anyway, this whole last paragraph is just an aside.)
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Very well. Consider it included.
.. That is until they raise taxes again to solve the under budgeting problem 
