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AND NOW....A FEW WORDS ABOUT SOCIALISM AND TAXES
10/31/2008
John McCain and Sarah Palin are falsely accusing Obama of being a "socialist." Surrogates like that hideous Tom Delay are using the word "Marxist," which kicks the vicious rhetoric up a notch. A few are saying "Communist" and Congresswoman Michele Bachmann is saying "anti-American."
I swear I thought we resolved this nonsense decades ago. But apparently we haven't. The Party that was once "of Lincoln," but would probably call Lincoln a traitor today, is still marinating in fear and hatred, and so has started its own little communist witch-hunt.
Hello Joe McCarthy! Hello John Birch Society!
So for those of you who have only read the word "socialism" in a history book and don't really understand what it means and whether McCain and Palin's words have any truth to them – here's a primer.
Socialism and capitalism are both economic systems. In socialism, the government owns the means of production and in capitalism it doesn't. In capitalism there is a free market system that sells goods and services, while in socialism the government distributes goods and services.
Democracy and dictatorship are two government systems. In one the people vote and decide either directly or through representatives how they want to structure their government, and in a dictatorship it is one person or a small group of persons who seize power and assert their will on the people.
There are few pure socialist economic systems and few pure capitalistic economic systems. Most systems are hybrids. Governing systems are generally not hybrids though. A system is either a democracy or a dictatorship (although many dictatorships have sham elections to make them appear to have the backing of the public.)
Economic systems and governing systems combine in four different ways.
There can be social democracies, where some parts of the economy are run by the government, such as in many European countries.
There can be socialistic dictatorships, as in Cuba and the former Soviet Union.
There can be capitalistic democracies, which is what the United States has mostly been, especially under Republican dominance.
There can be capitalistic dictatorships, which is how China could be described today.
It is more complicated here in the United States, though. We are actually a hybrid of free market capitalism and some socialism to provide a safety net to the less fortunate. We also provide government subsidies, tax incentives and bail-outs to private industry, and now in this economic crisis, we have nationalized the banks which could be described as a ramping up of socialism. This need to rescue the banks points out one huge flaw in our capitalistic system. When it is left unchecked, free to engage in all kinds of unfair and rigged games, capitalism self-destructs, taking the people down with it. It is then that the government must step in and assist or take over. As Ralph Nader said, quoting his father: "Capitalism will always survive because socialism will always rescue it." That is exactly what has happened under a Republican administration in just the past two weeks.
The McCain administration is using the socialist label against Obama as a way of scaring Americans into believing they will be taxed more and have less freedom under Obama. Taxes are another part of every election, with conservatives who tend to be repulsed by any hint of socialist policies and any potential that their taxes may be raised, very vulnerable to this argument against the Democrat. In spite of the fact that taxes are necessary to run the government, build the roads, maintain the schools, pay Social Security checks, etc., a large group of Americans hate the very idea that someone might ask them to pay a little more. Now Obama has made it very clear, though McCain consistently lies about it, that he will not raise taxes on anyone who makes less than $250,000. Yet those who fear taxes, as they once feared Communists, are suspicious. Obama will raise taxes on everyone, they believe, because he has to fund his socialistic programs. Of course, this is nonsense, yet the constitutional aversion to taxation in many Americans has a long history.
We all learned about the Boston Tea Party in school and think it had something to do with being angry about taxes. As a matter of fact, tea was taxed, making it very expensive. Large British import companies had tons of tea in warehouses, because the colonists refused to buy it and because some colonists had begun to smuggle tea into the colonies, which they could sell without the tax. Britain responded by passing the Tea Act, allowing the East India Company to sell their large stores of tea without a tax, thereby undercutting other merchants, including smugglers. This was the last straw in a long line of grievances over "taxation without representation." Eventually, a revolution was won and the United States was born.
Ever since that time, a significant number of Americans become apoplectic whenever the prospect of taxes comes up in a political campaign. This anti-tax hysteria is unique to America. Not having a history of unfair taxation by the British, but also seeing the benefits of the high taxes they pay, Europeans do not get so riled up about taxes. Some of those benefits are: universal health care, free college tuition, and good infrastructure. Of course, their military budgets are not even close to ours, so their taxes go for social programs rather than weapons. We spend so much on weapons here, that social programs become very difficult to implement no matter how much we pay in taxes.
But all societies and all governments rely on taxes, no matter how much citizens may dislike paying them. There simply are some projects that must be undertaken by the government and some services that only government can provide. Not everything can or should be done by the private sector. The only question is how should people be taxed? Some think a "flat tax" is the most fair. With a flat tax, everyone would pay the same percentage, say 15%, of their income in taxes. Others think income tax should be abolished and a universal sales tax implemented. Others think the flat tax and sales tax are unfair because they hurt those with lower incomes more than those with higher incomes. These citizens and politicians want to keep the income tax but apply it in what is called a progressive manner: those making little pay a smaller percentage of their income in taxes, while those who earn more pay a slightly larger percentage. Opponents of a progressive system call it "redistribution of wealth," and Obama is now being accused of this.
The reality is, however, that any form of taxation redistributes wealth to some degree. Tax breaks for the wealthy and large corporations redistribute wealth from the poor and middle class to the rich, because with the reduction in income tax revenue, the poor and middle class will be assessed fees for all kinds of things that the government can no longer provide cheaply or free. So license fess for driving and hunting and fishing will increase. Toll roads will replace freeways. State college tuition will go up, sales tax will go up, and all government-run programs will carry higher fees or offer fewer services. This disproportionately hurts the lower classes. So the wealthy benefit at the expense of the poor and thus wealth is redistributed upwards.
However, any redistribution of wealth through one or another tax scheme does not make one a socialist or communist or anti-American. No one is going to make this country into a communist nation, no matter how much propaganda McCain and Palin throw out there to muddy the campaign waters. Barack Obama is a politician smack in the middle of the political mainstream. He may be in favor of a progressive tax schedule, but he is not going to do away with wealth and he will probably not be able to eliminate poverty, no matter how hard he might try.
What Obama wants to do is save the middle class which is in danger of disappearing. He will do this with a new stimulus package and with a middle class tax cut, coupled with a small hike in taxes for the very wealthy. This does not make him a Marxist. It makes him a liberal or progressive, and he wouldn't be the first liberal president to rescue this country with progressive policies. Franklin Roosevelt did it after the Great Depression. And another Roosevelt, Teddy – who happens to be a Republican and John McCain's hero - is the one who created the first progressive income tax.
Yet today, John McCain and Sarah Palin have pulled out the old playbook and are demonizing liberals by calling them socialists. Republicans have done it since the sixties and it has often worked to get Republican presidents elected.
It doesn't seem to be working this time, though.
The American people do not hate their government as much as Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan wanted them to, and they don't hate taxes as much as Grover Norquist and John McCain want them to.
What the American people want this election is some common sense in government, and if that means tax cuts for the middle class and a slight tax hike for the wealthy, they don't see that as socialism, no matter what McCain says. They see it as necessary to save this country, to get our fiscal house in order, to reduce the debt and not pass it on to their children, to create jobs and build infrastructure, and to preserve the middle class and the middle class way of life.
That is why the "socialist" narrative will not work this year and why the American people will elect the progressive Democrat, Barack Obama, the 44th President of the United States this coming Tuesday.
All content © 2005 outragedcitizen.com
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