We now know what McCain-Palin's deal-closing argument looks like. In a nutshell: "If Obama is elected, he will team up with Pelosi and Reid to hatch an unprecedented wealth-redistribution scheme and force it on an unwilling public. You may think you're getting John F. Kennedy, but in reality you're getting Eugene Debs."
The problem, of course, that the socialist shoe just doesn't fit Barack Obama. In order to make their specious argument, they are making some lazy intellectual leaps from wealth redistribution to socialism.
And so, under the circumstances, I'd like to take a stroll with you through some examples of wealth redistribution in American public life.
Public Education:
Every year, we spend over $800 billion to educate American youth. Of the federal government's 8.5% share, taxpayers in the upper brackets carry the burden disproportionately. At the local level, whence nearly half of most school funding comes, the difference is even more stark. Since school budgets are derived from property taxes, wealthier property owners pay a great deal more into the system than other taxpayers.
Whatever the current state of public education may be in America, there's no denying the post-WWII success in providing greater access to an education:
Public education is wealth redistribution. It's underlying premise is that all children should have an equal shot at prosperity and success in a meritocratic, democratic society. In service of this premise, we take money from some people to give others a fairer shake in the form of free K-12 education.
Veterans' Benefits:
The 1944 Servicemen's Readjustment Act, as the name would suggest, is another prime example of wealth redistribution. Better known as the GI Bill, it provided for the use of taxpayer money to promote home ownership, unemployment benefits, and education for American veterans following World War II. Through Vietnam, GI Bill spending on higher education alone surpassed $50 billion.
This discussion from a 2002 episode of the News Hour between the late Stephen Ambrose and Doris Kearns Goodwin is enlightening as to the GI Bill's effects:
STEPHEN AMBROSE: Listen, that GI Bill was the best piece of legislation ever passed by the U.S. Congress, and it made modern America. The educational establishment boomed and then boomed and them boomed. The suburbs, starting with Levittown and others, were paid by GIs borrowing on their GI Bill at a very low interest rate. Thousands and thousands of small businesses were started in this country and are still there thanks to the loans from the GI Bill. It transformed our country.
JIM LEHRER: Transformed our country, Doris?
DORIS KEARNS GOODWIN: Oh, no question. I agree with everything Steve said, including the passion with which he said it. I think few laws have had so much effect on so many people. It meant that blue collar workers, a whole generation of blue collar workers were enabled to go to college, become doctors, lawyers, and engineers, and that their children would grow up in a middle class family. It meant, as Stephen said, that people had homes, instead of being renters in the city, so that they could bring up their children in a home that they had owned.
I mean, think about it. In 1940, the average GI was 26 years old and had an average of one year of high school as his only education, and now, suddenly, the college doors were open. I mean, it's so amazing to realize that the university presidents thought it was a terrible idea at first. The president of Harvard said it would create "unqualified people, the most unqualified of this generation" coming into college. The president of the University of Chicago feared we'd be creating educational hobos, but as the piece earlier showed, these were mature, responsible people, the best of their generation in college. It shows what happens when you give people who don't have a chance an extraordinary opportunity.
JIM LEHRER: "Extraordinary." "amazing." Haynes, those words do jump to mind, don't you think?
HAYNES JOHNSON: Yeah. And what they said is right; it did transform the country. It made a difference. Steve Ambrose got his graduate degree in Wisconsin. I was on the GI Bill after Korea, and I got a scaled down version, but that's how I got my graduate degree.
JIM LEHRER: I bought my first house on the GI Bill.
Veterans benefits are wealth redistribution. They come out of an impulse to repay a debt owed for service in our Nation's defense, and are based on the principle that people who risks their lives for our national interests should have access to the full fruits of American opportunity. In service of that principle, we take wealth away from some and give it to others in the form of education, loans, and job-training.
National Defense
To take even the lowest estimation, 20% of the Federal budget every year is spent on Defense (although, as many know, another 18% is eaten up by discretionary defense spending). This money comes primarily from income taxes, which are, again, paid disproportionately by taxpayers whose incomes reach into the top brackets.
National Defense spending is wealth redistribution. It emerges from a classic liberal impulse that sees one of the primary functions of government as the consolidation individual interest under the umbrella of shared protection. Under this regime, we believe it is right to sacrifice some of our natal freedoms and individuality in exchange for safety. In service of this principle we take wealth away from some in order to provide military protection for all.
There are other examples of wealth redistribution that are far from controversial: infrastructure development like highways and bridges, medicare, and scientific research to name just a few.
So as the right wing its new standard-bearers, McCain-Palin, try very hard this week to pin the socialist tail on the donkey, you might try asking the following questions of your conservative friends and family:
- Do you support ending taxpayer funding for public education?
- Do you support ending taxpayer support for veterans' benefits?
- Do you support the elimination of all federal defense spending?
If their answer is no to any of these questions, then congratulations, you're talking to someone who supports wealth redistribution.