I just saw a poll on the Huffington Post (a website which is very much anti Senator John McCain). The question asked was basically do you think Obama’s policies (of having the government distributing the wealth) amount to socialism?
Yes
No
I have no clue what “Socialism” is
Click here to vote.
Chess Daily News from Susan Polgar
What does that poll have to do with the Huffington Post? The link doesn’t go there.
Also, it’s a completely ridiculous question. And no, nobody actually believes that Barack Obama’s policies are anything like “socialism,” especially not the McCain people who are advancing the idea.
It’s a valid question and it’s basically the same question as in the Huffington Post. I came from the former Soviet Union and it IS socialism. I agree with Obama but he lost my vote with this position.
It’s at the very least social-democratic: the use of tax policy to effect a massive amount of wealth from those who pay taxes to those who don’t. Whether it’s socialist or not is quibbling over ideological details. The important thing is to realize that it would create a huge class dependent on the government and would cripple the very things that create jobs and spur economic growth.
Obama’s tax plan is a disaster waiting to happen.
“All socialists advocate the creation of an egalitarian society, in which wealth and power are distributed more evenly, although there is considerable disagreement among socialists over how, and to what extent this could be achieved.”
Newman, Michael. (2005) Socialism: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-280431-6
What annoys me about all this is that when you use the word socialism it automatically turns people off. It’s a label, that’s all it is.
Now fortunately, there’s people like anthony (los angeles) who posted above who’s at least put some thought into his post.
You can label it whatever you want. But the idea about distributing wealth thru force (taxation) is indeed not the way I think of the American dream. As an immigrant, I came to this country and worked my b. . . hard to achieve the so called “american dream”. I have seen this these so called “entitlements” being abused resulting in incredibly huge government expeditures!
So what? america has been embracing socialist policies for a very long time.
Да! Социализм делает мою задницу горячей и влажной! Да! Я думаю, что социализм должен управлять миром, таким образом каждый будет несчастен как мы бедный белый хлам в России! Да! Тогда мы можем все быть бедными и играть в голые шахматы! Да
“So what? america has been embracing socialist policies for a very long time.”
And yer mom’s been turning tricks.
Your point?
I don’t see why Obama’s socialist leanings need even be discussed. John McCain is a socialist too…
Most americans are socialists…
What’s the big deal?
Most Americans are stupid too.
Good point.
At least in Europe we don’t televise our criminals on T.V. like America’s Most Wanted!
Stupid Redneck American.
Hahaha!
This plac keeps getting funnier and funnier!
Listen my fellow Americans, and you snivelling Euro-people:
What is socialism? We miss the boat if we say it’s the agenda of left-wingers and Democrats. According to Marxist doctrine, socialism is a stage of society between capitalism and communism where private ownership and control over property are eliminated. The essence of socialism is the attenuation and ultimate abolition of private property rights. Attacks on private property include, but are not limited to, confiscating the rightful property of one person and giving it to another to whom it doesn’t belong. When this is done privately, we call it theft. When it’s done collectively, we use euphemisms: income transfers or redistribution. It’s not just left-wingers and Democrats who call for and admire socialism but right-wingers and Republicans as well.
Republicans and right-wingers support taking the earnings of one American and giving them to farmers, banks, airlines and other failing businesses. Democrats and left-wingers support taking the earnings of one American and giving them to poor people, cities and artists. Both agree on taking one American’s earnings to give to another; they simply differ on the recipients. This kind of congressional activity constitutes at least two-thirds of the federal budget.
Regardless of the purpose, such behavior is immoral. It’s a reduced form of slavery. After all, what is the essence of slavery? It’s the forceful use of one person to serve the purposes of another person. When Congress, through the tax code, takes the earnings of one person and turns around to give it to another person in the forms of prescription drugs, Social Security, food stamps, farm subsidies or airline bailouts, it is forcibly using one person to serve the purposes of another.
The moral question stands out in starker relief when we acknowledge that those spending programs coming out of Congress do not represent lawmakers reaching into their own pockets and sending out the money. Moreover, there’s no tooth fairy or Santa Claus giving them the money. The fact that government has no resources of its very own forces us to acknowledge that the only way government can give one American a dollar is to first — through intimidation, threats and coercion — take that dollar from some other American.
Some might rejoin that all of this is a result of a democratic process and it’s legal. Legality alone is no guide for a moral people. There are many things in this world that have been, or are, legal but clearly immoral. Slavery was legal. Did that make it moral? South Africa’s apartheid, Nazi persecution of Jews, and Stalinist and Maoist purges were all legal, but did that make them moral?
Can a moral case be made for taking the rightful property of one American and giving it to another to whom it does not belong? I think not. That’s why socialism is evil. It uses evil means (coercion) to achieve what are seen as good ends (helping people). We might also note that an act that is inherently evil does not become moral simply because there’s a majority consensus.
An argument against legalized theft should not be construed as an argument against helping one’s fellow man in need. Charity is a noble instinct; theft, legal or illegal, is despicable. Or, put another way: Reaching into one’s own pocket to assist his fellow man is noble and worthy of praise. Reaching into another person’s pocket to assist one’s fellow man is despicable and worthy of condemnation.
Patrick Henry
Amen, Patrick Henry
Stupid racist “Deus rex”.
Most Americans have more academic diplomas than the Europeans do.
More than 60% of the Nobel Prizes in Chemistry, Physics, and Medicine, since 1970, are Americans.
55 out of 100 best universities in the world are American.
The Americans are the 4th biggest readers of books on Earth (just beaten by South Koreans, Norwegians and Germans).
The vast majority of the discoveries are made by Americans.
And so on…
So shut up, you racist pig !
Go Leroidavid!
You rock on brother!
Yeah!
How did we get off of the subject of chess?
I dunno.
It made you post, didn’t it?
It indeed is a hotseat for Obama. Here’s the on-going poll.
poll
The substance of the argument is whether an income tax should be flat or progressive. Progressive means that greater wealth is taxed at a higher rate, which is what in (simple) theory causes the redistribution.
This issue was resolved in favor of progressiveness a hundred years ago in this country. The latter Wikipedia page quotes a nice statement of the rationale:
“The necessaries of life occasion the great expense of the poor. They find it difficult to get food, and the greater part of their little revenue is spent in getting it. The luxuries and vanities of life occasion the principal expense of the rich, and a magnificent house embellishes and sets off to the best advantage all the other luxuries and vanities which they possess. A tax upon house-rents, therefore, would in general fall heaviest upon the rich; and in this sort of inequality there would not, perhaps, be anything very unreasonable. It is not very unreasonable that the rich should contribute to the public expense, not only in proportion to their revenue, but something more than in that proportion.”
Is the writer a “socialist”? No, it’s Adam Smith, “father of capitalism”.
Yes, when you play up the Robin Hood aspect you get things like every state in that HuffPost poll agreeing with McCain. But when you realize the substance and history, the only thing left is the attitude to object to. And by the way, redistribution toward the poor is just the “simple theory”—totally belied by massive corporate welfare from Iacocca to the bailout bill. The #1 structural inequity that affects most of the people is the ability of those with higher incomes and assets/collateral to save interest by getting better rates—such as on non-gimmicky mortgages not beset by bubbles caused by wealthier buyers.
This is after all a country that has 13% of the population below the poverty line, a faulty health and Educational system and a shrinking welfare.
This is also a country that went in Iraq to fight for oil and not, as it made people believe, to fight terrorism.
And also, the credit crunch have made people realize that at least this current system of capitalism is over … or better is to change.
The Republican administration has clearly failed. And now, you risk having Sarah Palin as vice president and eventually as president. The fact that Obama is not winning by a larger margin should be a matter of concern.
Obama is no more socialist than George W Bush is a fascist. He has no socialist economic advisers. They are all capitalists … Paul Volcker, Warren Buffet, Michael Bloomberg, Lawrence Summers, etc. Obama has stated that he believes that GWB’s tax policy was slanted inequitably to the higher end of income earners, and he wants to dial it more to the middle. You can debate the wisdom of this plan, but is is hardly socialist.
I am quoting some others:
How did we get off of the subject of chess?
Susan asked a non-chess question.
I came from the former Soviet Union and it IS socialism.
I came from Hungary, and yes, it IS socialism, at least heading that way with full speed.
So what? america has been embracing socialist policies for a very long time.
True. Since the 60’s (at least) USA is slowly drifting toward a more and more socialistic structure. Obama’s election may just be the final push.
It’s not just left-wingers and Democrats who call for and admire socialism but right-wingers and Republicans as well.
Indeed. As I stated above, the concept (and the process) in USA is not new, it is going on for a long time. Republicans tried to resist it more than the Democrats, but growing percentage of the people (the voting population), who due to lack of proper understanding, kind of “forced” the process to continue.
The tragedy of all this, that there are more and more people who are born into this system (the way it is now) and have no clue that socialism is slowly growing in America. For example, look at this remark:
Obama is no more socialist than George W Bush is a fascist. He has no socialist economic advisers. They are all capitalists …
People who are not at least medium intelligent are not hanging out at Susan’s blog, thus I assume that pretty much everybody here are at least average or above average intelligent. Yet, it would take hours to explain to the (above) person (and millions alike) why they are so very wrong.
The mistake of the millions who fail to perceive the ongoing process (and people like Obama) are socialist, because in their mind other concepts (like dictatorship, red flag, Soviet Union, etc.) are somehow “linked” with socialism. If at least one of those are not present, they somehow can’t grasp the concept of socialism. Yet, none of those are needed for socialism.
Anything substantially more would require a book to write down.
Instead of showing your bios by quoting random or unknown sites who raise their funny concerns you should first provide a link that supports your facts. I never heard Obama say the words you’re so worried about. He only said that he’s going to raise taxes for the wealthiest. That’s not even close to the poll’s claims.
Here is an example of a real concern which comes from a reputable source:
Oops! McCain asks Russia’s U.N. envoy for money
This is rather ridiculous. Asking the question like this, anybody who believes in any sort of redistribution is a socialist – this has nothing to do with Obama or McCain (both of them believe in some degree of redistribution of wealth) but about whether or not you are an anarcho-capitalist.
Phrasing the question like this is just a way of associating the word socialist (a pure negative in America) with Obama, and I am surprised that Susan Polgar is promoting this kind of low propaganda.
Having read most of the posts, and knowing what I know, I agree with Johan. Though I can’t vote in this election anyway.
http://ocdbpac.homestead.com/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eDcQUcAjoeI
Johan is right. Some hardcore libertarians like to characterize any economic policy different from their own as “socialism” (or even “theft”), but that doesn’t make it so. For some interesting remarks about redistribution and differential tax rates, I recommend this comment:
Daniel Schorr: Joe The Plumber And The Wealth Gap
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=95949897
I don’t think Susan really means to promote anti-Obama propaganda, but the phrasing “Obama’s policies (of having the government distributing the wealth)”, which she used when creating her own poll at Pollcode.com, suggests (thus unwittingly reproducing a rightwing talking point) that the core of Obama’s economic policies is redistribution for redistribution’s sake, or that he would like to put the government in charge of distributing ALL or MOST of the wealth there is (which would, by definition, amount to socialism).
The McCain campaign (and WSJ, and Fox, and a lot of blogs) are doing their best to create that impression, seizing the opportunity of Obama’s remark to “Joe the plumber” that “when you spread the wealth around it’s good for everybody.” But does a slight tax increase on income over $250,000 (reportedly from 36 per cent to 39 per cent, that is, by three percentage points or one-twelfth of the previous level) amount to “socialism”? Hardly.
The original poll seems to have been posted by liberal pundit Arianna Huffington, not to her own website “Huffington Post” (which is fiercely anti-McCain, as Susan correctly points out) but to AOL:
http://news.aol.com/political-machine/2008/10/21/hot-seat-socialism-attacks/
Googleing the phrase from the original poll “mccain says obama’s policies amount” (including the quotes) you will find a small number of sites that link to it. They are all conservative blogs or discussion boards, which kind of explains why responders are heavily biased towards McCain.
An overview of the “Joe the plumber” brouhaha (from a former GOP operative writing for the Christian Science Monitor):
Jimmy Orr: Obama’s tax plan and the redistribution of wealth
http://features.csmonitor.com/politics/2008/10/14/obamas-tax-plan-and-the-redistribution-of-wealth/
Jimmy Orr: McCain throws plumber at Obama in final debate
http://features.csmonitor.com/politics/2008/10/16/mccain-throws-plumber-at-obama-in-final-debate/
Yes. I was just going to add to my post that I agree with every part of it except the last part about bias.
Evidence continues to mount that Obama had substantial help from Ayers in the creation of his 1995 book, “Dreams From My Father.”
Earlier in 1995, Ayers helped Obama, then a junior lawyer at a minor law firm, get appointed chairman of the multi-million dollar Chicago Annenberg Challenge grant. In the fall of that same year, 1995, Ayers and his wife, Weatherwoman Bernardine Dohrn, helped blaze Obama’s path to political power with a fundraiser in their Chicago home.
No wonder in 1997 Obama wrote a glowing review of Ayers’ book “A Kind and Just Parent: Children of the Juvenile Court,” just before it came out.
In his book, Ayers wrote: “Our neighbors include Muhammad Ali, former mayor Eugene Sawyer, poets Gwendolyn Brooks and Elizabeth Alexander, and writer Barack Obama. Minister Louis Farrakhan lives a block from our home and adds, we think, a unique dimension to the idea of ‘safe neighborhood watch’: the Fruit of Islam, his security force, has an eye on things twenty-four-hours a day.”
Obama and Ayers may have the same ambition to change America, not necessary for the bad. However, the current thinking of most Americans does not allow Obama to admit his connection with Ayers.