Last week I ventured into the "spreading the wealth" discussion with a post attempting to unpack one aspect of why even some people who might be helped by the kind of economic policies Obama is proposing are against them anyway. It was a rather long post, so I wrapped it up without getting into another aspect of the debate that I alluded to briefly and hoped to get back to in another post.
Never mind that it takes an utter lack of an “irony gene” to speak of “steal-from-the-rich,” when only after the taxpayer-funded $1 trillion bailout of the financial sector that got us into the current economic mess — welfare for the wealthy, essentially — was passed has Washington started talking about a stimulus package for the rest of us. It takes Joe himself to bring it on home.
While the McCain/Palin campaign attempts to whip people into a lather with a liberal use of the "socialism" label, invoking fears of a wealth transfer, it’s easy to forget that a huge wealth transfer has been underway for a while and is going on even now. We call it "the bailout."
You know, the one that passed without any help for homeowners on the verge of homelessness? Yeah. That one. But the transfer started long before that. We’re just living in the aftermath.