Obama and Americans; Spread the Wealth

I see the Right in the US is up in arms about Obama's 'spreading the wealth' plan*(1)

The pundit even whelps "here is the Obama pure socialism comment"

So progressive income tax, and making it more progressive, makes a country a 'pure' socialist state? The Right's inability even to understand politics and economics is pathetic.

Progressive income tax is a social democratic/liberal policy. To reduce the unequal distribution of wealth(in the US it's wider there than anywhere else in the world so they need it more than any other country in my view, rofl!).

Socialism has nothing to do with the nitty-gritty of every day government policy. It isn't a grand plan of what the laws and tax rates of a country should be. It's a basic framework; 1 Full public ownership, 2. Industrial Democracy, 3. Political Democracy. Socialism is the democratic ownership and control of economic and political power.

According to Rasmussen Reports in a "telephone survey" "Forty-four percent (44%) of voters agree with Obama’s statement while 42% disagree"(2). So if we're to take that poll as accurate, Americans are divided on the issue of redistribution of wealth via progressive taxes, etc. However, the US has had a progressive income tax for a long time(first durin the Civil War, then the 1890s, then finally in 1913 established permanently via the Sixteenth Amendemnt to the US Constitution).

Not unsurprising that most US citizens have accepted the Income Tax and redistribution of wealth since 1913, since their views are mostly social democratic/liberal. And have been for a long time(3). The Republicans and Right in the US can scream and froth in the mouth all they want; the well informed, Left, and majority, know better.


Note:
(1) http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/daily/site_101408/content/01125111.guest.html
(2) http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/election_20082/2008_presidential_election/democrats_favor_spreading_wealth_around_gop_disagrees
(3)a) On public opposition to Reagan's policies and popular attitudes remaining stubbornly social-democratic in important respects since the New Deal years, see for example, Thomas Ferguson and Joel Rogers, Right Turn: The Decline of the Democrats and the Future of American Politics, New York: Hill and Wang, 1986 (tracing the myth of a "right turn" in public attitudes in the U.S., and discussing general popular opposition to Reagan's policies),

b) Stanley Kelley, Jr., "Democracy and the New Deal Party System," in Amy Guttman, ed., Democracy and the Welfare State, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988, pp. 185-205 (presenting poll results that demonstrate consistent public support for New Deal-type programs from 1952 to 1984, with only a brief dip in 1980)

c) Vicente Navarro, "The 1984 Election and the New Deal: An Alternative Interpretation (2 parts)," Social Policy, Spring 1985, pp. 3-10 (reporting that polls during the 1980s regularly indicated that the public would support a tax increase devoted to New Deal and Great Society programs; support for equal or greater social expenditures was about 80 percent in 1984, and a greater number viewed social welfare programs favorably in 1984 than in 1980; 95 percent of the public opposed cuts in Social Security, people preferred cuts in military spending to cuts in health programs by about 2 to 1, they supported the Clean Air Act by 7 to 1, opposed cuts in Medicare or Medicaid by well over 3 to 1, preferred defense spending cuts over cuts in these medical aid programs by 3 or 4 to 1, and opposed a ban on abortions by over 2 to 1; three-fourths of the population supported government regulations to protect worker health and safety, and similar levels supported protection of consumer interests and other social expenditures, including help for the elderly, the poor, and the needy)

d) Mark N. Vamos, ed., "Portrait of a Skeptical Public," Business Week, November 20, 1995, p. 138 (reprinting a Business Week/Harris poll on popular attitudes towards the role of government, and concluding based upon its findings: "the public agrees more with the Democratic notion of government as protector of society's most vulnerable than with the Republican vision of Washington as arm's-length guarantor of an 'opportunity society'").