Obamanomics=free mkt wealth spreading

[DogPoundPup]

Posted October 27, 2008 11:54 AM
The Swamp

by Frank James

Sen. John McCain has gone after Sen. Barack Obama for the Democratic nominee's use of the words "spread the wealth" when the senator from Illinois explained his tax plan to Joe "the Plumber" Wurzelbacher.

I just happened to be reading over the weekend an interesting New York Times Magazine piece by writer David Leonhardt from August on Obama's economic philosophy and came across the phrase "spreading the wealth," a usage which predated Obama's Joe-the-Plumber encounter.

Obama didn't use the words. Instead they were used by a NYT magazine editor who wrote a subhead that appeared over part five of the article, a lengthy passage describing a key piece of Obama's plan, the idea that he wants to use the tax code to reverse some of the growing income inequality that has become more pronounced in the last decade which has seen the rich get richer as the middle class and the poor have seen their incomes stagnate.

The section of the article really provides a good understanding of Obama's concern that President Bush's tax cuts helped to accentuate inequality, especially since little to nothing was done to decrease the burden of the payroll tax on lower and middle-income Americans. Because of that increased payroll-tax burden, the tax code has become less progressive.

As Leonhardt explains, Obama wants to reverse the trend of growing inequality by providing credits to lower and middle income Americans that would offset some of those payroll taxes. Increasing taxes on the very rich would be the way he would partly pay for such credits.

The following lengthy excerpt explains what Obama wants to do.

http://www.swamppolitics.com/news/politics/blog/2008/10/obamanomicsfree_mkt_wealth_spr.html