SOCIALISM?!

The Socialism Nonsense.

First of all, words have meanings. Especially in the Reality-Based Community. Hilzoy explains:

Look: socialism is a word that has a meaning. It means public control of the means of production. It does not mean taxing the top bracket at 39%. Likewise, "collective ownership" has a meaning, and it does not mean the situation that obtains when the government can repeal tax cuts for the top 5% of the population.

(The best line of the post has to be this, though: "Sarah Palin, step away from that copy of The Fountainhead.")

Matt Ysglesias argues that the socialism charge is simply a lot campaign rhetoric, though it illustrates an intellectual divide in political elites:

And the socialism kick does illustrate something interesting about the divide among American political elites. To most liberal opinion leaders (including myself and, it seems, Hertzberg) the major Continental countries like France and Germany are models that have some admirable aspects along with some problems, and the smaller northern European countries like Denmark and the Netherlands are really admirable examples of a balance between individualism and dynamism on the one hand, and economic security and social equity on the other. “Socialism” and “social democracy” are not words we use or want to see used in mass politics because they’re not part of the American political vernacular, but the latter at least represents a reasonable aspiration.

Conservative elites, by contrast, are absolutely convinced that France and Germany are dystopian cesspools and that Scandinavia can no more exist than a round circle. If the government starts giving people health care and building trains, next thing you know we’ll all be . . . well, it’s not clear exactly what we’ll all be like. But it won’t be good!

Once again, conservatives have a hard times with: (a) comparative political analysis, (b) history, that is, (c) the whole empirical evidence thing.

As noted in an earlier post, the redistributionist rhetoric taps into racial fears. Steven Benen at Political Animal says:

When McCain tells white working class undecided voters that Obama wants to "take your money and give it to someone else," he doesn't say who "someone else" is, but he probably hopes he doesn't have to.

Matt Feeney calls this approach "a bit loony," insisting that if McCain were really trying to engage in race-based fear mongering, the Republican campaign would "use the word 'welfare.'"

But that only helps to prove my point -- McCain has been using the word "welfare." He's used it in his stump speech (Obama, McCain says, wants to turn the IRS into "a giant welfare agency"), and he's used it in his television ads.

And why would McCain tell white working class undecided voters that Obama's tax policies constitute "welfare" and "take your money and give it to someone else"? Here's a wild guess -- it has something to do with exploiting racial fears.

And John Judis, in the piece Benen mentions in his post, says it's a revival of Reagan's celebrated "welfare queen":

I mention the Bradley effect because I think, too, that McCain and Sarah Palin's attack against Obama for advocating "spreading the wealth" and for "socialism" and for pronouncing the civil rights revolution a "tragedy" because it didn't deal with the distribution of wealth is aimed ultimately at white working class undecided voters who would construe "spreading the wealth" as giving their money to blacks. It's the latest version of Reagan's "welfare queen" argument from 1980. It if it works, it won't be because most white Americans actually oppose a progressive income tax, but because they fear that Obama will inordinately favor blacks over them.

The funny thing is that the public might not mind, for the polls are telling us that the public thinks McCain's economic policies help the rich. Nate Silver explains:

Fifty-nine percent of registered voters think McCain's economics would favor the wealthy; just 11 percent the middle class. Far more than being a "center-right" country, this is a middle class country, and a candidate who fails to speak to the concerns of the middle class does so at his own peril.

Additionally, spreading the wealth is as American as apple pie. In fact, using tax policy to redistributre money is a constant theme in American political history.

For example, public financing of transportation networks (turnpikes & canals) in the antebellum era, transferred wealth from the eastern seaboard to the trans-Appalachian regions, those places we now call the Heartland of America. More examples: the New Deal, the Homestead Act, the Morrill Act, the G.I. Bill, the Interstate Highway system...the hits, and I mean BIG hits, of America's rise to the top were all products of redistributed wealth.

Bush presided over an enormous upward distribution of wealth:

Now the top 1% is back to grabbing its largest share of US income since 1929, one of several indicators that wealth is more concentrated than at any time since the Great Gatsby era. The top 1% earns more than the bottom 40% of workers, the top 5% earns more than the bottom 60%, and the top 20% out-earns the bottom 80%.

Wealth is even more skewed. The top 1% holds 34.7% of total US wealth and the next 9% has 35.4%, leaving just 29.9% of the pie for the bottom 90%.

The reality is this: that bottom 40% has it tough, especially if they have kids. You go try and raise a child while earning minimum wage. It can't be done. I mean: empirically, people do it all the time, but are the child's needs really met?

In short, GOP economic dogma has the (presumably) unintended consequence of screwing children, another indication in the GOP's general inability to grapple with real reality:

If you’re a woman earning $21,200 a year and raising three children, you’re going to find that it’s really, really hard to take care of all your regular children’s regular needs. Note that as of July 24, 2009 the minimum wage will be $7.25 per hour which conservatives think is too high. If you work forty hours a week, for fifty-two weeks a year at $7.25 an hour you’ll take home $15,080 a year with which to take care of your regular children’s regular needs. Try to give you a refundable tax credit? Well, that’s welfare and we can’t have it. It would be one thing if conservatives had the courage of their convictions and just said, “hey, government intervention in the economy is so terrible that we don’t care if children suffer.”

And finally:

Nobody seriously denies that kids need this stuff. But lots of people are just indifferent to the fact that a huge proportion of our children don’t get their needs met. And it’s appalling. McCain says that rather than spreading the wealth around, he wants to have equal opportunity. But what kind of equal opportunity do have when mom’s pulling in $21,500 to support three kids and President McCain is slashing spending on child and family services left and right?

In a way, then, this election is a referendum on trickle-down economics. E. J. Dionne is one of those guys worth listening to. This book really explains the political scene well. He gets it. And the final clause of his piece is worth consideration:

For years, Republicans have argued that the way to help struggling working people is to give more money to the wealthy. Obama is saying that we should cut out the middleman and help working people directly. My hunch is that Obama's argument will prevail, and that conservatives will then work overtime to try to deny the judgment that the people have rendered.

Conservative insularity, the cocoon, the echo chamber, their voluntary exclusion from the Reality-Based Community, whatever, they just won't concede their ideas aren't very popular.

Back to the topic at hand: If the referendum goes against trickle down, then I guess it's sort of in favor of reversing course, and throwing cash downwards. Three cheers.