Obama On Redistribution of Wealth

Obama On Redistribution of Wealth

A 2001 Chicago public radio interview with then State Senator Barack Obama explaining that the failing of the Supreme Court with respect to civil rights was that it didn't redistribute wealth--it only granted the right of blacks to vote, order a meal at a lunch counter, and equal protection of the law.

Why am I suspecting that President Obama will push for slavery reparations?

UPDATE: Let me be clear on this: if Obama's talk about redistributing wealth meant redistributing wealth from the rich to the poor, my concerns would be:

1. There are people who are poor through no fault of their own--but there are many people who are poor because of incredibly bad choices. We can argue about what level of support a Christian commonwealth owes to the deserving poor--but many of the poor have worked hard to get there, with laziness and substance abuse problems.

2. Redistribution discourages hard work, both because it taxes the productive and takes away incentives to work from those who can do so. It is surprisingly easy to kill the goose of capitalism that lays the golden eggs that fund the welfare state.

Of course, Obama's redistribution of wealth isn't going to be from the rich to the poor. At best it will be a redistribution from those who are working to become wealthy (those with taxable incomes) to those who with little or no income. For those who are obscenely rich, income taxes are completely optional right now. (You buy municipal bonds of your state, and owe no federal or state income taxes on the interest.)

In practice, because Democrats are so completely in the pocket of Wall Street (as this recent bailout shows) and other wealthy interests, a few scraps will be thrown to the poor, but most of the redistribution will be upward, from middle class households to the obscenely rich. There's a reason that the obscenely rich class are funding Obama's campaign--they know that he is going to help them continue looting middle class America.