The redistribution of wealth is nothing more than barstool econimics. And NY and NJ are already starting to see the results of taxing the rich more and more by watching the exodus of the rich. I think that if they succede in putting some of these socialist ideas into effect then it wont take long to see the rich leave. Dont forget that they are the ones that currently pay 90% of the taxes in the country. Then when they are left broke and in debt and the government unable to support the people things might get bad enough for them to realize what they have done. For those that are unfamiliar with barstool econonics here is the ancedote.

Suppose that every day, ten men go out for beer and the bill for all ten comes to $100. If they paid their bill the way we pay our taxes, it would go something like this:

The first four men (the poorest) would pay nothing.
The fifth would pay $1.
The sixth would pay $3.
The seventh would pay $7.
The eighth would pay $12.
The ninth would pay $18.
The tenth man (the richest) would pay $59.

So, that’s what they decided to do. The ten men drank in the bar every day and seemed quite happy with the arrangement, until one day, the owner threw them a curve.
“Since you are all such good customers”, he said, “I’m going to reduce the cost of your daily beer by $20″. Drinks for the ten now cost just $80.
The group still wanted to pay their bill the way we pay our taxes so the first four men were unaffected. They would still drink for free. But what about the other six men – the paying customers? How could they divide the $20 windfall so that everyone would get his “fair share?”
They realized that $20 divided by six is $3.33. But if they subtracted that from everybody’s share, then the fifth man and the sixth man would each end up being paid to drink his beer. So, the bar owner suggested that it would be fair to reduce each man’s bill by roughly the same amount, and he proceeded to work out the amounts each should pay.

And so:
The fifth man, like the first four, now paid nothing (100% savings).
The sixth now paid $2 instead of $3 (33%savings).
The seventh now pay $5 instead of $7 (28%savings).
The eighth now paid $9 instead of $12 (25% savings).
The ninth now paid $14 instead of $18 (22% savings).
The tenth now paid $49 instead of $59 (16% savings).

Each of the six was better off than before. And the first four continued to drink for free. But once outside the restaurant, the men began to compare their savings.
“I only got a dollar out of the $20,” declared the sixth man. He pointed to the tenth man, “but he got $10!”
“Yeah, that’s right,” exclaimed the fifth man. “I only saved a dollar, too. It’s unfair that he got ten times more than I!”
“That’s true!!” shouted the seventh man. “Why should he get $10 back when I got only two? The wealthy get all the breaks!”
“Wait a minute,” yelled the first four men in unison. “We didn’t get anything at all. The system exploits the poor!”
The nine men surrounded the tenth and beat him up.
The next night the tenth man didn’t show up for drinks, so the nine sat down and had beers without him. But when it came time to pay the bill, they discovered something important. They didn’t have enough money between all of them for even half of the bill!

And that, boys and girls, journalists and college professors, is how our tax system works. The people who pay the highest taxes get the most benefit from a tax reduction. Tax them too much, attack them for being wealthy, and they just may not show up anymore. In fact, they might start drinking overseas where the atmosphere is somewhat friendlier.

I would like to believe that before things get that far, the American people (real Americans who remember how and why this country came about in the first place) would not stand for it. After all it was Thomas Jefferson who said,

“God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion.
The people cannot be all, and always, well informed. The part which is
wrong will be discontented, in proportion to the importance of the facts
they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions,
it is lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. …
And what country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not
warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of
resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as
to the facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost
in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from
time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants.
It is its natural manure.”

My dispute with blogs such as this is that we constantly complain about the libs ignoring the facts… then we turn around and attack Obama with
untruths.

Despite your generalization, it isn’t anything like a regular occurrence with the conservatives on this blog; with the lefties, though…you have it about right.
Nobody’s perfect, but we generally get things right.

Rob, I’m thinking of the old saw “give a hungry man bread so he can eat, and he’ll be hungry tomorrow. Teach him how to grow his own wheat and he’ll never be hungry again”.

But I agree with you on free market systems. The unfortunate facts is they exist as a result of the “pay off to the general public” by the totalitarian regimes, who otherwise few would ever support.

The bottom line is that a free markets will never exist in those countries until there is a change in their political system. I think the solution is “revolution from within”.

But it would initially have to involve seed-money from our government, because what businessman would invest in such a corrupt system? Nor why would he invest knowing that his investments could be confiscated at will, and further that the US government would probably even look the other way when it happened, as they have done in the past.

I have never known a Democrat who met a tax they did not like. Obama is no different.

Socialism is socialism even when you camouflage it as a Democrat.

Just a followup on that comment, I think anybody who is genuinely interested in changing the state of poverty in these third world countries should spend a few minutes researching the consequences of blank checks sent to these impoverished third world nations.

What one realizes is that the reason that poverty exists in most of those countries is because of the totalitarian socialist governments running those countries. Without launching into a treatise on why socialism is a necessary prerequisite for a stable totalitarian government (you are buying out the poor), I’ll just point out that if you hand these governments a blank check you are just propping up the government, and therefore indefinitely extending the poverty and suffering that the peoples of these countries are undergoing.

Bono has had a number of comments on this along the lines “no more blank checks, please” addressing exactly this issue. I do think that he is right and it is in our common interests to end poverty in those nations, but having your heart “in the right place” as most liberals do pretty much guarantees that they have their heads stuck in a warm, most and dark place at the same time.

Rob, whoever did that math needs a refresher course.

0.07% of $12 trillion works out around to $8 billion

On another note we have Senator Obama to thank for demonstrating once again that the global warming jihad isn’t so much about saving the Earth as much as it is about robbing from the rich to give to the poor nations third-world totalitarian leaders in a pointless exchange of revenue.

But I agree with you that we can’t afford to send even one red cent to these governments, since we are guaranteed it will just prop up their corrupt regimes even longer.

Exactly.

D’oh! I’ll just stop posting and go have more coffee…

LaydownSally: For you, Madam? Anything!

The link to the details on the Obama/Hagel bill – which now that I went back and looked – does cost over $800 billion and takes .7% of our GNP, not the .07% I originally posted – is as follows:

http://www.glenbeck.com/content/articles/article/198/5991/

Since the original UN resolution calling on the G8 nations to pony up was followed by the Bali global warming conference also calling on wealthy nations to support a global tax to empower poorer ‘powerless’ states, I concluded that Barack Obama, a committed internationalist, was responding to the call.

Well Folks,

Now I’m critizing.

I’m sure if I wanted to, especially since I’m no fan of Obama, I could dig up plenty of reasons why and how he would make things worse for us.

But from the first mathematical error to the last (i.e. 0.7% of GNP is still not $800M), the information from above is full of errors, and should be retracted.

There is a Global Poverty Act before congress (H.R. 1302 and S. 2433) but as I stated earlier it is…

nothing more than a verbosely written tirade commiting us to aid to Africa.

Whether you agree with these bills or not, they are recieving full bi-partisan support and are in fact an
expansion on what Bush already has in place. Nothing more.

I don’t know if it’s a misunderstanding or a misreading of what Glen Beck wrote but no where can I find a number which is the product of a percentage of GNP.

LaydownSally: There but for a single ‘n’ go I. Sorry. =) Here’s the correct link for the Obama GLOBAL POVERTY ACT info.

http://www.glennbeck.com/content/articles/article/198/5991/

Sorry pparets,

I’ll drop it…just thought you might be interested in the truth, when you blog about something.

Guess not.

LDS: Have done some research on this bill, and can’t find the hard numbers, but still maintain that it’s a flawed concept to try to do anything about poverty by tax and spend tactics. It’s unfair, IMO, to confiscate money from the productive people in one country to give to the corrupt UN, which will then pass some of it on to various corrupt dictators and slaveowners around the world. Even here in the US, where we have an actual good economic system, that tactic doesn’t work, so why would anyone think it would work anywhere else? Instead of quibbling about numbers, realize that even one dollar is too much to put into this boondoggle.

I am a retired law enforcement officer. I am considered to be a “blue coller” worker. Therefore, it should excite me that the Obama wants to “redistribute the wealth” by taking from the rich and giving to the poor. Sounds good to this old working stiff. The problem with that philosophy is that history has proven that,in reality,it dosn’t work. Karl Mark introduced the concept back in the late 1800s. He wrote,”From each ,according to his ability to each ,according to his need.” We all know what Karl Mark’s pilosophy brought to the masses. Is there anyone out there who can tell me why this sort of distoted thinking will work now when,throughout history,everytime it has been tried, it has only caused misery to us working people. Let the rich stay rich. I will continue to enjoy my meger pinsion. Thank you very much just the same.

Have you heard this 2001 radio interview in which Obama discusses wanting redistribution of wealth?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iivL4c_3pck

Got it. I guess I wasn’t clear that I was chiming in with you.

I find it interesting that the lefties are always telling us that we can’t be the “world’s policeman”, or that we shouldn’t try to provide freedom for the world’s oppressed peoples or to share our hugely successful free enterprise economic system with them, but it’s just fine for us to be the world’s welfare provider.

pparets,

Thanks. It worked.

I hope you read my above comment, because it still applies.

I like Glenn Beck, but he’s got it all wrong in this instance.

LaydownSally: I would like to think that you are being a little testy here. I would never knowingly print anything that I knew was not the truth.

Instead of stealing from smart productive people to feed stupid weak and lazy people who overbreed and have no civilization what we should do is start sending them our vitamin rich feces. to third world scum our crap will be a welcome and nutritious meal. just spice it up a little. When republicans get full power back and we will, we need to remember what obama tried to do before he was fired. Then we can end ALL Welfare here and abroad, all welfare ever was for is to Feed and Breed Ghettos as “vote farms ” for Democrats. Have you black people ever noticed that no matter how much Democrats claim to be helping you they only give you enough to barely survive and breed them another generation of ghetto vote SLAVES. The Democrat party are the new slave masters, while the media is their willing acomplices. Remember people a nation of ALL Liberals could NEVER stand up in the world. They need to leech off productive moral people in order to enact their reverse Darwinism.

No matter who proposed it, it’s a load of crap.

Robert, perhaps my point wasn’t clear (wouldn’t be the first time!) When Obama doesn’t like where the money is going, it’s desperately needed at home. When he, for political reasons, wants money to go for some pet cause, we’ve got all the money in the world available for it and no need for it here.

Corrected the post. I should have read a little closer.

As for helping the poor, it often seems to me that we could do that more effectively (and at no cost to the taxpayer) simply by liberalizing a number of our international trade regulations.

Rather than give them money, why not let them earn it?

Of course, that probably wouldn’t sit well with the unions and protectionists at the left. We can give these people billions of dollars in tax dollars, but god forbid we engage in open trade with them.

Americans rejected all this nonsense on November 2nd but he’s going ahead with it anyway with executive order. His dad’s a marxist, his friends are marxists and all of those he’s put in charge of his government agencys are marxists. Communism is no more dead than I am! I saw it in the 70′s and 80′s out in the open as our enemy and now the enemy is in the White House. He even took the oath to “defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemys foreign and domestic.” What a joke!