(09-08-2012 08:34 AM)Tom in Lazybrook Wrote: Chavez is a socialist. So is Castro. So was Sweden. Obama isn't. I don't see how returning tax rates to Clinton/Reagan levels constitutes socialism in a contemporary sense unless one wishes to opine that our social floor (social security/medicare/medicaid/unemployment compensation) represents socialism in the contemporary sense. Any social floor requires some level of redistribution of wealth. Does that make every first world nation socialist - including the USA and most Republicans? The US is the only developed nation without a single payer healthcare system (or substantially so). Does that mean that every other developed nation is socialist?
The question on any redistributive scheme is this..does the scheme produce a 'gain' to society at large? Many on the right would argue that any redistributive scheme (medicare/medicaid/social security/food aid/etc.) provides a disincentive towards work and therefore should be removed. I disagree because these schemes provide for greater security (less crime/social disruption) which helps those at the top. I lived in Mexico (a surprisingly wealthy nation - roughly the same income level as Portugal and Saudi Arabia on a PC basis - with very low taxes in practice, huge income disparities, ineffective OSHA/environmental regulations, etc.). I see the security/corruption issues there as the proximate result of a government that does not work for a significant percentage of the population. Besides, redistributive policies can help the wealthy in concrete terms. European companies don't have to pay for healthcare at the same rates as US ones do for example.
More reasonable discussion than I usually get on the issue. Several points in response:
1. There's a difference between where Obama wants to take us and where he has actually taken us, because his actions are constrained by congress, among other things. For example, Obama clearly wanted a public option as part of Obamacare, but did not have the votes to get that through congress. Should we determine who he is by what he wanted or by what he was forced to accept? And since a common argument I get is, "If Obama were a socialist, he would have put the public option in Obamacare," and that argument would seem to imply that public option = socialist, then is it reasonable to infer that Obama wanted a public option = Obama is a socialist, at least on that issue? What I don't see is any instance, at any point in his life, when Obama had available to him a more socialistic choice than the one he took, and went instead for a less socialistic choice. If you see one, I'd like to know what it is. And Obamacare isn't.
2. Obama is clearly to the left of Sweden on several issues, including social security reform and medical malpractice, which just happen to be two pretty big ones. If Sweden is the gold standard for socialism, what do we make of that? I actually think Obama's ideal US would be somewhere left of Sweden. That's certainly what he describes in his books and speeches.
3. I've said that I think our social floor needs to be more comprehensive than it is. I would favor something like Milton Friedman's negative income tax or the Boortz-Linder prebate/prefund to put a floor on income, coupled with French health care, and turn the current mish-mash of alphabet soup programs over to the states to run as they see fit, and continue or not. French health care would take a Medicaid load off the states and give them the ability to take this on. One big goal would be to eliminate the "welfare trap"/"poverty trap" consequences of the current system, under which from about $15,000 to $55,000 of annual income, a family of four loses a dollar to higher taxes/lower benefits for every dollar they bring in--a 100% effective tax rate, or an incredible disincentive to work. Europe's safety nets are just that--safety nets--whereas ours are more a part of an immense and costly wealth redistribution scheme--with a disproportionately large share of the redistribution going to overpaid and unaccountable federal bureaucrats. Europe's tax structures are substantially flatter (less "progressive") than ours, even without considering that most European countries rely heavily on regressive consumption taxes. I would gladly go for a more comprehensive safety net funded by flatter taxes.
4. The point about European companies not having to pay health care costs is a significant one. But Obamacare doesn't do anything to help that. It may shift the burden on many companies from paying for health care directly to paying for it indirectly by paying taxes to fund health care, but it's still the same problem. The cost of health care probably needs to shift to consumption taxes, like Europe.
5. The US is not the only developed nation without single-payer health care. Actually, Canada is the only developed nation WITH true single-payer health care, and the Canadian system fares very poorly in international comparisons. I don't think the left really means single-payer when they say single-payer, at least I hope not because single-payer is a really bad approach. Single-provider (like UK) is what I think they really mean,but that's a pretty dreadful approach, too. Significantly, both Canada and UK have been moving away from their basic approaches in recent years--under governments from both wings--because they simply are not working. The best systems are the universal insurance systems like France or Holland, but they are nothing like single-payer.
6. The big fallacy with the idea of returning to the Clinton-era tax rates is the the world has changed in ways so that the Clinton-era rates could reasonably be expected to have vastly different impacts today. When Clinton raised personal tax rates, we were still below the average for developed countries, per OECD. Today, even without raising them, we are ABOVE the OECD average, and Obama's proposed changes woulkd take us pretty close to the top. It's even more dramatic for corporations. When Clinton got to the white house, our top corporate rate was 12% lower than the OECD average. When he left it was about even with the OECD average, and today its 15% higher than the OECD average, and we are highest in the world. A 3-4% rate hike is probably not enough to have a dramatic effect, although what effect it does have will most certainly be negative. But again, Obama has made it pretty clear that he wants to go further, but this is a far as he can go when bound by political reality. I do think it is most instructive that Bowles-Simpson and Domenici-Rivlin both went 180 degrees out from Obama on this issue.
I think Obama wants to take us toward socialism, probably somewhere left of Sweden is his target. The he hasn't actually done so yet--and I acknowledge that he hasn't done so yet--is something that I would attribute to the blue dogs not being socialists, rather than to Obama not being a socialist.
