Spreading the wealth guards against abuse of power

At a recent campaign stop in Ohio, Barack Obama made a rather innocuous statement that supposedly belies his far-left agenda.

While discussing his tax plan, Obama stated, “My attitude is that if the economy’s good for folks from the bottom up, it’s gonna be good for everybody. ... Right now, everybody’s so pinched that business is bad for everybody, and I think when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody.”

Conservatives pounced on the “spreading the wealth” remark, claiming that these sentiments betrayed Obama’s “socialist” tendencies. The subtext of such a preposterous argument is that there is something inherently unjust about shared prosperity. What more can we expect from an ideological movement that has presided over a period of hoarded wealth for a select few?

 In 2004 alone, the top 1 percent of earners commanded nearly 16 percent of the country’s wealth. The total compensation of chief executives in large American corporations was 275 times that of the salary of the average worker last year.

This leaves me wondering, then, what exactly is so objectionable to spreading the wealth? It should only be just that the well-off individuals in our society contribute at a higher rate to the public good than the poor. This isn’t just an issue of justice, however.

Individuals often utilize the resources of government, such as public infrastructure, in the course of making money. For example, many millionaires attended public schools, a government-subsidized program that no doubt contributed to their educational enrichment and future success. Additionally, the American government spends a great deal promoting research on small businesses, and this information is vital to entrepreneurs and other business owners.

Such support and encouragement of business and the creation of wealth must be acknowledged in the form of higher taxes. Bill Gates has even claimed that the money he has earned is due in part to the indispensable help of the government. Thus, it is only be fair that the wealthy give back to a system that has greatly benefited them.

But, for conservatives to support higher taxes, there needs to be an implicit acknowledgement that the government actually does some good. This is antithetical to their ideology of “every man for himself.”

Liberals acknowledge that prosperity is useless if it isn’t shared by a majority of people. Furthermore, concentrated wealth promotes abuses of power, as evident by the recent Wall Street meltdown. Income redistribution then becomes not only a matter of justice but that of survival as well. As long as we continue to propagate this class divide, the nature of our democracy is under threat.

In this instance, the words of a famous philosopher and economist come to mind. Writing in the 18th century, Adam Smith argued, “It is not very unreasonable that the rich should contribute to the public expense, not only in proportion to their revenue, but something more than in that proportion.”

So, according to Republican discourse, the father of laissez-faire economics was secretly a socialist sympathizer. I should’ve known.