A Couple Things

Let’s take a look at what wikipedia says about socialism:

Socialism refers to a broad set of economic theories of social organization advocating state or collective ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods, and the creation of an egalitarian society.

Conservatives love to whine about how Obama is a Socialist. So let’s see. Based on the definition provided above, does Obama pass the Socialist test?

Does Obama advocate state ownership of the means of production?

Is he anti-markets? Does he think the government should distribute goods?

Does Obama advocate egalitarianism? Does he want everyone to have the same income?

The answer to all of these questions is no. Obama wants greater government regulation in markets, he wants rich people to pay more taxes than poor people, and he wants rich firms to pay more taxes than anyone. This does not equate with egalitarianism, anti-markets, or government ownership of the means of production. Not even close.

Now, if you create a scale with libertarianism on the one end and communism on the other, Obama is closer to communism than libertarianism, for sure. But it’s not clear to me that McCain is any closer to libertarianism. Buying up bad mortgages slides you toward socialism pretty quick.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 22nd, 2008 at 12:00 pm and is filed under Domestic Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.