The answer is simple:

TAX THE RICH!

Excuse me, but isn't Miss Sarah a "socialist??" I mean, didn't she take from the rich - Oil/Gas Companies in Alaska - and give out checks to the poor - well, really every citizen of Alaska, not just those in lower income brackets.

Is that not true? That's what she's been bragging about for months - little Ms.
Socialist Robbin' Hood.

...The agricultural aspect is but one here at my perch in the middle of this America. There is anger and there is ire, bred from the fact that the days of the golden watch are long, long gone. My Grandpa worked 12-14 hour days in South St. Louis City at an aluminum plant. The pay was dismal and the labor was intense, but he was still able to take care of his family. Granted, there wasn't a pot to p*** in or a window to throw it out of, but they were never without the necessities. Today, that very same job does not pay enough to support a family, does not come with the knowledge that if you work hard for the company they will not toss you out. If lucky, you are union but your benefits are scant and your pension has gone the way of the ever evaporating 401k.

The people I know here are p***** off at the fact that the working people that perform the labor that is necessary to make our nation function day to day-the plumbers, electricians, truckers, nurses, teachers, construction workers, etc.-are disregarded, to be paid lip service and used as props whenever an election rolls around (and both parties can be faulted here). These people are the real backbone of our society, and exist without regard to geography or political affiliation. Try to think of your life without the ability to call a plumber or electrician in a snap, without a nurse looking you over at the doctor or caring for your elderly parent, without a teacher there to help your child on their way to a better future, without the trucker that spends weeks away from their family so that the goods you need end up at your local market. Honest work means very little at this point, and the folks that make your daily routine a possibility have seen their prospects erode; people who are skilled tradepersons know that the money is in the four year degree and the suit and tie. In my experience, they do not begrudge people whom have gone to school and work in an office their right to work hard and support their families, but take umbrage at the conflicting narratives of honest work for honest pay and neoclassical economic theory.
I apologize for this rant, but I really feel that the people I have talked about exist in a large degree as abstractions, useful to hold up as the heart and soul of the American experience but easily relegated to the shadows when their benefit is outlived.

The next time you have the chance, thank a plumber, a trucker, a teacher or nurse. Whatever else happens, they will always be there when you need them, and that is a valuable quality that is all too rare to find.

Here in the heartland (I'm in St. Louis, grew up in a small farming town in IL, just outside the city) our farmers break their backs everyday to put food on the tables all across this nation. If you don't have any experience with farming, it is toilsome, back breaking and dangerous. My town sits on the IL side of the Mississippi River, and while the land is rich, it is an annual crapshoot to see if your fields will be underwater, or conversely, if a nasty drought will force you to take heavy cuts in your yields. The best part of living in "America's Breadbasket" is that every year, my vegetarian arse can visit the small stands set up by the farmers that I have known literally all of my life and pick up produce still warm from the sun shining on the fields. You have never really had a tomato unless you have eaten one still dusty from it's cradle in the soil.

The fact is that in my 28 years on this marble, I have watched as the fields have shifted to crops that are heavily subsidized-corn and soybeans especially. I have seen the small family farms-these people who know me by who I am "from home" and always inquired into the well-being of my Granny and Grandpa-either consumed by "big box" corporate farms or simply shuttered because the costs of the harvests have gutted the ability to remain profitable...

It's a simple matter of starting over. Start again in the new vision and live simply. No society can stand without a strong foundation. America's foundation, it's middle class, is crumbling. It's replacement culture, the green culture, is in formation. Absent a global warming extinction event, it will survive.

While we're at it we could spread the power around, too.

FREE AMERICA

REVOLUTIONARY (DIRECT) DEMOCRACY

Gosh, I "love" it when Republicans and conservatives accuse Obama of socialism and redistributing wealth while the GOP has been redistributing wealth from the bottom to the top since Reagan which has destroyed America's economy in the end.
Nonetheless they have the insolence to call others socialists who don't agree with them.

What is it that the Republicans spread around? Oh yeah, poverty!
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Socialism isn't about "spreading the wealth around". It's about who controls the means of wealth creation. It's a matter of the expropriation of workplaces, not of their finished product. Don't trust me: look up the word on dictionary.com and read the first definition.

Mr. Buzzanco does a much better job than most Common Dreams authors of not explicitly endorsing the typical strawman version of socialism as "spreading the wealth". (The only comment he makes re:socialism is that it "has been dead for decades", which is undoubtedly true). I thank him for his honesty, especially since his own sympathies seem to lie more with liberalism than with radicalism.

But then the user comments conflate socialism with welfare capitalism over and over and over. If we are leftists, then let's get our own history straight...even the parts we don't agree with, or don't draw inspiration from, yet.

"Republican business owners create jobs"? Hardly. Most would willingly ship your job overseas, rather then pay you a higher wage.

"Money trickles down". No it doesn't. This is the biggest lie in the GOP book. Money concentrates at the top. And repug business owners use those profits to start new businesses, and build new junk, and create false demand for that junk that you don't need, and raise your cost of living. Capitalism only has one goal; to GET your money.

And if they are too lazy to make real junk, then they just as well will sell you junk on paper, like a sucker.

At least John McCain achieved the male great American Dream: Married a GPoA whose father is a beer distributor.

When I first started posting on political sites years ago, someone damned me as a secular humanist who advocated the redistribution of wealth. I failed to see the insult in that description at the time, and still don't.

Until this country is stuck in a long term GREAT GREAT Depression and finally realizes it, there'll be more selfish losers railing against socialism even when they blindly support pols who perform corporate socialism behind their backs. Just ask the conservative trolls on this form and they'll admit it even as they try to deny it.

I see only one problem with sharing the wealth, a great deal of it is nothing but worthless paper.

Rickster

I can no longer afford it. I keep telling the organizations that I give to every year, "not this year, times are bad".

And so I wonder why all these organizations etc. are always relying on real Americans to help support them.... agencies like the American Red Cross for example. So all you agencies out there, give these rich folks a call, and lets see if they really love America or NOT? They hate America with a vengeance! But, they will covet everything you own, even if the consequences cost a citizen his life. Wakethe hell up America!

Maybe the Dictator of AmeriKa should ask them to go fucking shopping! Now where in the fuck did I hear that mantra before?

"It is logical. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few."

Spock (The Wrath of Khan)

Or in this case: "The needs of the many outweigh the WANTS of the few." However, greed and selfishness dictates that some are more in entitled than others.

"Trickle-down" voodoo economics was supposed to be about "sharing the wealth". Now the GOP (Of the rich, For the rich, By the rich) are screaming blue bloody murder about sharing the wealth. Hmmphh.

So if Obama is "spreading the wealth around", despite things like voting for the largest corporate welfare bill in the history of the country, then you would have to say Bush did the same with his rebate checks (although at the time, progressive were calling them petty bribes).

It's time for some class warfare from the bottom up.

Didn't John just vote for the biggest social bail out in history when he voted for the seven hundred billion dollar bail out for his rich friends in banks and lending firms, created by the Republicans and Bush and Cheney? Maybe he needs to be reminded of it and any one else that has forgotten that. He makes no sense and neither does his running mate. They spew hate every chance they can.

What's wrong with spreading the wealth around. They make it sound disgusting. The people they are talking to don't even realize it like maybe they would actually be better off with Obama's tax plan.

I guess that none of you realize the corporate socialism rampant in the U.S. The U.S. Guv is owned lock stock and barrel by the corporate oligarchy.

A government 'controlled by/run for' the benefit of corporations used to be known by another name - 'FASCISM'.

The remark that socialism has been dead for decades is an odd one - is the author not aware of what is going on in South America?

But, I do find the whole idea of these rabid brownshirts screaming "socialist" at anyone who would utter "spread the wealth" to be pretty comical. If this were true, Presidents Johnson ("War of Poverty", "Great Society") and Nixon (wage and price controls) were right over there with Lenin, and modern-day Europe would be to the left of Ernesto "Che" Guevara.

But it is odd these Joes don't notise how workers in countries that adopt such socialist measures always seem to enjoy the best living standard.

This is a rather comical contention on McCain's part considering Guv-Mint is re-distributing massive quantities of money from the responsible to the financially irresponsible!

(That is, presuming we ever pay enough taxes to pay for all this.)

I hereby dub this new Socialism -- "No Bank Left Behind"

A Dictatorship of workers against the right-wingers of Exxon, Shell, Wal Mart, Bank of America and the corporate sector: which is what we need in USA

http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1920/terrcomm/ch02.htm

Marx and Engels hammered out the idea of the dictatorship of the proletariat, which Engels stubbornly defended in 1891, shortly before his death – the idea that the political autocracy of the proletariat is the “sole form in which it can realize its control of the state.”

That is what Kautsky wrote about ten years ago. The sole form of power for the proletariat he considered to be not a Socialist majority in a democratic parliament, but the political autocracy of the proletariat, its dictatorship. And it is quite clear that, if our problem is the abolition of private property in the means of production, the only road to its solution lies through the concentration of State power in its entirety in the hands of the proletariat, and the setting up for the transitional period of an exceptional regime – a regime in which the ruling class is guided, not by general principles calculated for a prolonged period, but by considerations of revolutionary policy.

The dictatorship is necessary because it is a case, not of partial changes, but of the very existence of the bourgeoisie. No agreement is possible on this ground. Only force can be the deciding factor. The dictatorship of the proletariat does not exclude, of course, either separate agreements, or considerable concessions, especially in connection with the lower middle class and the peasantry. But the proletariat can only conclude these agreements after having gained possession of the apparatus of power, and having guaranteed to itself the possibility of independently deciding on which points to yield and on which to stand firm, in the interests of the general Socialist task.

Kautsky now repudiates the dictatorship of the proletariat at the very outset, as the “tyranny of the minority over the majority.” That is, he discerns in the revolutionary regime of the proletariat those very features by which the honest Socialists of all countries invariably describe the dictatorship of the exploiters, albeit masked by the forms of democracy.

Abandoning the idea of a revolutionary dictatorship, Kautsky transforms the question of the conquest of power by the proletariat into a question of the conquest of a majority of votes by the Social-Democratic Party in one of the electoral campaigns of the future. Universal suffrage, according to the legal fiction of parliamentarism, expresses the will of the citizens of all classes in the nation, and, consequently, gives a possibility of attracting a majority to the side of Socialism. While the theoretical possibility has not been realized, the Socialist minority must submit to the bourgeois majority. This fetishism of the parliamentary majority represents a brutal repudiation, not only of the dictatorship of the proletariat, but of Marxism and of the revolution altogether. If, in principle, we are to subordinate Socialist policy to the parliamentary mystery of majority and minority, it follows that, in countries where formal democracy prevails, there is no place at all for the revolutionary struggle. If the majority elected on the basis of universal suffrage in Switzerland pass draconian legislation against strikers, or if the executive elected by the will of a formal majority in Northern America shoots workers, have the Swiss and American workers the “right” of protest by organizing a general strike? Obviously, no. The political strike is a form of extra-parliamentary pressure on the “national will,” as it has expressed itself through universal suffrage. True, Kautsky himself, apparently, is ashamed to go as far as the logic of his new position demands. Bound by some sort of remnant of the past, he is obliged to acknowledge the possibility of correcting universal suffrage by action. Parliamentary elections, at all events in principle, never took the place, in the eyes of the Social-Democrats, of the real class struggle, of its conflicts, repulses, attacks, revolts; they were considered merely as a contributory fact in this struggle, playing a greater part at one period, a smaller at another, and no part at all in the period of dictatorship.

In 1891, that is, not long before his death, Engels, as we just heard, obstinately defended the dictatorship of the proletariat as the only possible form of its control of the State. Kautsky himself more than once repeated this definition. Hence, by the way, we can see what an unworthy forgery is Kautsky’s present attempt to throw back the dictatorship of the proletariat at us as a purely Russian invention.

Who aims at the end cannot reject the means. The struggle must be carried on with such intensity as actually to guarantee the supremacy of the proletariat. If the Socialist revolution requires a dictatorship – ”the sole form in which the proletariat can achieve control of the State” – it follows that the dictatorship must be guaranteed at all cost.

To write a pamphlet about dictatorship one needs an ink-pot and a pile of paper, and possibly, in addition, a certain number of ideas in one’s head. But in order to establish and consolidate the dictatorship, one has to prevent the bourgeoisie from undermining the State power of the proletariat. Kautsky apparently thinks that this can be achieved by tearful pamphlets. But his own experience ought to have shown him that it is not sufficient to have lost all influence with the proletariat, to acquire influence with the bourgeoisie.

I have listed this site several times. If you haven't seen it, please check it out.

http://www.demos.org/inequality/numbers.cfm

If you page down to the pie charts, you will find the distribution of wealth and stock ownership for 2004. At that time, 10% of people in this country had over 70% of the wealth. Similarly, 10% of people owned nearly 80% of stocks. Most of us, the 90% at the bottom, had only 28.7% of the wealth. That was 2004. I would bet that since then more has "trickled up".

We definitely need to redistribute wealth.

Does anyone have later numbers on this?

The problem with spreading the wealth around here is that wealth and power concentration is increasingly globalized and can't be easily addressed in any one country. Western corporations have to compete with other multinationals based in countries with fewer regs where rich investors worldwide stand to make higher profits.

This translates into a contest that foreign multinationals with fewer regs are winning, resulting in job losses among Western multis and forcing Americans to give them less regs, no matter how onerous. When Americans start suffering as a result, we ask for more regs. Things become a spiderweb of regs, where no one can predict anything, much less economists who are the modern equivalent of witches. Then things like our present mess arise.

Since the world is becoming so dependent on multinationals, the WTO and other trade agreements arose to level the playing field for corporations, excluding the public welfare, reasoning that what's good for corporations is good for the public.

In other words, if we force social and environmental regs on our corporations, they lose competitiveness and we lose jobs. Like Nader says, it's a race to the bottom.

I never thought I would be saying this, but maybe the solution is not more regs on corporations, limits on CEO pay, more corporate taxes, universal healthcare, environmental restrictions, minimum salaries or other regs to add to the spiderweb of confusion.

Maybe the solution is to become a direct democracy the easy way, by incorporating We the People, getting equal shares of non-transferable stock and dividends from the lease or sale of our public treasure, having a corporate management that represents us instead of other corporations, having the ability to hire and fire our corporate management in yearly online corporate meetings according to their performance, having a one person, one vote corporate government and deciding to deal only with socially and environmentally responsible corporations and banks.

The dividends we receive from stock in our public treasure would be enough to lift every American out of poverty and give us more free time for leisure, sports, education, arts, science and hobbies now reserved for the top one percent. Now that's people power.

nationalize walmart and redistribute the profits.

"Socialism" is bad?

Tell that to the NFL - salary caps, shared revenues, free universal health care, and a "commission" that autonomously sets the rules and even punishes off-field behavior.

Yet, as CNN reports, the NFL "is the most successful sports organization in history."

Meanwhile, ever hear of The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, The Commonwealth of Massachusetts, The Commonwealth of Kentucky or The Commonwealth of Virginia? They're still called that, key word: commonwealth. Maybe we should petition to change them to, say, "The Ownership Society of Pennsylvania," or "The Steal As Much Wealth As Possible Kentucky," or "I Got Mine Screw You Massachusetts," or maybe "Enough Is Never Enough Virginia?"

I just saw McCain talking about Obama's "Spread the Wealth" plan. He is telling people that 40% of Americans don't even pay taxes, so to give them a tax cut from zero would mean giving them checks for money they didn't earn or tax credits.

With all of these negative attacks and lies, when can he be charged with slander or something?

What blows my mind is that the same people who object to spreading the wealth on Saturday, will head to church on Sunday and listen to how Jesus tells them to care for the least among us. And they'll drop a couple bucks in the collection plate.

Anybody with half a brain can look at Obama and McClone's websites side-by-side and quickly see that Obama will lower working class worker and retiree taxes, while McClone will be increasing working class taxes, including those of Joe the Republican shill turned pseudo plumber. The only conclusion I can draw is that McClone is betting on a significant portion of the US electorate being brain-dead. Its no doubt a good bet.

McClone's greatest travesty in this regard:
Just as Ronny Raygun eliminated tax deductions for personal property loan interest, and started taxing unemployment insurance benefits in 1986, McClone will start taxing employer-provided medical insurance benefits, thereby removing one of the working class' last tax breaks.

McClone's proposed $2,500 per taxpayer, or $5,000 per family tax credit won't come anywhere close to offsetting this major tax increase.

The wealthiest have used government - the tax laws, international trade, outsourcing,bailouts, illegal wars etc to take as much wealth for themselves as they possibly could during the last thirty years. Then they (McCain) have the audacity to suggest that Obama is trying to spread the wealth. What a frightening thought - middle and lower class americans might be able to own something without a huge amount of debt on their shoulders. Let's not mention the usurious credit card rates that people like McCain have permitted banks to charge while limiting a person's ability to get relief in bankruptcy. Sorry McCain, you and yours days of theft are over - time to retire to one of your seven homes. We no longer need your self-serving government service.

"Class warfare." Typical Republican strategy of accusing others of doing what they themselves are guilty of. Similar to loudly leveling accusations of "voter fraud" (against ACORN, for example)== something that rarely happens-- while quietly committing massive election fraud-- purging voter registrations and setting up voting machines that flip or miscount votes. For a man like John McCain to use the term "class warfare" against leftists and liberals is so ludicrous and disingenuous as to discredit him entirely on all fronts.