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To: thames_sider who wrote (90378)	10/16/2008 5:24:06 PM
From: Lane3	Respond to of 541778

Obama mentioned 'spreading the wealth', but he said nothing about who was 'eligible' to receive it or in what form, still less 'entitled'. I believe that Obama's expression was code, which means that it wouldn't be explained. I could, of course, me misreading him, but it's a topic to which I am very attentive and I have seen it used that way enough to believe my take to be on target. Your mileage may differ. "Entitlement," FYI, is a term used in the US budget for programs like food stamps or Medicaid, the health care program for the poor. What it means in budget lingo is that anyone who meets the criteria is entitled to benefits. Entitlement programs are of interest because a fixed amount cannot be budgeted. Since everyone who is entitled must by law get the benefit and since the budgeters don't know in advance how many eligibles will show up, the amount that might be spent is unknown, open-ended. You might notice in the current US news that, with the financial crisis, lots more people are signing up for food stamps, the fiscal impact of which unknown. "Entitlement" in common parlance means a right. Blend the two usages of the word together and you get the notion that people have a moral right, a human right, if you will, to food stamps or whatever. This is the notion that concerns me. I am not particularly concerned about the level of taxation, offering benefits, the payments made to needy people, or any of what you have suggested. I'm only concerned about the growing attitude fostered that "the government owes its citizens a living," the notion of justice equating to equal results. That is an attitude that can easily lead to torpor, low productivity, and massive government expenditures. I spent 30 years analyzing the federal bureaucracy and I know what fostering such an attitude does to a culture. I do not know how to explain it any better than I have already. I guess it just resonates with some people and not with others. ----------------- Redistribution of wealth From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (Redirected from Spread the wealth) Jump to: navigation, search Redistribution of wealth refers to the transfer of wealth from some individuals to others. Contents [hide] * 1 Methods of transferring wealth o 1.1 Voluntary transfer of wealth o 1.2 Forced transfer of wealth * 2 See also [edit] Methods of transferring wealth The transfer of wealth can occur in various ways. Some methods for transferring wealth are voluntary transfers from those who have it to those who do not. Other methods involve forcibly removing the wealth from those who have it and redistributing it to those who do not. All political systems are designed to redistribute wealth including Communism, Socialism, and Democracy. [edit] Voluntary transfer of wealth Charity is a common method of shifting wealth from those who have it to those who do not. [edit] Forced transfer of wealth Some methods for this are: welfare, slavery, taxation, inflation, devaluation, government policies, or theft [edit] See also * Income redistribution --------------

To: thames_sider who wrote (90378)	10/16/2008 6:22:40 PM
From: Mary Cluney	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 541778

<<<I agree many people do seem to feel that someone else owes them a living, without return, and I do resent it>>> Who cares what some people may think? All sorts of people think all sorts of thoughts. No one is suggesting that everyone is entitled to everything anybody else is getting. But, Are social and economic rights foreign to American traditions? Are they inconsistent with our laissez-faire freedom-loving culture? Consider a defining moment in our nation's history, when national security was also threatened and when an American president argued that freedom itself required social and economic rights. In our own day, we should be paying close attention to his arguments. On January 11, 1944, the United States was involved in its longest conflict since the Civil War. The war effort was going well. At noon, America's optimistic, aging, wheelchair-bound president, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, sent the text of his State of the Union address to Congress. Ill with a cold, Roosevelt did not make the customary trip to Capitol Hill to appear in person. Instead, he spoke to the nation via radio -- the first and only time a State of the Union address was also a "fireside chat." Roosevelt began by emphasizing that "the one supreme objective for the future" -- for all nations -- was captured "in one word: security." He argued that the term "means not only physical security which provides safety from attacks by aggressors" but includes as well "economic security, social security, moral security." Roosevelt insisted that "essential to peace is a decent standard of living for all individual men and women and children in all nations. Freedom from fear is eternally linked with freedom from want." Roosevelt said that the nation "cannot be content, no matter how high that general standard of living may be, if some fraction of our people -- whether it be one-third or one-fifth or one-tenth -- is ill-fed, ill-clothed, ill-housed, and insecure." Roosevelt looked back, and not entirely approvingly, to the framing of the Constitution. At its inception, the nation had grown "under the protection of certain inalienable political rights -- among them the right of free speech, free press, free worship, trial by jury, freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures." But, he added, over time, "we have come to a clear realization of the fact that true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence." As Roosevelt saw it, "necessitous men are not free men," not least because those who are hungry and jobless "are the stuff out of which dictatorships are made." He echoed the words of the Declaration of Independence, urging a kind of Declaration of Interdependence: "In our day these economic truths have become accepted as self-evident. We have accepted, so to speak, a second Bill of Rights under which a new basis of security and prosperity can be established for all -- regardless of station, race, or creed."