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To: tejek who wrote (3268)	3/5/2009 8:29:33 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 3816

Bush's policies favored the rich. False, overall the government shifted money from the rich to the not-rich under Bush, as it has under every modern presidency. Obama is likely to increase this shift, but that's going further in the same direction, not reversing course. Hence, he is leveling the playing field. The field is tilted towards the poor, they get government support. The rich are (pretty much by definition) the people who managed to outplay others even when the field is tilted against them. If you have the Pittsburgh Steelers playing you local high school, then tilting the field against them doesn't mean they can't easily run up the score anyway. Obama isn't planing to level the playing field, he's planning to tilt it even more. Which might actually make some sense if wealth was a zero sum game, and getting it was a conflict in which the rich where too successful and left too little for the not rich. But we don't have a zero sum game we have a positive sum game. The rich are mostly rich because of wealth they created. If you tilt the playing field more and more, causing them to score less, then the weaker teams on the field also score less. Keep tilting it and everyone falls down and can't score at all.

To: tejek who wrote (3268)	3/5/2009 8:32:10 PM
From: Oeconomicus	1 Recommendation Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 3816

"FACT: Bush's policies favored the rich." Sorry, not fact. Conjecture. And unsupported by fact at that. The facts are that the structure of federal taxes overall (not just income taxes, though true of that, too) has become MORE progressive, not less so, since 2000; and that the shares of the total federal tax burden born by the top 20%, top 10%, top 5% and top 1% of earners have all risen significantly since Bush's "tax cuts for the rich" while the shares of pretax incomes for the top quintile and top 1% are roughly the same. Also, the Gini coefficient (look it up if you don't know) for US household income has been essentially flat since Bush took office through 2007 (the last year BLS reports) after rising singnificantly from 1992 to 2000. See census.gov .