More on the "S" Word

This from an Amazon disscussion board (I'm quoting it verbatim, with thanks to MDS) . . .

Congressional Quarterly gave this a rare twice over, once for McCain and once for Palin. In both cases they explain that you've been lied to.
McCain: http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2008/oct/27/playing-dirty-s-word
Palin: http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/826/

Few serious policy makers - including McCain - consider progressive taxation socialist. In fact, on the Oct. 26, 2008 edition of NBC's Meet the Press, McCain stood by a comment he made in 2000 that "there's nothing wrong with paying somewhat more" in taxes when you "reach a certain level of comfort." "You put into different, different categories of wealthier people paying, paying higher taxes into different brackets," McCain told host Tom Brokaw, as if to say progressive taxes are a no-brainer.Indeed, progressive taxation has been a cornerstone of American tax policy since the federal government first collected an income tax in 1863. It was based on the Tax Act of 1862, which President Abraham Lincoln signed, and which imposed a "duty of three per centum" on all income over $600, and five percent on income over $10,000.Obama's proposed top tax rate of 39.6 percent, (up from today's 36 percent) is considerably higher than that. But it's not particularly high in the context of modern times; as he pointed out to Wurzelbacher, it's about what top earners paid in the Clinton years. In 1987, the top tax rate was 38.5 percent. In 1944, it was 94 percent for the highest portions of high incomes.So no, Obama's tax increase on those making more than $250,000 would not represent a transformation of the U.S. system of government. His desire to "spread the wealth" through progressive taxation makes him no less a capitalist than McCain, or Lincoln. Palin's allegation that Obama wants to "experiment with socialism" seems designed less to inform than to inflame. That's Pants on Fire wrong.

Amen. Progressive taxation is not socialist, it follows a long tradition of recognizing that the ideas of the "American Dream" and democracy itself depend on a vibrant public sphere and the participation of educated, informed citizens. Jefferson made this argument in our early years, Jacksonian Democrats agreed, as did the "Young Americans," Teddy and Franklin D. Roosevelt, John Maynard Keynes, LBJ and a host of others. It is time that we return to these more sensible views of American Democracy and forever scrap neoliberalism and its blind faith in markets and greed. If too much wealth accumulates in the power of too few, not only does democracy fail but the economy as well.