Sunday, November 02, 2008

Your money

Here, President-elect Obama shows a dramatic misunderstanding of the mechanisms of our economic system. At a rally in Missouri, he said this. Emphasis mine.
"Exxon-Mobil announced that it had made the greatest profits of any corporation in the history of the world: $14 billion in one quarter. That's all your money."
That's all your money.

No, sadly, it's not. Unless you own equity in Exxon-Mobil, that's not your money. You traded money for goods or services and Exxon-Mobil is very good at what they do.

If you are in a retirement plan, some of that might be your money.

If you work for a state government and your retirement fund allows equities, then some of that might be your money.

Otherwise, it's not. It belongs to the shareholders at Exxon-Mobil.

If you think I'm taking the quote out of context, go ahead and read the whole paragraph. He's making a point, I understand that, but while making a larger point, he misrepresents the entire free market. And that misreprentation, I think, is in keeping with his world view. He's said it time and time again. When he told Joe the Plumber he wants to share the wealth. When he told the Missouri crowd that the Exxon-Mobil profits belong to the people. Barack Obama is a socialist. He's a great politician. He's wonderfully motivating, but he's a socialist. He's a rich socialist, too, and they tend to be the worst. Rich socialists believe that their money is their money and everyone else's money should be used to spread the wealth.

Obama's got plenty of money to help people, but he'd rather use the tax dollar. Obama could help his aunt, his half-brother, he could lift them from poverty, but he doesn't do it. That's his money. He'd rather use the public dole.

He scares the hell out of me.

1 comment:

Rivrdog said...

PawPaw, I also heard that speech, and what I got out of it was an explicit threat to write law that would seize most of those profits.

If he can do that to oil companies, he will be able to do it to anyone, because cyclic market conditions put the possibility of large profits on the ledgers of ANY well run company in ANY sector of business.

How to kill capitalism in one easy step: excess profits law.