'SHARE THE WEALTH' WITH THE WORLD?
By PETER SCHWEIZER
Obama: Wants big hikes in foreign-aid spending.
Posted: 5:00 am
November 1, 2008
Barack Obama doesn't simply want to "spread the wealth around" here in America: He's on record as favoring redistribution on a global scale.
As the Democrat explained last year in Foreign Affairs, he thinks we need to be "sharing more of our riches to help those in need" around the world and promised to double American foreign assistance. He also proposed a multibillion-dollar Global Education Fund to eliminate what he calls the "global education deficit."
Obama has already acted on these beliefs. In the Senate, he
co-sponsored the Global Poverty Act, which calls on the US to allocate 7/10ths of 1 percent of our GNP to foreign aid and debt relief. (That's $845 billion more than we're now set to spend over the next 13 years.)
When Joe the Plumber explained that he wanted to buy a plumbing business and that high taxes would complicate his plans, Obama explained that the government needed to balance the scales. "I just want to make sure that everybody who is behind you, that they've got a chance for success too. My attitude is that if the economy's good for folks from the bottom up, it's gonna be good for everybody . . . I think when you spread the wealth around, it's good for everybody."
When it comes to global economics Obama has a similar suspicion of business and profit as a source of wealth creation. In his Foreign Affairs essay, he speaks quite a bit about the need for government aid to balance the scales - but little about trade as a source for lifting the developing world out of poverty.
In a statement on the
Global Poverty Act, Obama explained we need to transfer massive amounts of money to the developing world and get "beyond trade agreements that are more about increasing profits than about helping workers and small farmers everywhere."
Profits, in Obama's view, don't help people - they hurt them. Whereas redistribution can fix all kinds of problems - including terrorism, a global scourge that Obama believes is actually a result of inequality.
In a Hyde Park Herald article published eight days after 9/11, Obama (then a state senator) explained the causes of terrorism. After acknowledging that "demagogues and fanatics" can contribute to political violence, he said: "Most often, though, it grows out of a climate of poverty and ignorance, helplessness and despair." In Foreign Affairs, he wrote of global terrorists who "respond to alienation and perceived injustice with murderous nihilism."
Since terrorists are responding to injustices, including disparities in wealth, "sharing our riches," will help them reform. Never mind that most terrorists in the West come from middle class or even affluent homes and are well educated. Or that Mali, is one of the world's poorest countries, has a sizeable Muslim population but doesn't produce terrorists - while wealthy Saudi Arabia churns them out in great numbers.
Obama has almost no experience in the business world (he spent just one year working for a business consultancy) - but plenty of US politicians (including John McCain) have equally slim records. Few, however, are as hostile to the notion of profit - or as committed to redistributing the wealth - both nationally and globally.
Perhaps that's why so many in the world hope Obama wins.
Peter Schweizer is a research fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution. His most recent book is "Makers and Takers."
http://www.nypost.com/seven/11012008...ld__136288.htm