DISQUS

Dan · 1 year ago

Will,
I'm more or less with you on the point you make in this post, but I find that column to which you linked, on Obama and the ownership society, pretty unpersuasive.

Obama in 2004 simply wasn't, as you assert, equating "American ideals of ownership, independence, and autonomy with 'Social Darwinism.' He was making the point that the particular phrase, "ownership society," was a way of selling policies that favored the wealthy at the expense of many of the not-so-wealthy.

Now, whether or not the Bush administration econonomic policies have been good or bad for the masses is arguable, but that there are serious arguments to be made against them doesn't seem arguable. That the Bush administration has a pro-corporate worldview, of which reasonable critiques can be made from a liberal perspective, doesn't seem arguable.

I'm with you on the zero-sum inconsistencies in this speech, but your old critique seems glib and unfair.

Will Wilkinson · 1 year ago

Dan, He wasn't critizing Bush's policies in particular, but individually prefunded health and retirement accounts, which are well-tested and proven to work. My argument was and is that if he took his own rhetoric and avowed values seriously, these are the kinds of policies he'd want to enact.

Ben Eng · 1 year ago

Well said, Will. Being a Canadian of Chinese descent, it is I who Americans should actually be afraid of. With my shiny Green Card, I will personally take the most high paying jobs and offshore them all to India.

Oh wait, we're already doing that. :)

Craig · 1 year ago

I agree that the speech was impressive, but do you really think it's 'superficial' to point out that a preacher with whom he has long been closely associated is a racist nut-job?

Dain · 1 year ago

The 'superficiality' of pointing out Obama's association with this guy is no more or less superficial than what happened with Ron Paul.

Why the urge by Wilkinson to sweep Wright under the rug but look at Paul's associations square in the eye?

And I'm inclined to agree with Wright, according to what I've seen. Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Check. 9/11 as consequence of foreign policy coming home to roost? Check.

swells · 1 year ago

Will, I think you mis-interpreted Obama on the point about corporations shipping jobs overseas. I doubt that Obama was really trying to use zero-sum thinking politics outside the borders. What I understood him to be doing was to decry corporations practicing zero-sum thinking in relation to employees here in the states. Now maybe that does inevitability reduce to your point but I don't think that is necessarily the case.