Friday, October 31, 2008

Sarah Palin the Socialist?

Pretty brilliant argument.

I can't say it better than this week's New Yorker:

"For her part, Sarah Palin, who has lately taken to calling Obama 'Barack the Wealth Spreader,' seems to be something of a suspect character herself. She is, at the very least, a fellow-traveller of what might be called socialism with an Alaskan face. The state that she governs has no income or sales tax. Instead, it imposes huge levies on the oil companies that lease its oil fields. The proceeds finance the government’s activities and enable it to issue a four-figure annual check to every man, woman, and child in the state."

[...]

A few weeks before she was nominated for Vice-President, she told a visiting journalist—Philip Gourevitch, of this magazine—that “we’re set up, unlike other states in the union, where it’s collectively Alaskans own the resources. So we share in the wealth when the development of these resources occurs.”

Perhaps there is some meaningful distinction between spreading the wealth and sharing it (“collectively,” no less), but finding it would require the analytic skills of Karl the Marxist.

http://www.newyorker.com/talk/comment/2008/11/03/081103taco_talk_hertzberg

1 comment:

Red said...

wasn't this article great? i'm glad to see you're reading the new yorker, like any good man should.