As Michael Kinsley notes, John McCain has been busy hammering Obama on his off-the-cuff comment (to "Joe" the "Plumber") about 'spreading the wealth around' ":
John McCain thinks Obama's "spread the wealth" comment is a major gotcha. He has locked his chops around this remark like a terrier around Obama's ankle and keeps repeating it. He regards it as self-evidently self-damning. On Meet the Press, McCain ducked Tom Brokaw's invitation to agree or disagree with Sarah Palin that Obama is a "socialist." But a day later McCain brandished a radio interview from seven years ago in which Obama had used the term redistributive change.
Besides the fact that it is a churlish and likely-futile meme, it disregards an important fact: Sometimes, spreading the wealth around is good (and I say this as someone who will likely be spreading wealth around -- a bit -- to others, if Obama wins).
We lived in Denmark for 3 years. One statistic the Danes are especially proud of is the fact that 97% of the population there is 'middle class'. That is an astounding statistic. It means that they have no extreme poor and few extremely rich. They also consistently rank at or near the top in things like 'happiness index' which merely polls people and asks them how happy they are. This is in spite of the fact that virtually everyone there pays > 50% in income tax to the government, which is a huge number. They get many services in return such as cradle-to-grave healthcare, fully-paid education from kindergarten through university and more, but it is still a significant tax burden.
Now, I would say that Denmark is clearly 'socialist' (even though it is also considered an attractive location for business due to a progressive business tax structure) and I don't think their system would apply directly here in the US. But there is a middle ground to be struck between European-style social democracy and the laissez-faire systems of, say, South America. Kinsley, again:
Although it was an off-the-cuff remark and one that Obama probably regrets, he actually put it well, avoiding the suggestion of envy or class war, which are the usual accusations about such talk. Spreading it around is "good for everybody," he says. And who disagrees? Or would you like to live behind locked gates and hire guards to protect your family from kidnapping, as in places where they spread it around even less than here?
Any place there are great disparities in wealth, there will be increases in crime. You can see this firsthand in large cities such as New York, where there are people living in refrigerator boxes on the sidewalk next to very expensive Central Park hotels (I witnessed this firsthand, not long ago). Besides the fact that it is morally reprehensible to ignore these facts, it is in our own self-interest in more peaceful lives to help ameliorate these problems.
