Thomas Sowell is so smart.

One of the most naive notions is that politicians are trying to solve the country's problems, just because they say so-- or say so loudly or inspiringly.

Politicians' top priority is to solve their own problem, which is how to get elected and then re-elected. Barack Obama is a politician through and through, even though pretending that he is not is his special strategy to get elected.
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Perhaps a defining moment in showing Senator Obama's priorities was his declaring, in answer to a question from Charles Gibson, that he was for raising the capital gains tax rate. When Gibson reminded him of the well-documented fact that lower tax rates on capital gains had produced more actual revenue collected from that tax than the higher tax rates had, Obama was unmoved.

The question of how to raise more revenue may be the economic issue but the political issue is whether socking it to "the rich" in the name of "fairness" gains more votes.

Posted by: Sarah at 08:30 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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1 I don't see the need to throw EVERY politician under the bus just to prove the point about Obama. Yea, yea I know they all suck, blah, blah...whatever.

Posted by: tim at July 17, 2008 11:31 AM (nno0f)

2 Tim...obviously, some are much better than others. But an important and often-forgotten point is that politicians & government officials are themselves economic actors rather than pure-hearted referees. I think leftists and even traditional liberals often tend to think of "the government" as being comprised of idealized parent-figures, rather than understanding that these are just humans who respond to incentives.

Posted by: david foster at July 17, 2008 12:05 PM (ke+yX)

3 I cringe everytime I hear Obama talk about a "fair" economy...that's the big code word for taxing the "rich" and transferring the wealth to the government. It makes my stomach turn and it angers me that he gets cheers after saying that. I heard Mitt Romney speak the other day and the only thing I could think was, "Only if..."

Posted by: Nicole at July 17, 2008 01:02 PM (sBJ2p)

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