When all else fails, count on the Right to raise the red flag of ‘Class Warfare’. Barack Obama’s comment to ‘Joe the plumber’ about “spreading the wealth around” was quickly seized by McCain to accuse him of Socialism. In light of the trillion plus dollar bailout and government ownership of failing banks by a Republican Administration, voted by McCain himself, this charge on the face of it seems desperate and hypocritical. But it’s more than that! It reflects a selfish attitude that only the 5% of Americans are entitled to the country’s wealth and any attempt to ’spread the wealth around’ will unfairly leave the privileged wealthy less wealthy. Underlying this view is the feeling that such exorbitant wealth was earned only through hard work and exceptional intelligence.

Don’t misunderstand my position. I have great admiration and respect for all great achievements of any human being. I am as reverent of our great thinkers (Pythagoras, Newton, Einstein and so many other great geniuses whose intellectual products are the heirloom of all Mankind), as I am of capable entrepreneurs that can create great wealth. And I would never advocate ‘taking from the rich’ to ‘give to the poor’. But even the greatest achievements do not happen ‘in a vacuum’. That even the most successful entrepreneurs do not make their money in isolation and all by themselves. They need an Economy and a Political System and Intellectual Products and Technology that make wealth possible. They need a country that functions well and a social order which carries with it socioeconomic costs to maintain. When a factory pollutes our environment we all suffer and pay. When a factory moves overseas for cheap labor and unregulated operations it leaves behind much ’social pollution’ with costly consequences for all of us. The natural resources used by private businesses took nature an eternity to produce and their use depletes all of us now and forever. These are costs to business operations that are never accounted in Free Market Economics. We need a ‘Cost of Everything Accounting’ to measure true earnings of individuals.

Not all of the ‘wealth amassed’ is ‘wealth produced’ with real products in the real economy. Much of the recent wealth made in Wall Street is only made ‘on paper’, often overnight without any ‘real wealth’ added to our Economy. Yet this ‘paper wealth’ can buy real goods and services. It can send kids to expensive schools and buy houses in the best of neighborhoods. This is one way you get redistribution of wealth from ‘the bottom up’ –- wealth going to the ‘rich’ taken from the ‘rest’. Every ‘financial bubble and burst’ is a redistribution of wealth with nothing of real value added to our economy. There are other ways as well that wealth gets distributed through government policies, including the unregulated manifold leveraging by Investment Banks of ‘real money’ to ’borrowed money’. Simply stated, policies and practices put in place by Republican pro-business political thinking has created a system that has polarized our country and our Economy. This systemic redistribution of wealth to the top 5% is the true ‘class warfare’ that is now bringing down our Economy. But it is not the ‘class warfare’ that McCain is ‘fighting’. McCain is just not fighting for us or our country. Sadly, he’s adding to our economic woes (“McCain: more bull, more pork, more risky“) and does not understand that we are all connected. When imbalances in our Economy are allowed to persist for a long time we’re all at risk and suffer (“The Wall Street Meltdown and the Collapsing Middle Class“). Obama clearly understands this and is the reason why he is running for President. McCain is just running!