Seizing on comments Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) made to “Joe the Plumber,” Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) campaign has argued that Obama’s economic policies would redistribute the wealth of hard working Americans and provide “just another government giveaway to others.” “The redistribution of wealth is the last thing America needs right now. The goal is not to redistribute wealth, but to create it,” McCain said during an event in Manchester, NH. But as the Tax Policy Center points out, “today’s tax code is riddled with examples of government ‘taking’ money from one taxpayer and giving it to another.” “[F]or decades, government has used the tax code for much more than raising money. These days, redistributing tax revenues are the principal way government encourages people to do what it wants and discourages them from doing what it doesn’t,” TPC wrote. In fact, during the last eight years, President Bush’s regressive economic policies have effectively redistributed the nation’s wealth to the richest Americans. According to a recent report released by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), “the United States has the highest inequality and poverty in the OECD after Mexico and Turkey, and the gap has increased rapidly since 2000.” Unfortunately, McCain’s proposed economic policies would give even more wealth to the richest Americans, exacerbate the nation’s income inequality, and further erode opportunities for social mobility.

From The Progress Report