Via Matt, Hendrik Hertzberg in The New Yorker:
The Republican argument of the moment seems to be that the difference between capitalism and socialism corresponds to the difference between a top marginal income-tax rate of 35 per cent and a top marginal income-tax rate of 39.6 per cent.
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Which means we’ve already lived through socialism: Obama is proposing the tax rates that existed 1998-2000 under the Clinton Administration (39.6% top marginal federal income tax rate; 20% top federal capital gains tax rate). Incidentally, the top capital gains rate actually got LOWERED during the Clinton years; Reagan’s 1986 tax reform treated capital gains like regular income, which meant it was taxed at a top rate of 28%. The rate got lowered in 1997 to 20%. The only reason the return to Clinton-era tax rates is being hyped as “socialism” is that these rates got dropped by the Bush tax cuts — which John McCain voted against. He and Chafee were the only Republican senators to do so.
Though I agree with the gist of your comments, PG, It’s worth nothing that the argument, “It’s not socialism, after all Clinton did it too,” just might not hold weight with the kind of delusional right-wingers who actually believe Obama is a socialist. I mean, for them, that’s like saying, “It’s not all that evil. After all, Beelzebub did it too!”
—Myca
Myca,
I suppose I mention that because it indicates that the U.S. had its longest peacetime economic expansion, the explosion of the tech industry and a surge in the stock market all during “socialist” tax policies. But you’re right that I’m probably giving too much credit for logical thought by making this argument; if someone just equates “socialist” with “evil” instead of realizing that it is a specific kind of economic policy, saying that we had it under Clinton probably will just make them think that Obama can’t keep his pants zipped either.