To the Editor:
In “The Bipartisan March to Fiscal Madness” (Op-Ed, April 24), David A. Stockman comes close to expressing the most reasonable public viewpoint on the financial madness of the budget battle. But it’s still pretty far from the mark.
He worries that “we are about to descend into class war” but fails to recognize that his own damning figures on the redistribution of wealth show that the class war is well under way, if not already over. In fact, the Citizens United decision may have been the treaty of surrender.
In an interview in February, Bill O’Reilly asked President Obama about the impression that he believes in the redistribution of wealth. The president missed a fantastic opportunity to set the terms of the debate by pointing out that the wealth has already been redistributed. When I voted for him, that’s the kind of courage I hoped he would exhibit. But who can blame him now, with the endless disinformation and bullying from the right?
I worry that we’ve been talking about the wrong “entitlements.” Compare the expectation of a comfortable retirement, treatment for your cancer or an education for your child to the right to be ultra-rich or the right of a corporation to pay low or no taxes. That is the choice of values before us now in the two competing budget plans.
STUART BERNSTEIN
New York, April 24, 2011
Note from KBJ: What does the letter writer mean when he says that "the wealth has already been redistributed"? To whom, by whom? When people say that they oppose wealth redistribution, they mean they oppose government taking their wealth without their permission and distributing it to others.
Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D. 