2016 Postmortem
Showing Original Post only (View all)George McGovern strongly called for the redistribution of income -- and lost 49 states to 1. [View all]
He called for a guaranteed minimum income and ran as the candidate who wouldn't drag America into any more unnecessary wars.
He was a wonderful man who had the fervent support of million of young people.
And he got slaughtered in the general election by Richard Nixon.
And so when Bernie calls for redistribution of income, many of us here an echo of a another candidate we loved, but who didn't have a chance in the general.
ON UPDATE: Ten years later, Walter Mondale honestly stated that both he and his opponent, Ronald Reagan, would need to raise taxes -- but Mondale's tax increase would not go to the rich but to improving everyone's lives. Reagan pretended he wouldn't be raising taxes. Mondale lost by 49 states to 1.
ON UPDATE: More than half of our states have Republican governors and most of them rejected free Federal dollars for Medicaid expansion. So I don't buy the argument that the times today are much more friendly to a candidate who pushes for the redistribution of income. It isn't a coincidence that tea party super pacs spent millions on ads against Hillary in the last few months, in an effort to help Bernie win. They view him as a much easier opponent in the general.
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/1972/05/04/george-mcgovern-on-taxing-redistributing-income/
George McGovern: On Taxing & Redistributing Income
George McGovern and Wassily Leontief MAY 4, 1972 ISSUE
INTRODUCTION
George McGoverns proposals for tax reform and redistribution of income, originally released in January and published here in slightly revised form, should be read and reread by every one of the more than one hundred million Americans who dropped in the mailbox last Saturday or Sunday, with mixed feelings of civic pride and desperation, their income tax returns for 1971. McGoverns brief statement contains more hard common sense and practical wisdom than the tired platitudes and inconclusive technical disquisitions that fill the 300 pages of the Presidents Economic Report, which was transmitted to the Congress a few days after Senator McGovern made his program public.
The distribution of income is clearly emerging as the issue that will dominate the American political scene in the closing quarter of this century. The share that each member of our society receives in the immense and still swelling stream of goods and services produced annually by the American economy not only largely determines the level of satisfaction of his daily needs but also provides means for attaining many, if not all, of his highest aspirations. But more than this, under our political institutions the income and the amount of wealth controlled by any one group, in relation to other groups, determines decisively the power it can wield in influencing, not to say in directing, all government activities.
Twenty-five percent of the total gross national income is controlled directly by the government, and a much larger proportion indirectly. It is not surprising that by exercising a decisive influence on government policy, particularly in the economic sphere, a small group of citizens controlling a disproportionately high share of the national income and a still greater share of the national wealth has been capable of defending its economic and political dominance against all assaults.
In view of the close interdependence among all the parts of the modern industrial economy, the distribution of income and of wealth naturally depends, to some extent, on every one of its social and economic institutions. However, the power of the government to levy taxes, to borrow and to print money, and to use this immense purchasing power in any way it sees fit has long been recognized as one of the most effective means of bringing about a distribution of income compatible with the prevailing standards of social justiceor as an equally effective means of thwarting attempts to do so.
SNIP