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nextnewdeal.net — In this electoral season, the role of government in the United States has become an important issue. Surveys reveal that most Americans don’t like government, especially the federal government. And yet they want the things that government provides, such as defense, law and order, safe food and drugs, clean air, pure water, education, flood relief, health care, etc. For many years I taught about the role of government in different countries at Harvard Business School. Many of my students came from outside the United States. They were perplexed by the disdain, indeed disrespect, for government displayed by their American classmates. “It seems odd,” they said, “that you Americans loudly proclaim to the world the virtues of your political process, urging the rest of us to copy you, while at home you deplore the government which that process produces. And it’s not so much the policies that you decry as it is the institution itself.”

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prospect.org — If Romney were genuinely opposed to redistribution, his plan would eliminate progressivity from the tax code—the after-tax incomes of all Americans would match their share of national income. He would also show greater hostility to social insurance programs, including Medicare and Social Security. Indeed, his promise to “restore $716 billion to Medicare” makes no sense for someone who has presented himself as a committed anti-redistributionist. By virtue of holding public office, Romney will be involved in redistribution if elected president. The question is who benefits from it. On the surface, his tax plan maintains the status quo of redistributing from the rich to everyone else. But when coupled with his large cuts to existing social services — including repeal of the Affordable Care Act and huge cuts to Medicaid — it amounts to a massive scheme of upwards redistribution, from ordinary Americans to the wealthy.

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