In the last lap of his campaign, john mccain is claiming that barack obama "believes in redistributing wealth." The problem with this charge is not that it's untrue. It's that McCain - along with most of his supporters - favors redistribution, too. Government redistributes wealth to some extent by its very existence, since it's impractical for citizens to pay for or benefit from it in equal proportion, even if that were desirable. So long as you have a system of taxation and spending on public goods like education and roads, some people will do better out of the bargain than others. The real questions are whether public policy consciously tries to affect the distribution of wealth, and how much it tries to change it and in what direction.
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