Obama gave his State of the Union address last night and a main thrust of his speech was an issue addressed in a previous post on this blog having to do with economic inequality and justice. He made a variety of comments directed at giving each person a "fair shot" and he insisted that everyone must play by the "same rules." Regardless of one's political leanings, I think it's hard to reject a call for fairness. One might wonder, however, what particular policies are in order to assure such fairness. Obama did offer some particular examples of such policies. These related to tax reform, rules related to politicians owning stock in certain companies, campaign finance reform, etc. I wonder what you think about his suggestions. Also what (other) policy changes do you think are in order?
The difference in coverage of his address is worth noting. Compare, for example, this and this.
[Obama also had a bit to say about energy policy. I plan on writing a post on this topic next month when I cover energy in my Philosophy and Public Issues course. So keep an eye out for that.]
2 comments:
There are many problems with what Obama calls "fairness." For example, the bailout of U.S. auto industries is not what I see as fair. My major is entrepreneurship and one of the things mentioned over and over in my classes is risk. There is a great risk in starting businesses and even some risk in maintaining them. If all of these businesses experience this risk then why should one be protected and another not? I do not think it is right. If Obama is worried about loss of jobs then why is he not giving money away to many small businesses that fail due to a problem such as the auto industry did? I'm sure all of these businesses would add up to more jobs than just a few companies. Either way I do not think it is right to hand money out to businesses whether they are large or small just because of loss of jobs. This is one issue that I wanted to focus on because I found it to be a huge contradiction.
I feel as though Obama should just issues like this alone. I highly doubt that he will actually end up doing any good with trying to change things around so that it becomes more fair. In actuality he will probably end up making it even less fair than it is right now. The world is an unfair place I honestly think that people just need to realize that and get over the fact that there are always going to be people in this world that have things so much easier and have so much more money. Just leave everything the way it is and worry about making prices for things like gas cheaper for Americans. This would be more of a help rather than trying to make things fair.
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