Thursday, October 16, 2008

Obama's Intertemporal Wealth Redistribution: A Reponse to Kotecki

It appears that James Kotecki has uncovered a diabolical plot by presidential candidate Barack Obama (pronounced "o-BAM!-uh" by non-elitists) to travel through time in order to redistribute money from today's citizens to individuals in need of assistance in the past.



The implications of this discovery are astonishing, but I think that Kotecki has only scratched the surface of the truth. If Obama had in fact taken money from Joe the Plumber in the future and given it to Joe the Plumber in the past, I think it would be unlikely that we would find Joe the Plumber in his current state, which is deeply entrenched in his very obviously anti-redistributive worldview:



If the money taken from Joe the Plumber in the future had in fact been going to Joe the Plumber in the Past, we would expect Joe the Plumber to be happy about it, rather than resistant. It seems reasonable to think that as people gain more money, the utility derived from the marginal units would generally drop. So Joe the Plumber would be rational to want to allocate some of his future wealth to his past self, who likely would have been made much better off for it (unless the increased wealth in the past led him to work less, decreasing the amount of money he would eventually be able to send back to himself in the past through Barack Obama's redistributive plan). Joe's resistance to the plan suggests that Obama did not actually follow through on his promise to travel back in time to bring Joe's future wealth to his former self (or that the plan didn't work as planned, but I would expect Joe to raise a different sort of objection in that case).

This has apparently led Kotecki to posit a parallel universe theory of "time travel," where Obama's travel "through time" is in fact a jump from our universe to a universe identical to ours except in that it's four years younger. But if Obama were doing this, then the separateness of these universes would mean that the Joe the Plumber receiving the money would be a different person than the Joe the Plumber receiving the money. Now, given that Obama appears to be in favor of redistribution across individuals, it's likely that this would not trouble him. But what if Obama's time traveling power allowed him to actually travel through time, and not just travel to parallel universes?

Given that Obama has clearly not used this power like he's promising -- to redistribute wealth over time -- what has Obama been doing in the past? I think the answer can be teased out through a sober assessment of the evidence. Please skip to the 6:30 mark in the following video:



I think it's clear that there's almost no reason that it should ever have occurred to anyone that Sarah Palin would be a good candidate for Vice President. Of course, no one is a good candidate for being allowed to wield the kind of power granted to today's government officials. But if one did support electoral politics in its current form, it would seem odd to advocate significant power being put in the hands of someone with almost no visible understanding of any substantive issue that even approaches what one could achieve from reading most of the newspapers and magazines in existence.



So I think the puzzle pieces should be coming together by now. Obama reveals an ability to travel back in time, but does not seem to have used it in the way that he suggests that he would, and somewhere in America a few years ago, some random guy starts vigorously advocating the selection of an attractive but unknown and almost entirely uncompelling governor to public office. Coincidence? I don't think so. That Barack HUSSEIN Obama done gone wint back in time 'n showed that boy some pageant vidjuhs!



Looks like someone would rather mess with the space-time continuum than lose an election.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Kotecki errs in thinking Obama said he would cut taxes in the past - what he said was that if his plan had been in place back then, Joe would have kept more of his earnings and therefore been able to save and buy the business sooner (assuming that the owner has any plans to sell and Joe plans to become a plumber).

But nice work on your part.

Danny said...

I'm not sure I follow; isn't Obama's plan to cut taxes for people like past Joe the Plumber?

Unknown said...

This is a ridiculous response to one of the most ridiculous, and unfunny Video Bloggers on the web-o-sphere. Please do us all a favor and ignore Kotecki and maybe he'll act like the ugly chick at the lunch table and just go away to cry to himself in a corner.

Danny said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Danny Shahar said...

I must say, you are truly an impressive hater. Not only have you apparently been keeping tabs on Kotecki's blog, but you have been doing so with such focus that you managed to discover my response to his blog, read it, and throw down some hate over here as well. Bravo, sir; the tubernets could use more people of your stature. I therefore nominate you for Haterade Hater of the Week.

john smith said...

The First 7 Years of The Policy, or The NAV as Applicable on The End of The Policy Term. useful reference

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