One of Obama’s flaws is that he seems to feel he can’t criticize any current arrangement without vilifying the people involved, whether they are responsible for it or not. Refusing to insure people with preexisting conditions, for example, does not make insurance companies evil. Under current arrangements, they’d be crazy to take on a customer they know will cost them far more than he or she will pay in premiums.
It’s not necessarily evil or even wrong for Romney to have taken advantage of every opportunity to minimize his tax bill. There is a point at which twisting yourself and the regulations into knots to avoid taxes does start to seem unpatriotic, and some of Romney’s tax shelter arrangements may approach that point. His refusal to reveal more than a tiny part of his financial records is suspicious. But the mere fact that he does what he can to pay as little as he can is not…
Meanwhile, if Romney is a free trader at heart, faking a bit of protectionism, Obama seems to be a protectionist at heart, faking a belief in free trade. That quote in the previous paragraph is from Obama, and it shows a fundamental misunderstanding of how markets work. Trade is not a zero-sum game. There isn’t a certain number of manufacturing jobs that will either go to China or Germany, or come to us. We want China and Germany to have lots of manufacturing jobs. The more they have, the richer they are, the better off we will be as well. Beggar-thy-neighbor policies don’t work.
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