All Economics Is Redistributionist

E. J. Dionne writes that income redistribution is behind Obama's new budget:

[Obama's] overall approach to taxes is frankly redistributionist: Even as much of the middle class gets a tax cut or no increase, the well-off will pay more. And before the howling on the right gets too loud, consider that we have just gone through a long era involving a far less frank form of redistribution -- upward.

"Over the past two or three decades, the top 1 percent of Americans have experienced a dramatic increase from 10 percent to more than 20 percent in the share of national income that's accruing to them," said Peter Orszag, Obama's budget director. Now, he said, was their time "to pitch in a bit more."

It needs to be said that Reaganomics was also redistributionist, only in the other direction, from the average person to the wealthy, after 50 years of New Deal economics. (Granted that the natural laws of capitalism lean toward the rich benefitting more, which is why in a democratic state, capitalism has to be kept under control.) Considering that, this is just a little justice, now overdue.