Socialism and Communism at its best * ELECTION 2008* 2 socialists for price of 1? *Michelle Obama's 'give up piece of pie' remark invokes Marxism * Posted: November 03, 2008 9:47 pm Eastern © 2008 WorldNetDaily While Sen. Barack Obama has caught flak for his socialist-sounding remarks about "spreading the wealth around," his wife's own Marxist-tinged rhetoric has gone largely unnoticed. During an April campaign stop in Harrisburg, N.C., Michelle Obama spoke with a group of about 50 working moms who were having a hard time making ends meet, including some who complained about health-care benefits. Obama said the rich would have to start giving up more income http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=79977/lto pay for health care for everybody. "The truth is, in order to get things like universal health care and a revamped education system, then someone is going to have to give up a piece of their pie so that someone else can have more," Obama said. Her remark, quoted by the Charlotte Observer, did not make national news. In fact, a search of the Nexis database of media citations turned up a total of just five references to the remark in periodicals, wire services, broadcasts and newspapers, including the Observer. Mrs. Obama's pie metaphor did not sit well with many residents of Charlotte. "Michelle Obama says enacting universal health care will mean 'someone is going to have to give up a piece of their pie so that someone else can have more.' I find that attitude worrisome. If my neighbor's possessions are better than mine, am I entitled to take his property so that we're equally furnished?" asked Brooke S. Dickson of Charlotte. "I shudder at how big a slice of the pie Ms. Obama and her husband have in mind." Barack Obama, meanwhile, has called for "major redistributive change." Critics say both Obamas believe the American economy is a fixed quantity, like a pie, in which the rich get richer at the expense of others, and it's up to government to redistribute wealth to bring about "fairness" in the system. Economists call such thinking "zero-sum economics," a central tenet of Marxism, which believes capitalism breeds classism and static economic stations. Redistributing wealth is "a principle as basic as apple pie," Sen. Obama told ABC News anchor Charlie Gibson. However, GDP figures showing dynamic growth in the overall U.S. economy refute the notion of finite wealth. And Federal Reserve income data defy notions of a fixed class system in America. A recent Treasury Department study examining such data found considerable income mobility of individuals in the U.S. economy from 1996 to 2005, with more than half of taxpayers moving to a different income quintile over the period. In fact, roughly half of taxpayers who began in the bottom income quintile in 1996 moved up to a higher income group by 2005, while many of the richest fifth slid to lower income groups. + Get "The Audacity of Deceit," and learn about the looming hostile attack on Judeo-Christian values and freedoms Americans hold dear + Overall, economic growth resulted in rising incomes for most taxpayers over the 10-year period. "If my real income does not fall, how am I hurt when Bill Gates makes another billion dollars?" asked economist Bruce Bartlett, a critic of higher taxes on the rich. "We don't want to be equally poor." Sen. Obama argues that wealth does not "trickle down" when taxes are cut at the top. But his critics say his plan to soak the rich, particularly in a recession, will only result in "trickle-up poverty." Unlike Bill Clinton, Obama has not presented himself and his wife as a buy-one-get-one-free proposition. The Clintons were criticized for operating a co-presidency. However, Michelle Obama has strong views and like her husband is a trained lawyer. She drew criticism earlier in the year when she said on the stump that, "For the first time in my adult life, I am proud of my country," before adding "really proud" later on. Then she damned business as "the money-making industry" and encouraged young people to go into "the helping industry" like she and her husband did. Visiting a day-care center in Zanesville, Ohio, the would-be first lady advised the women there not to "go into corporate America." "Become teachers," she counseled. "Work for the community. Be social workers." "Those are the careers we need," she added. "And we're encouraging our young people to do that. But if you make that choice, as we did, to move out of the moneymaking industry into the helping industry, then your salaries respond." Actually, Mrs. Obama made plenty of money in the private sector, or "money-making industry," as she calls it. She received 7,500 stock options worth $53,500 last year from Treehouse Foods, whose biggest customer is Wal-Mart. And she earned $38,000 as a Treehouse board director - on top of the more than $300,000 a year she banks as "vice president of community and external affairs" for the University of Chicago Medical Center. Sen. Obama, meanwhile, has earned millions from his books. The couple donates less than 1 percent of their income to charity.