In response to the “47 percent” fracas, Mitt Romney has decided to come out swinging: There’s an Obama tape too! One in which Obama says he believes in redistribution!

The tape (audio this time, not video) dates to 1998. Just to give you some context: This was back when Romney was still pro-choice, still pro-gun control, still pro-stem cell research, and still in favor of gays serving openly in the military. It was five years before Romney would, as Massachusetts governor, voice private opposition to Bush’s tax cuts and refrain from supporting them in public, and a mere six years after Romney cast a primary ballot for the Democrat Paul Tsongas. Saving Private Ryan was 1998’s big movie, and the top song was “Too Close” by Next. Best-selling books included The Greatest Generation and The Death of Outrage. Eldridge Cleaver died that year, along with Barry Goldwater and Henry Steele Commager; Bob Hope and Leni Riefenstahl would hang on a few more years. Mark Zuckerberg was 14, Justin Bieber was 4, and Elle Fanning was born that April. Everybody was “Gettin’ Jiggy Wit It.”

Now that we’ve set the stage, here’s what Obama said in 1998: “I think the trick is figuring out, how do we structure government systems that pool resources and hence facilitate some redistribution, because I actually believe in redistribution, at least at a certain level, to make sure that everybody’s got a shot.”

Whatever the context of the original statement, it’s worth asking: Is Obama still a redistributionist, “at least at a certain level,” today?

In the sense that he’s governed during a period of growing income equality, he definitily isn’t. After all, incomes have grown more unequal under Obama. The Gini index, a leading indicator for income inequality, has risen every year since 2006. In 2008 it was 0.466. In 2011, the last year for which data are available, it was 0.477, marking the largest single-year rise since 1993.