"To be honest with you, that infuriates me," plumber Joe Wurzelbacher told Nightline's Terry Moran. "It's not right for someone to decide you made too much---that you've done too good and now we're going to take some of it back."
"That's just completely wrong," he added.
I agree with Joe that people who are smarter or who work harder should be able to enjoy the fruits of their labors. A system such as Socialism can remove the incentive to try harder from people's lives. Why should I bust my ass if the government is gonna just give you a house and food too, for just skating through life?
Democracy has a fatal flaw though. People become so rich, they are able to then use their immense power to unfairly influence the system. Whether it be the unfairness of our so called Justice System or the lobbyists of industry bribing our legislators, the whole system becomes skewed in favor of those with the most money. We become so enthralled with our Party of choice that we ignore these sins and that is how our leaders end up handing a trillion dollars to the people who are their largest contributors. These leaders take part in the passion play of fear that frightens us into believing that we must do something, even when it's something that throws good money after bad. The media is no longer the watchdog that the 4th Estate was intended to be. They now have a vested interest in appeasing our legislators and the media is also the final recipient of most of those campaign donations.
Joe the Plumber thinks that nobody should pay more taxes. He's like the children who have no concept of where the money their parents give them comes from. We are 50 trillion dollars in debt, when you consider all that we are responsible for.
Now that the banking manipulations have been exposed, China and the rest of the world won't be so willing to pay for our constant spending. We will be forced to simply start printing money out of thin air and this will trigger a whole new crisis. Even without a war in Iraq, we still have 700 military bases around the world to support and highway and sewage and fresh water systems throughout the country that are rapidly deteriorating.
We are going to have to tax someone, whether Joe the Plumber likes it or not. Why should the rich take on this burden? Because they can afford it. Look at the prices of a wide variety of collectibles. They are through the roof. Paintings that most people have never even heard of are selling for tens of millions of dollars in bidding frenzies. In an economy where even the rich may be delaying some purchases, sales of the Rolls Royce increased 5% over last year while we have many tens of millions of working people who are living paycheck to paycheck, on the verge of homelessness, should even a minor crisis tip them over the edge.
Some things about Democracy are great but many people have far more than they need to live a life of luxury. We can see with companies like AIG how the rich are showered with yet more riches, even when they are dismal failures. This is done with impunity. The system has failed.
As bad as it sounds, Obama does need to spread the wealth around.