Wow! Looks like I hit a nerve on this one, or rather the candidates have. No one loves to pay taxes - in fact the Gospel lesson in most worship services this weekend will allude to the fact that even in the time of Christ tax collectors were judged pretty harshly! We pay them though because we need the things that they provide as a community. It looks to me like the few people who have the most are benefiting from the current arrangement of things while the rest of us fight with one another and are victimized. Joe the plumber you are a victim too because you aspire to something that looks like it is beyond your reach while you struggle to be satisfied with what you have. I read somewhere that the plumber said all he really wants is a house, a bass boat and a couple of guns. That seems like a reasonable dream but there is more to life Joe. I think that the current state of affairs has shown us that we are all in the same ‘boat’ together and someone needs to speak up for the folks who are up the creek without a paddle…

I would just add that “What is best for me” may mean taking a job that I don’t like, working or working harder, saving or saving more and spending less.

Stay tuned, by the way: next week I plan to report to you here about a meeting I recently attended with a pension planner about health care insurance and also a lunch I plan to have with a Christian CEO of a brokerage firm.

From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs. Right Pastor?

Scott, I guess I don’t quite get what your trying to say. I don’t want to know what your income is and will not tell what mine is. I have been in a small to medium size business for 24 years now. I’m a registered Republican and donate to many organizations including the Republican party. Your comment is totally unfounded and I can assure you that I will not starve not matter what anyone else is eating. I hope you are not in any kind of retail business with your nasty attitude. I can’t even figure out why you came back with such foolish comments. I think you need to read my post again. There is something there that you are not getting.

Just for the record, Scott isn’t deleting comments. I am. Got a problem, take it up with me. If you follow the Rules of the Road, you can have all the First Amendment rights you want — including criticizing me. But if you make personal attacks, use racist hate speech, go off topic, your comment will be deleted.

Now, review the Rules of the Road…the link is on every post, just below the comment box. Let’s get back to the point.

I Predict,

Shouldn’t you stop reading the Post if you hate it so? Or do you really like it and are just afraid to let your liberal self show?

Of course, all information must be viewed in partisan terms and Rev. Scott is a Thought Nazi as long as he says and acts in ways that run counter to my partisan view.

Rev. Scott,

Good points, but you should have mentioned that shared prosperity benefits Joe in the long run. The community and the individual are not mutually exclusive. If he’s running his plumbing business, he needs customers and lots of them. If they’re better off, then they can better choose to update their pipes or remodel their bathroom.

‘I contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle.’

Winston Churchill

A lot of the “taxing the wealthiest more = socialism” type of comments seem to be largely based on severe misconceptions and assumptions.

Firstly, many Joe the Plumber supporters are acting like a system of taxation is an entirely new concept never seen in America. Taxation is not socialism folks, it is a key part of Capitalism and it has enabled our country to build itself and prosper. “Taxation without Representation!” was the cry of the revolutionaries, not “Down with Taxes!”

Your elected representatives decide how tax revenue is dispensed and spent, and it is spread among many, many programs that benefit you indirectly and directly. So the belief that Barrack Obama will personally sit in th White House and decide how every tax dollar is spent is laughable.

Which leads to my next point, which is a huge - and false - assumption that the “socialism” argument is built on. The increase in taxes to the wealthiest citizens are not going to be handed to non-working, poor people. Yes, programs that help them may see a revenue increase, but nobody has ever once talked about a massive expansion of welfare. Not once.

What the money will go to is a better health care system, a better education system, public works projects that supply jobs, and innovations in energy and science, all of which will benefit wealthy people as well as the mother of five who doesn’t work.

Right now a huge portion of our tax dollars are being spent in Iraq directly benefiting non-Americans who after years of benefiting from your hard work, cannot even get their own government to get organized and build their own country’s infrastructure. Where’s your outrage over that? And it’s now being spent to benefit a Wall Street that went amuck with greed and corruption. Where’s your outrage over that?

Wealth is NOT being “redistributed” to the non-working poor. That is an utterly false notion planted in your heads by a desperate political campaign. What Obama and Biden are proposing are a changed system of taxing and spending, where money is spent more responsibly and in a way that benefits a broader cross-section of America.

I want my money to be spent educating a child whose family can’t afford to educate him - not bombs and bullets, and not rewarding corruption. That’s not socialism - it’s the right thing to do.