I think Joe the Plumber makes a lot of good points. No, he may not get them across as eloquently as someone else might, but that doesn't give them any less validation.
Here's how I see it. Most people want to vote for a candidate they can relate to on some level...I can't say I blame them, it only makes sense. More often than not, candidates will use every day people to help show some tie to the public to earn more votes. Here's where Joe fell short when it came to this:
There are millions of self-employed individuals in the U.S., there are many more who have legitimate aspirations to be self-employed and run and own their own small business. Now it was these people that could relate to Joe and McCain was going to get there votes any way. The rest, which make up the majority of the U.S. are not self-employed, they will never own their own small business and therefore cannot relate to the types of things Joe was saying, no matter how true they might be.
One of Joe's biggest qualms, the main one we heard about was "Distribution of Wealth." Obviously for this to happen, taxes must go up and although Obama swears that they will not go up for the middle class, he has called for tax increases on small business owners, for some reason small business owners or the self-employed are automatically equated with being rich.
Now, for those that do not know because they are not self-employed, if you are self-employed you pay more taxes...there is actually something called the "self-employment penalty." If you work for an employer you part of your taxed income is automatically 7.5% while your employer matches the other 7.5%. If you are self-employed you pay the entire 15%. Then the rest of your taxes owed as far as total percentage fall under the bracket of how much income you actually bring in. If you are self-employed and make one dollar over the poverty line you automatically fall under one of the highest percentage brackets there is, even though you are obviously not a rich man. Someone working for a company, not self-employed making 4x the amount you do, falls into the same bracket.
Now, what is part of Obama's plan? He is going to raise the amount of taxes small business and self-employed people such as myself have to pay. As a self-employed individual, who is by no means a rich man, how can I like or support this when it will make things even harder for me? Obama's main point to everything is relief for middle America. I'm middle America and the plan he has laid out could very well destroy my pocket book. Taxes are already a major pain in the butt for me and something that is very hard and difficult. And now it has the chance of getting even worse.
