Benj,

in defense of Joe the Plumber,

Joe working on his employeers license (a legal and respected practice that places the responsibility for good plumbing on the contractor) had plans to purchase his employers business which, with multiple employees all working off of the boss’s license, could very easily be in the quarter mil bracket on gross receipts. From that however and all the risks it supposes, President Obama’s tax plan proposed to punish the business for having the audacity to make a good living possible for multiple families while accepting the responsibility to teach and train new plumbers.

In a risk reward system, the greater the risk taken, the greater the reward needs to be or nobody is going to take the risk. There has to be an incentive for training up new plumbers and providing for families beyond a love for plumbing. BTW, there is no way Joe’s boss takes home that 200k amount, for good practice demands that his own take is a percentage with the rest plowed back into the business or under the new regime into payola or protection. To insist a plumber cannot make any amount because he is “just a plumber” is not only highly irresponsible, the continued harping on it as a matter of “common sense” or perhaps some divined absolute that plumbers cannot make money because…(insert rational here), shines a spot light on the speakers ignorance and extreme lack of an even basic understanding of economics.

From that I can only conclude that the President does not know he is a Marxist, because he does not understand what what it means to be a Capitalist nor the ramifications of Marxism, even in a limited form, a la EU. Probably the greatest result of the EU and other countries adoption of socialism is the entrepreneurial brain drain that results in the best seeking to emigrate to the US.