I crossed paths with Joe the Plumber over the weekend and found him to be a common-sense, down-to-earth guy who knows a lot more than just pipes.
Asked about his exchange with Barack Obama on the candidate's tax plan, he said Mr. Obama was a smooth talker but not a good listener. He seemed mistakenly to think Joe was already making a lot of money, not merely that he hoped someday to own a business that would make over $250,000 a year. "I don't make nearly that much now, but I hope to in the business I buy someday," Mr. Wurzelbacher told me.
Mr. Obama also muffed details of his own tax plan, confusing a small business's revenue and net income, and the tax rate that would apply under his proposals. He also seemed hazy about the Flat Tax, put forward by Steve Forbes and Dick Armey a decade ago, confusing it with proposals for a national sales tax and saying the rate would have to go to 40%. "I was talking about one thing, and he was answering me about something else," Mr. Wurzelbacher recalls.
The Heartland Institute, a free-market think tank in Chicago, points out that a flat tax would let Americans see exactly how much government costs in one easy, transparent and accountable tax. Mr. Obama's reforms, in contrast, would only add to the thousands of loopholes, exemptions and complications of the current 67,000 page tax code. "A candidate for president should at least know the difference between a flat tax and a national sales tax," Heartland concludes. "But both a flat tax and a national sales tax are head and shoulders over the convoluted tax system we have now."
John Fund is an editorial writer for the Wall Street Journal
