Joe Hill vs. Joe the Plumber
Written on 10/20 at 11:42 AM by Andy Posner
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Filed under: philosophy News
In last week’s third and final presidential debate, John McCain spent a considerable amount of time talking about “Joe the Plumber.” Joe is a guy that met Obama on the campaign trail, and who confronted him about the fact that his tax policy would “penalize” him if he were to buy the business he works for and see a dramatic rise in his income, because Obama’s tax plan calls for tax cuts for people that earn below $250,000, and tax increases for those that earn more. Now the amazing thing is that, for a lot of people, Joe’s complaint rings true even though they will most likely never earn more than a quarter million dollars a year. As I starting thinking about this bizarre dynamic, it occurred to me that we’ve heard from a lot of Joes during this campaign: Joe six-pack, Joe the Plumber and Joe Biden. But there’s another Joe we haven’t heard about--most likely because he died over a century ago--but whose story, immortalized in folk songs, has a lot to say about the state of the country and its potential for greatness.
A lot of you will have heard of Joe HIll because Joan Baez often sang, and probably still does sing, about his life. To put it briefly, Joe Hill was a songwriter, labor activist and union member, who was framed for murder and then executed by firing squad in November of 1915. In the version of the song about his life that Joan Baez sings, the lyrics go as follows:
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