Ordinary Joes Have Mixed Feelings On Wealth In America

The last days of the Presidential campaign have brought to the fore, one of the most important aspects of what is important to people in this country. Namely, as evidenced by the story below, as well as others, that a great number of people think that our nation is divided between rich and poor, with virtually no middle class anymore.

McCain touts Obama's socialist agenda, even as he promotes a $300 billion bailout of homeowners by the government, making it hard to tell the Republican Socialists from the Democrat Socialists. It all comes down to who benefits from the government to decide which "socialist" party you want to in the White House this November. If you are for corporate bailout socialism, then you are a McCainiac, and if you are for helping people in poverty up through the "middle" class, you would be an Obamanite! It is a little more complex than that, but not too much more.

Anyway I found this interesting story at Yahoo News concerning our changing attitudes toward wealth in America:
NEW YORK – The war of words waged by John McCain and Barack Obama for the votes of plumbers and other average Joes is a reminder of the nation's long-standing doubts about concentrated wealth — and its qualms about doing something about it.

Americans have voiced concerns about putting too much wealth in to too few hands since the country was founded, but the public's views also come with contradictions. Now it's clearer than ever — thanks to Obama's much scrutinized talk about taxes with a certain Ohio voter and McCain's dogged criticism — that these mixed feelings about income inequality are a long way from being resolved.

"I think that when you spread the wealth around, it's good for everybody," Obama told the man — maybe you've heard of him — Joe the Plumber. The remark may have sounded pretty innocuous. But McCain has lambasted his rival's words as sounding "a lot like socialism," and turned the criticism into a central theme of his campaign's final round. Obama's remarks, McCain says, are emblematic of a tax plan to confiscate wealth and give it to the poor that would make the IRS "into a giant welfare agency."

The comments of both presidential candidates touch nerves in American politics — longtime concern about too much concentration of wealth, but also about the role of government and the individual. More than two centuries after Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson and other early leaders warned about the hazards of too much in the hands of too few, Americans have developed complex views on the intertwining issues. A substantial majority of Americans say the rich don't pay their fair share of taxes, opinion polls show. A growing number say the U.S. is becoming a nation of haves and have-nots.
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