I’ve hung around with quite a few so-called elites in my life – prep school, Episcopal Church, Sierra Club, Geriatric Adventure Society – but I’ve come to realize that (to paraphrase a recently revived metaphor) you can paint a diploma on a pig, but it doesn’t make him a Harvard professor. As a carpenter, great-grandson of a cobbler, grandson of a pharmacist, and son of a missionary, I just don’t have Wall Street, Academia, or Malibu Beach in my genes.

But I’ve been very upset about Joe the Plumber’s stream-of-consciousness grousing about my country. I’m fed up with the presidential candidates’ pandering to our lowbrow sensibilities. Joe Sixpack, my foot! A sixpack lasts about two months around here, and that’s in the summer! I’m sick of having Republican push-pollsters asking if I’m aware Barack Obama wants to cut and run before we’ve achieved victory in Eye-rack. (Apparently they’re told to pronounce it that way because it resonates with us lowlifes.) And I’m frustrated – have been, in fact, for years – by the way taxes have been framed as maleficent. Where would we be without taxes? I’m delighted to pay them, considering the services they provide. I only wish that a much smaller portion could go toward making war.

Joe the Plumber – now, to his deep regret, revealed as not really Joe, not a licensed plumber, and evidently not much of a money manager – seems concerned about a long litany of ills that plague the United States. Leaning against his SUV, this income tax delinquent and self-described conservative rails against Social Security (“forced upon us”), illegal immigration, and “liberals.” He did tip his hand a bit in an interview with Katy Couric, when he said in regard to Barack Obama’s tax policy: “[like a] tap dance... almost as good as Sammy Davis, Jr.”

I’ve been figuring out Joe’s income, based on the claims made by the McCain campaign about his working hours. In one speech, Senator McCain claimed that poor Joe, a single parent, often worked ten to twelve hours a day, and sometimes seven days a week. (“What!” exclaimed Mother. “No wonder he doesn’t have a wife!”) Multiplying what plumbers get per hour – I used to pay from $35 to $45 to subcontractors, but that included extra charges like Social Security and unemployment insurance; let’s say Joe earns $20 – a seven-day week of mere ten-hour days is seventy hours at straight time. That’s $1400, plus mandated time-and-a-half at $30, means that Joe is taking home a gross of $2300 a week. That’s about $115,000 a year. Most of us single middle-class wage-earners can manage to get along on that.

I got some news for you, Joe. You ain’t gonna be able to buy that plumbing business till you pay your delinquent Ohio income taxes. You ain’t gonna be able to run it without a master plumber’s license. You’re gonna get a big surprise if you get out on your own; at that point you’ll be the employer, and you’ll be paying your entire Social Security tax, instead of the half you’re paying now. You say you want to be able to invest your own money for retirement. You can; set up an IRA. Given your record so far, you’d best hope Social Security doesn’t give out before you reach retirement age. And if, in spite of everything, you manage to buy that plumbing business, the least of your worries is going to be paying the taxes on your income over $250,000. Time you get done paying for materials, vehicles and equipment, insurance, repairs, fuel, unemployment insurance, labor, subcontractors, half of your workers’ Social Security premiums, you’ll be lucky if you have $2500 left over for Joe. And if you make that little, you’ll get a tax credit. Lighten up.

Over the years I had the pleasure of working with some of the nicest guys in the world. My subcontractors – plumbers, electrician, painter, concrete guys, excavators, drywallers – were guys I respected and had gotten comfortable with from decades of collaboration. We may have looked like Joe the Plumber (except for the shaved head), but I never once in 35 years heard an ethnic or racial slur on the job. The background was Public Radio, except for a bit of Rush Limbaugh now and then for entertainment. The goal was to do the best job we could for our customers and not jar their sensibilities with the kind of music you hear shaking the windows of passing teenagers’ cars.

Most of us in the middle class create wealth by converting raw materials and labor into value-added products and services. Unfortunately, many of our fellow citizens manipulate wealth to produce profit for their clients and outsize incomes for themselves – all this while more and more lower-class folks slip into poverty. John McCain sarcastically refers to his opponent’s tax policy as “spreading the wealth” – he holds up his fingers and wiggles them to emphasize the quote. His running mate refers to that as socialism. It never seems to occur to them that Will the Builder and all his ilk are spreading the wealth: charging competitive prices for services and then distributing the result to any number of others. Doesn’t sound like socialism to me; more like capitalism at its best.

In case the victorious candidate should dip into the great middle class for advice, assistance, or people to help run the place, I hope he’ll give me a call. Something in the State Department, perhaps. Why, sitting right here at my desk, I can see both Canada and Russia at the same time!