26-02-2010, 04:24 AM
I think that Joseph Stack essay does not reflect the plight of working people today, and his point of view is not worthy of serious consideration. I read his essay; it lacks any real intellectual merit. Instead, it is a rant of a man who has had his fair share of financial failures. His essay reads like a person who has suffered financially and wants to blame it on someone else. While I agree that we are all, at times, victims of the financial system we live in, and I believe that major changes are needed to this system, Joseph Stack's desire to lay the blame for his troubles on the doorstep of the IRS is ludicrous. We all live in this system, we all share in its ups and downs, but most of us will not resort to violence.
He is akin to all of those other persons who go on killing sprees, only just recently Amy Bishop, a university professor, killed three people because she was denied tenure. Stacks, Bishop, and the countless others who have committed these acts of violence, going on shooting rampages, shooting their fellow high school students are people who have severe psychological problems, and I would not want to legitimize their beliefs by holding them up as an example of something worthwhile. I would no more take Stack seriously as I would Ted Kaczynski or Timothy McVeigh who both believed they had good reasons to kill people.
A final point; his complaint about a twenty four year old tax law that defines who is a independent contractor and who is an employee is truly asinine. This law is an important law and it protects working people. Many companies do not want to pay benefits to employees, they want to circumvent legislation which require the payment of salutatory benefits such as vacation pay, unemployment insurance, medical benefits etc.. To get around these laws, they will try to label an employee as a contractor. The IRS has twenty questions (there is a link to this from his essay) which are used to determine whether or not an employee is a contractor or not. He may not have liked this law, but their are millions of working people who benefited from them.
John Kowalski
He is akin to all of those other persons who go on killing sprees, only just recently Amy Bishop, a university professor, killed three people because she was denied tenure. Stacks, Bishop, and the countless others who have committed these acts of violence, going on shooting rampages, shooting their fellow high school students are people who have severe psychological problems, and I would not want to legitimize their beliefs by holding them up as an example of something worthwhile. I would no more take Stack seriously as I would Ted Kaczynski or Timothy McVeigh who both believed they had good reasons to kill people.
A final point; his complaint about a twenty four year old tax law that defines who is a independent contractor and who is an employee is truly asinine. This law is an important law and it protects working people. Many companies do not want to pay benefits to employees, they want to circumvent legislation which require the payment of salutatory benefits such as vacation pay, unemployment insurance, medical benefits etc.. To get around these laws, they will try to label an employee as a contractor. The IRS has twenty questions (there is a link to this from his essay) which are used to determine whether or not an employee is a contractor or not. He may not have liked this law, but their are millions of working people who benefited from them.
John Kowalski