The Commercial Appeal, Memphis, Tenn., David Waters column

Dec. 18--Joseph won't be getting a tax cut next year, and he could really use one.

His health insurance premiums are going up. His rent and utilities are going up. His co-workers keep getting arrested for failing to follow the government's registration decree. And his young wife is pregnant.

Joseph makes $30,000 a year as a carpenter. It's an honest job but not one that qualifies for special treatment by government tax collectors or their wealthy donors.

His absentee landlord, a wealthy man who owns a real estate LLC and lives far away, is getting a big tax cut.

So is the wealthy businessman who owns the real estate development company Joseph does work for, and who keeps hiring his unregistered co-workers.

So are all of the wealthy lawmakers who met behind closed doors to change the tax laws in their favor.

Joseph didn't go to college, but he's no dummy. He knows that it's easier for a working man to go through the eye of a needle than to get a tax break in this country.

He's lived and worked long enough to know that economic justice doesn't roll downstream like a river; it doesn't even trickle down.

The wealthiest 1 percent of the American population used to control 20 percent of the wealth; now they control 40 percent.

The bottom 50 percent of all American earners once took home 20 percent of the nation's income; now they take home 10 percent.

The average net worth of those in the top 1 percent is $26.6 million. The net worth of his family and everyone in the bottom half is about zero.

Tax cuts for the rich only make the rich richer and the poor poorer. Tax policies set by the rich ensure that the poor will always be with us -- no matter what the tax policy makers tell us.

Their leader kept saying they were going to make the new tax laws work for working men and women like Joseph. But someone had to pay for the tax cuts to the rich.

Their leader kept saying they were going to eliminate "special-interest deductions that increase rates and complicate Americans' taxes," but for some reason they created at least as many new special-interest provisions as they eliminated.

Their leader keeps saying the wealthy won't keep the billions they're getting in tax cuts and that they'll use it to create more jobs for working men like Joseph.

Joseph is a faith-based man, but he doesn't believe in faith-based economics.

And he can't dodge his payroll taxes -- the tax every working man and woman pays. He's already paying double what his father paid and six times what his grandfather paid.

Now the wealthy lawmakers and their rich leader are talking about cutting the programs funded by those payroll taxes -- Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.

Someone has to pay for the $1.5 trillion in tax cuts to the rich rulers. Joseph will just have to work harder. After all, he and his wife are about to have a child.

Joseph hopes his son might grow up and make a difference in the way the rich and powerful treat the poor and meek.

The new tax laws will help the rich inherit even more wealth, but blessed are the meek...

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