Joe Stack: Failed Independent Contractor, or, Jilted Employee?

The New York Times reported today (article here) that under the Obama Administration the IRS is cracking down on employers who wrongfully classify their workers as independent contractors. The article claims that an average of 30% of companies misclassify employees. The Obama Administration - which is dealing with a record deficit in the Federal budget - hopes to raise nearly ten billion dollars over the next decade by cracking down on companies who are milking the system.

As somebody who has nearly always been classified as an independent contractor at the jobs I have worked in my life - most of which have been low income - I have experienced firsthand how such a tax loophole allows companies to pad their profit margins at my expense, since doing so means they do not have to pay for health benefits or unemployment insurance.

The New York Times article failed to mention, however, that the plight of independent contractors who are in actuality regular employees (because they do not have much independence regarding their activities at work nor do they seek their own customers) is one of the primary complaints at the crux of the suicidal diatribe that was released yesterday by the Austin IRS kamikaze. I understand that the two stories are not part and parcel, but given the immediacy of both of them, I could not help but highlight it.

If I remain a low-income worker for the rest of my life, am I expected to never build up my Social Security nor have medical benefits for me nor the family I hope to one day start because I am legally an "independent contractor"? Often the only solution for workers in such a situation is to unionize, but I don't have much faith that unions encourage innovation nor efficiency, and so that only seems to me to be the lesser of two evils.

We need to reform our nation's laws that grant more "rights" to employers than employees. Our capitalism must be forcibly injected with a healthy dose of humanity. And if the US Government refuses to impose such standards upon its corporate puppetmasters, then we should all be prepared for more Joe Stacks to emerge from the woodwork and commit wanton atrocities as their parting salvos to a Darwinian economic system that, in the pursuit of happiness, catalyzed their sociopathic behavior by the inherent hypocrisy of it being a corporacracy rather than a democracy.

We are living in hard times. It is time that the social safety net that the wealthy enjoy be extended to the middle class and the poor.