Work much?

Nearly one-fourth of all the money made in America goes to the richest 1 percent of Americans, and John McCain says Barack Obama wants to "spread the wealth around."

Why is McCain making the case for his opponent?

Oh wait. McCain doesn't mean it in a nice way.

The inherent evil of the Obama tax plan, according to McCain, lies in Obama's intention to let Bush tax cuts on people making more than $250,000 expire as scheduled. As a result, the tax rate on the most wealthy Americans would revert to the same rates that the wealthy paid back when so many of them made so much of their money in the first place, i.e., the Clinton years.

At the same time, Obama would cut taxes on everybody -- repeat, everybody -- else. Even given the upscale demographic of the typical reader of political columns in free weeklies with sex ads in the back, that almost certainly means you. In fact, Citizens for Tax Justice estimates that only 2.3 percent of Nevadans would lose some of the Bush tax cuts under Obama's plan.

So what does McCain think of a small percentage of the very richest Nevadans paying just a little more while 97.7 percent of taxpayers in the state get a tax cut?

"Socialist!" McCain shouts at his angry crowds.

The International Committee of the Fourth International, a contemporary socialist organization -- yes, there is such a thing -- recently published an article defining socialism as "the reorganization of economic life under the democratic control of the producers, the working people whose labor creates all wealth. It can come about only through the independent mobilization of the working class, led by a revolutionary party, which establishes a new and far more democratic form of state, a workers' state, which exercises ownership and controls the means of production."

That is not what Barack Obama is proposing. Barack Obama is proposing a tax cut.

Nevada's unemployment rate hit 7.3 percent in September, the highest rate in 23 years. When Obama was speaking in Las Vegas last week, he warned that things are probably going to get worse before they get better. In one indication that Nevada officials agree, state officials project that unemployment will be pushing 9 percent next year. That translates to about 120,000 people out of work, and that doesn't account for the untold thousands who are not reflected in unemployment statistics because they've given up looking for a job -- or at least given up looking for a job with help from state employment offices.

Meantime, gambling revenue and visitor volume continues to decline, and since the rest of the nation's economy is just as craptacular as Southern Nevada's, it's hard to see how either of those numbers are going to turn around anytime soon, scheduled openings of new arrogantly oversized monstrosities notwithstanding.

So when McCain punches the air yelling "that's spreading the wealth around, my friends" and invoking "socialism," it may stir up the angry and deluded conservative base.

But most people in Nevada and the nation have more, shall we say, relevant concerns, like how they're going to live if they lose their job. Socialism? The ignorance of the charge aside, as far as the vast majority of the voting public is concerned, McCain might as well be accusing Obama of being, oh, a neomercantalist, or a chartist, or a disestablishmentarianist.

McCain's floundering inability to connect with mainstream voters is what it is and it's tempting to take a moment to laugh at the angry/funny little man and leave it at that.

But since conservatives in the right-wing media echo chamber as well as assorted segments of the Nevada wingnut infrastructure have warmed to McCain's "Spread the wealth? Socialism! Oh Noooooo!" message, neither he nor (more importantly) they should get off the hook so easily.

Their bitter divisive attack against giving tax breaks to everybody instead of just to the rich is laced with accusations that money would be taken from -- to borrow phrases deployed in McCain stump speeches -- "those who earned it," the "hard working Americans" who are the "most productive" members of society.

Got that? If you don't make more than $250,000 a year, you don't earn your money, you don't work hard and you're unproductive.

But wait, there's more. Obama's plan to let tax cuts expire on people making more than $250,000 a year while cutting taxes for everybody else "gives away your tax dollars to those who don't pay taxes," McCain recently said. "That's not a tax cut. That's welfare."

So if you make less than a quarter million dollars, not only are you a worthless layabout. According to McCain, you also don't pay any taxes.

In fairness, there's no reason that McCain would know that no matter how small your wage, 7.65 percent of your paycheck is withheld for federal payroll taxes. McCain hasn't had to worry about where he was going to come up with the money to pay an unexpected bill -- a car repair, a trip to the ER, a visit from his savior Joe the Plumber -- since he married his terrifying and terrifyingly rich heiress of a wife in 1980. That was probably also the last time McCain bothered to look at a pay stub.

And if McCain has demonstrated nothing else over the course of his reputation-ruining presidential campaign, it is that he is hopelessly, irretrievably out of touch with mainstream America.

McCain. Whatever.

The more important point is that conservative writers, thinkers and leaders around the nation and Nevada incessantly rant and rave about the importance of cutting taxes. Now somebody comes along and proposes cutting taxes not only for the rich and not even just for the middle class but for everybody. And the wingnuts flip out.

Conservatives are sour and bitter by nature, so maybe there's no pleasing them. But their reaction to Obama's tax cuts, laden with what they hope are incendiary attacks about "socialism," "spreading the wealth around" and "welfare," is one of the most high-profile yet mean-spirited attempts to incite class warfare in decades.

And as they begin the scramble to recover politically, at least the leaders of what's left of the conservative movement are helpfully showing everyone what they honestly and genuinely think about people who work in this country: not much.

Hugh Jackson is a longtime local journalist, former senior editor of CityLife and the proprietor of the Las Vegas Gleaner (www.lasvegasgleaner.com), where he blogs.