Joe the Plumber Got Money, and He Knows It. He Takes It Out His Pocket And Shows It.

I wished they would have framed every discussion from last night’s debate around Joe the Plumber. It would have been fantastic.

“Joe the Plumber’s wife should be encouraged to accept a culture of life and keep her next baby.”

“I’m sure Joe the Plumber would greatly appreciate the school voucher program if he lived in Washington DC.”

“I don’t see Joe the Plumber hanging around with domestic terrorists – what does that say about Senator Obama?”

Sadly, all Joe the Plumber talk was confined to the economy and health care. I want to give some advice to Joe the Plumber, by the way. You can set up your new plumbing business as an LLC and pay yourself a salary of $249,999.99 and you’ll get a tax cut (provided you don’t have an additional source of income). Problem solved – now you’re getting some of that wealth Obama’s “spreading around.”

By the way, I really don’t get trickle-down economics, at all. I wish someone would explain it to me. I understand the basic idea is that if the rich get richer they buy more things and the process of buying more things injects more money into the economy and the process of injecting more money into the economy creates more jobs. More jobs means more people making money and more people making money leads to more people spending money and more people spending money leads to the rich getting richer. The cycle continues. That’s it, right?

Here’s what I don’t get – if you have 100 people and 5 of them have disposable income those 5 people would buy a new iPhone. Essentially, Apple misses out on the sale of 95 iPhones. If you have 100 people and a tax-cut for 95 of them frees up some disposable income all 100 people would buy a new iPhone because the other five people will still have a large amount of disposable income. Now we have 100 people buying iPhones and that money goes up the chain to the 5 people with the mass amount of disposable income and they get richer. In either scenario, the rich get richer. In the latter scenario, everyone gets an iPhone, as well. Without the tax cut, the only way Apple will sell 100 iPhones is if the 5 people with disposable income each buy 20 iPhones. Well, that’s not entirely true…the other way it could happen is if the 95 people without disposable income buy their iPhones on credit but that would just lead to some sort of “credit crisis.” What are the odds of that?

Whatever, maybe I’m ignorant. Back to the debate…I think McCain managed to firm-up the voters that were leaning in his direction. He showed some backbone and threw some red meat out there for attention-seeking “undecideds” to finally admit they’re going to vote for McCain. Certainly not enough to win, and I have to imagine Obama’s unshakeable posture and strong proposals resonated with the rest of the country. Obama’s looking more-and-more presidential every day. I honestly can’t imagine how Obama would lose at this point, provided people actually show up to the polls on Election Day. So, you know, go vote.

And if you get a chance, go to a club with Joe the Plumber. You'd be rolling VIP and he'd make it rain; throwing his money this-a-way and that-a-way. You'd get all the hoes.

Labels: economy, editorial, politics

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