Sunday, November 02, 2008

JTP...

This week “The Flying Fickle Finger of Fate Award” or the TFFFFA goes to JTP, also known as:

JOE THE PLUMBER!!!

He set out to make Obama look foolish on national television. Lo – and behold, now he’s become a national symbol for “wealthy” Americans who would rather see the country go bankrupt than sacrifice an extra $20 bucks here and there.

Right now, he’s campaigning with McCain, but soon he’ll become the personification of all that is wrong with politics and all that is stupid.

Allow me to explain…

About a month ago I saw the TV snippet where Joe approaches Obama and explains Obama’s tax plan will not benefit him if he starts a new plumbing business as he says he plans to do.

Of course I have absolutely no factual information to back me up, but the first thing I thought was, “This is a ‘plant’ by the Republican party to embarrass Obama.

Ok no harm done, unknown to McCain, his campaign gives Joe a couple a’ hundred bucks to embarrass Obama on TV.

Then fate pulls his ugly head and McCain makes Joe The Plumber his big campaign push that gives him a nice 3 word phrase to represent McCain’s attempt to convince Republicans that Obama does not support small businesses like McCain. “Flip – Flop”, “Fuzzy – Math”, “Joe The Plumber”.

Perfect.

A short two or three word phrase that represents what McCain stands for. The only bad part is that Joe the plumber is not starting a plumbing business and based on last years taxes, he would actually benefit more from Obama’s tax plan than McCain’s. Regardless, he pretends he is a potential “victim” of Obama’s tax plan. To make things worse, eventually it will get out that he got cash from the Republican Party to execute this hoax that has gotten blow way out of proportion. Who knew?

Now for something completely different…

Why trickle down economics never works in this day and age:

In this day and age of mega-corporations the idea that if you give a large corporation a tax break and they will use the extra funds to create more jobs is an illusion. A hundred years ago, a tax break to manufacturer would have done just that. But these days the money goes to a different cause. The best way to illustrate this is to use a real life example:

A few years ago I worked with someone who’s spouse worked for Union Pacific Railroad. Every year around fall, they would be a nervous wreck because that’s the time UPR would fire staff members in order to yield a higher profit margin before the end of the fiscal year.

In my experience this occurred during the nations best economic boom, so it had nothing to do with the state of the economy. During the Bush years, you would think that the laying-off and firing would have ended because they were getting extra money from tax incentives; however, business ran like usual and people were fired. The tax incentives were used to greater inflates the level of profits reported at year-end.

Why, you may ask, is it so important for large corporations to inflate the profit margins at the end of the year? Because corporate executives get bonuses based on year-end profit margins. The tax incentives just inflated that figure so executives could get a bigger bonus. No one’s job was saved and additional people were not added to the work force.

Multiply this a couple of hundred, thousand times and you end up with a government that is going broke, being run by the meager taxes of the middle and lower class. Meanwhile, nothing is accomplished for the country other than enhancing the year-end bonuses of a handful of executives.

This is why across the board trickle down economics will never work again. Perhaps if that concept was used but limited the benefits based on the size (or lack of size) of the business, then we would see jobs increase and the tax benefits would eventually enhance the economy rather than destroy it.

Just an idea.

COMING NEXT…Lunatic Blogs changes to Strange Blogs?

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