Joe The Plumber

History will tell us whether Joe the Plumber unwittingly made the difference in the 2008 presidential campaign. There are a few things though we can already learn from Joe's imprint on this campaign. First of all, it is possible for an average citizen to have some kind of impact on a national level. Joe did not set out to make that kind of impact. In fact if Obama had not answered his question using the phrase "spread the wealth around", most likely Joe would have been long forgotten by now. So Joe was essentially an innocent bystander, minding his own business in his neighborhood when Obama came calling. Joe asked a simple, no nonsense question about Obama's plan to take even more money from wealthy people and give it to others. Obama made the news with his "spreading the wealth around" comment. The second thing we learn from Joe the Plumber is that if Obama and his followers do not like a question, or if Obama messes up an answer, their immediate action is to discredit someone else. In this case it was Joe. All the attention went toward digging up any dirt on this guy. His private records were accessed and he was dragged through the mud. So while one individual can make a difference, that difference may very well come with a price.

But there is something else we learned from Obama's response to Joe the Plumber. Obama believes in a "trickle up" theory of economics. He believes that if the waitress, the mechanic, or the taxi driver is making substantially more money, then anyone who traditionally earns more would equally benefit. In other words, if the waitress is earning more, she will enjoy a higher quality of life, spend more, and consequently drive the economy upward for the higher earners in the world. While this sounds nice, there is a part of the equation that I don't understand: how does the waitress, the mechanic, or the taxi driver get paid more? Where does that money come from? My best guess is one or all of the following: 1) profitable businesses would need to forego any profit in order to pay higher wages; 2) businesses would have to charge substantially more for goods and services; or 3) the government would need to intervene with subsidies (taxes) or by taking over certain businesses. None of these fit into our traditional concept of a free market capitalistic society. Without profits, companies will not grow, hurting our economy in the long term. If companies are charging substantially more in order to pay their employees more, fewer people (including those employees) will be able to afford their goods. All you are doing is shifting numbers higher. And no one (except for maybe Democrats) believes that government should be owning private industries. So my question to Obama is to please explain how all of this happens. How does he pull off a "trickle up" economy without effectively changing our fundamental economic values? What serves as his examples of how this works or that it does work? How do you provide higher pay to these lower income people? If it is through education, then wouldn't these people elevate themselves into higher paying jobs and careers rather than stay an educated waitress or taxi driver?

Today Obama ridiculed McCain for calling Obama's economic and tax plans as being "socialistic", and his answer to that was that McCain was being selfish. Selfish? Someone makes a living, earns a good, honest wage . . the government comes along asking for an even bigger cut of that in order to give it to someone who is not earning a decent, honest wage . . and for complaining about that he is now called selfish? God help us.