Obama essentially tells plumber ‘too bad’

Wealth redistribution. Senator Obama has promised it, Senator Biden feels it’s patriotic. Communist nations are built on it. But is it bad for America?



By now many have seen the conversation that Senator Obama had with a plumber over the weekend. This plumber, as I have seen reported, makes $280,000 and owns a small business. This is no fat cat Wall Street tycoon. This is no mega-corporation owner or major stockholder. This is a guy that comes to your house (or has employees that do) and fixes your pipes. No glamour, no excitement. And he might just live in your neighborhood, and his kids go to the same school your kids do.

According to Senator Obama, this man will pay more in taxes, and so will his business. Now plumbing is a decent living, but there is not growth spurts really. Plumbing companies don’t jump on the stock exchange, nor do they have 10 – 15% growth year over year. It’s likely that this guy makes 3 – 5% profit just like a grocery store owner or most other small businesses. And the 10% tax increase to businesses, plus another tax on him directly, means that he will be losing money in a company he may have been working on and living off of for 20 years now. Just because taxes changed and nothing else.

He will have 2 choices, raise prices – which most home owners can’t afford these days – or fire workers and cut their hours. And if Obama and Democrats can raise the minimum wage, he will likely have to do both with his higher taxes included.

But Obama doesn’t see that.



His focus is that people will have more money to pay the plumber. But he forgets that if more people are working fewer hours, if at all, then they make the same money or less and prices have to go higher just for the plumber to cover his breakeven cost. In the vacuum that Obama spins, changing how businesses make money has no effect on the people they employ. That’s polispeak. The real world means that if you change one part, the others react.

Personally I have seen a government that took money from hard working people to give to others. I lived in Russia in the 1990’s. And while I could afford to have people wait on line 2 hours to buy good meat for me, or 1 hour for bread, I don’t advise it. The people were great, but the style of life was – and continues to be – so far below the American standard that ex-patriots are often required to take vacations every 3 months and leave the country. America should not follow this path.

I’m not calling Senator Obama a communist. He is not. But his socialist plans do lead to a path where everything decreases the quality of life from what Americans are accustomed to and deserve. His economic plans are not to the benefit of the country. Wealth distribution benefits no one.