Yankee Notebook: Beer has better head for business than 'Joe'
Toolbox
By WILLEM LANGE - Published: November 2, 2008
Hello. I'm Will the Builder — or used to be, till I got too old and sick and stupid to do my job properly and retired. I confess I've spent most of my life pretending not to be a member of the middle class. But now that I see we middle-class folks are newly fashionable, and likely to get a nice tax cut, I've decided to admit my humble origins, modest accomplishments and simple-minded preoccupations.
I also want to dispel the notion that middle-class icon Joe the Plumber speaks for all of us working folks.
I've hung around with quite a few so-called elites in my life — prep school, Episcopal Church, Sierra Club, Geriatric Adventure Society — but I've come to realize that (to paraphrase a recently revived metaphor) you can paint a diploma on a pig, but it doesn't make him a Harvard professor. As a carpenter, a great-grandson of a cobbler, grandson of a pharmacist and son of a missionary, I just don't have Wall Street, academia or Malibu Beach in my genes.
But I've been very upset about Joe the Plumber's stream-of-consciousness grousing about my country. I'm fed up with the presidential candidates' pandering to our lowbrow sensibilities. Joe Six-Pack, my foot! A six-pack lasts about two months around here, and that's in the summer.
I'm sick of having Republican push-pollsters asking if I'm aware Barack Obama wants to cut and run before we've achieved victory in Eye-rack. (Apparently they're told to pronounce it that way because it resonates with us lowlifes.)
And I'm frustrated — have been, in fact, for years — by the way taxes have been framed as maleficent. Where would we be without taxes? I'm delighted to pay them, considering the services they pay for. I only wish that a much smaller portion could go toward making war.
Joe the Plumber — now, to his deep regret, revealed as not really Joe, not a licensed plumber, and evidently not much of a money manager — seems concerned about a long litany of ills that plague the United States. Leaning against his SUV, this income tax delinquent and self-described conservative rails against Social Security ("forced upon us"), illegal immigration and "liberals."
He did tip his hand a bit in an interview with Katie Couric, when he said in regard to Barack Obama's tax policy: "(like a) tap dance … almost as good as Sammy Davis Jr."
I've been figuring out Joe's income, based on the claims made by the McCain campaign about his working hours. In one speech, Sen. McCain claimed that poor Joe, a single parent, often worked 10 to 12 hours a day and sometimes seven days a week. ("What?" exclaimed Mother. "No wonder he doesn't have a wife!")
Multiplying what plumbers get per hour — I used to pay from $35 to $45 to subcontractors, but that included extra charges like Social Security and unemployment insurance; let's say Joe earns $20 — a seven-day week of mere 10-hour days is 70 hours at straight time. That's $1,400, plus mandated time-and-a-half at $30, means that Joe is taking home a gross of $2,300 a week. That's about $115,000 a year. Most of us single, middle-class wage earners can manage to get along on that.
I got some news for you, Joe. You ain't gonna be able to buy that plumbing business till you pay your delinquent Ohio income taxes. You ain't gonna be able to run it without a master plumber's license.
You're gonna get a big surprise if you get out on your own; at that point you'll be the employer, and you'll be paying the entire Social Security tax, instead of the half you're paying now.
You say you want to be able to invest your own money for retirement. You can; set up an IRA. Given your record so far, you'd best hope Social Security doesn't give out before you reach retirement age.
And if, in spite of everything, you manage to buy that plumbing business, the least of your worries is going to be paying the taxes on your income over $250,000. Time you get done paying for materials, vehicles and equipment, insurance, repairs, fuel, unemployment insurance, labor, subcontractors, half of your workers' Social Security premiums, you'll be lucky if you have $2,500 left over for Joe.
And if you make that little, you'll get a tax credit. Lighten up.
Over the years I had the pleasure of working with some of the nicest guys in the world. My subcontractors — plumbers, electrician, painter, concrete guys, excavators, drywallers — were guys I respected and had gotten comfortable with from decades of collaboration.
We may have looked like Joe the Plumber (except for the shaved head), but I never once in 35 years heard an ethnic or racial slur on the job. The background was public radio, except for a bit of Rush Limbaugh now and then for entertainment. The goal was to do the best job we could for our customers and not jar their sensibilities with the kind of music you hear shaking the windows of passing teenagers' cars.
Most of us in the middle class create wealth by converting raw materials and labor into value-added products or services. Unfortunately, many of our fellow citizens manipulate wealth to produce profit for their clients and outsize incomes for themselves — all this while more and more lower-class folks slip into poverty.
John McCain sarcastically refers to his opponent's tax policy as "spreading the wealth" — he holds up his fingers and wiggles them to emphasize the quote. His running mate refers to that as socialism. It never seems to occur to them that Will the Builder and all his ilk are spreading the wealth: charging competitive prices for services and then distributing the result to any number of others. Doesn't sound like socialism to me; more like capitalism at its best.
In case the victorious candidate should dip into the great middle class for advice, assistance or people to help run the place, I hope he'll give me a call. Something in the State Department, perhaps.
Why, sitting right here at my desk, I can see both Canada and Russia at the same time!
Willem Lange is a writer, storyteller and retired contractor who lives in East Montpelier. His column appears each week in the Sunday Rutland Herald and Times Argus. He can be reached through his Web site, willemlange.com.
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