A regular lurker in Oklahoma recently emailed the following tale. When I wrote back to ask its origins, he didn’t know. A little googling led me to Doug Powers, who wrote it.
No doubt some of you will have read this already; it does appear to be going viral. As a tongue-in-cheek lesson in economics, it is one that Walter Williams, an ebullient economist who has made his profession anything but dismal, would enjoy.
Speaking of which, Mr. Williams must be shaking his head over the election. Unlike Colin Powell, Mr. Williams would never let his race - black - interfere with his good sense. He calls Obama’s fiscal policies "whackanomics" - sounds right to me.
Obama’s leaky plumbing
Barack Obama discovers a leak under his sink, so he calls Joe the Plumber to come and fix it.
Joe drives to Obama’s house, which is located in a very nice neighborhood and where it’s clear that all the residents make more than $250,000 per year.
Joe arrives and takes his tools into the house. Joe is led to the room that contains the leaky pipe under a sink. Joe assesses the problem and tells Obama, who is standing near the door, that it’s an easy repair that will take less than 10 minutes.
Obama asks Joe how much it will cost.
Joe immediately says, "$9,500."
$9,500?" Obama asks, stunned. "But you said it’s an easy repair!"
- - - - - - - - -
"Yes, but what I do is charge a lot more to my clients who make more than $250,000 per year so I can fix the plumbing of everybody who makes less than that for free," explains Joe. "It’s always been my philosophy. As a matter of fact, I lobbied government to pass this philosophy as law, and it did pass earlier this year, so now all plumbers have to do business this way. It’s known as ‘Joe’s Fair Plumbing Act of 2008.’ Surprised you haven’t heard of it, senator."
In spite of that, Obama tells Joe there’s no way he’s paying that much for a small plumbing repair, so Joe leaves.
Obama spends the next hour flipping through the phone book looking for another plumber, but he finds that all other plumbing businesses listed have gone out of business. Not wanting to pay Joe’s price, Obama does nothing.
The leak under Obama’s sink goes unrepaired for the next several days.
A week later the leak is so bad that Obama has had to put a bucket under the sink. The bucket fills up quickly and has to be emptied every hour, and there’s a risk that the room will flood, so Obama calls Joe and pleads with him to return.
Joe goes back to Obama’s house, looks at the leaky pipe, and says "Let’s see - this will cost you about $21,000."
"A few days ago you told me it would cost $9,500!" Obama quickly fires back.
Joe explains the reason for the dramatic increase. "Well, because of the ‘Joe’s Fair Plumbing Act,’ a lot of rich people are learning how to fix their own plumbing, so there are fewer of you paying for all the free plumbing I’m doing for the people who make less than $250,000. As a result, the rate I have to charge my wealthy paying customers rises every day.
"Not only that, but for some reason the demand for plumbing work from the group of people who get it for free has skyrocketed, and there’s a long waiting list of those who need repairs. This has put a lot of my fellow plumbers out of business, and they’re not being replaced - nobody is going into the plumbing business because they know they won’t make any money. I’m hurting now too - all thanks to greedy rich people like you who won’t pay their fair share."
Obama tries to straighten out the plumber: "Of course you’re hurting, Joe! Don’t you get it? If all the rich people learn how to fix their own plumbing and you refuse to charge the poorer people for your services, you’ll be broke, and then what will you do?"
Joe immediately replies, "Run for president, apparently."
See, now we have something to look forward to: Joe the Presidential Plumber.
Except that Mr. Powers, on his blog, cautions Joe:
All I can say before heading off to bed tonight is this: Joe the Plumber, enjoy your extensive audit.
I’d have said prior to this campagin that the Obamanas wouldn’t dare audit him, but after this election, I’d believe anything.
17 comments:
Thanks for this post.
With B-HO's CHANGE we must HOPE we can survive.
12/07/1941 Pearl Harbour
09/11/2001 al Qaeda NYC
11/08/2008 Obama
01/20/2009 Begin the Ending
Whackanomics is right.
With the dems controlling both house and senate we will most likely see energy costs skyrocketing.
The big O plans on bankrupting new coal plants by way of greenhouse taxes and I read he's going after agriculture as well
Shades of zimbabwe?
One might think that so simple a fable as that of Mr. Powers' would be all it should take for Obama and his ilk to understand how totally dysfuntional socialist whackanomics really are.
That they are able to ignore such obvious evidence is indicative of delusional thinking or worse. Mr. Powers' little object lesson is a prime example of what happens when people who have never had to do any heavy lifting decide they know best how to "redistribute the wealth" of those who do.
All of the foregoing is encapsulated neatly by one simple fact. America's executive boardrooms are no longer filled with individuals who worked themselves up through the corporate ranks by being successful managers of sales or manufacturing groups. The current gold standard for CEOs and their fellow glorified bean counters is the Harvard MBA.
A once mighty industrial nation is being brought to its knees by people who have never broken a sweat during the entirety of their brief pampered lives. They will leverage, merger and outsource America until it is nothing more than a tourist destination.
We will all know when outsourcing has proven itself a truly functional tool. That will be when CEO positions are outsourced.
pleas: The answer is simple, and can be expressed with a (pardon me) four-letter word: B-u-s-h.
I've got to agree. Few individuals worked as tirelessly and cleverly for Obama's election than the republican politicians. Through their network of elite cronies, they created enough conflicts of interest and end-runs around the constitution to where American voters were almost forced to vote for anyone who was not a republican.
To give credit where credit is due, Conservative Swede previously opined that the narrowness of America's two-party system has proved a disservice to its electorate. We have been gifted with a political system driven almost entirely by monied special interests. We now have a one-party system of the Almighty Dollar.
Should anyone doubt that our partisan system has imploded, I ask you to review the complete and total treason committed against America by its politicians with their bipartisan support of the Z Visa. That should have been the proverbial canary in the coal mine for all rational patriotic Americans.
We have been betrayed so often that we now think nothing of betraying ourselves. Such political masochism can only have the most dismal of endings.
I weep for our country.
I don't understand.
Obama won but the weather continues cloudly, windy and rainy over here?
Maybe he's not really the Messiah...
zenster - interesting comment about breaking a sweat. Interesting because that was actually part of the agenda of the Maoist reeducation camps during the Cultural Revolution. College professors would be forced to engage in heavy manual labor to appreciate its value. Oddly, decrying the lack of a sweat equity investment in one's rise to positions of political or capitalist power may actually feed into the creation of a socialist worker's paradise that many apparently want.
Up is down, right is wrong, left is right, and in is out. We live in interesting times.
Inalienable Rights: interesting comment about breaking a sweat. Interesting because that was actually part of the agenda of the Maoist reeducation camps during the Cultural Revolution.
There is no useful comparison of punitively enforced hard labor as idelogical "re-education" and the valid desire for executive business directors to have a degree of managerial competence.
Recently, while waiting for a flight, I met and talked to someone who works for and has worked within the McDonald's corporation for many years, even meeting Ray Kroc personally.
He concurred quite vigorously with my own observation—drawn from Jeffery Love's well-written book "Behind the Arches"—that one reason for McDonald's phenomenal success was that its original board of directors was drawn almost exclusively from the ranks of their most successful sales staff (with very few, if any, college graduates among them). He also agreed that many of McDonald's corporation's current ills can be traced directly to the top-heavy population of MBAs on their board of directors.
If one extends that observation into the myriad American industrial boardrooms, the problem becomes rather apparent.
This situation can even be linked to some of America's political woes. Our Senate and Congress are overstocked with lawyers and very few competent business leaders. The monstrous levels of bureaucracy and "big government" that have arisen of late are a direct reflection of this unhealthy demographic.
America's politics and industry are both in dire need of people who understand how to profitably build and sell goods in an open market. Instead, nothing could be farther from the truth.
zenster - don't get me wrong. I agree with you. I was merely noting the parallel sentiments. Of course self-initiated hard work is completely different from forced labor... if you have a brain and a moral compass. Sadly, there are powerful forces who do not understand that all important distinction, which is why they fail to differentiate between charity and taxes, wants and rights, etc. The result is the modern Democratic party, and the phenomenon of The One.
Inalienable Rights: Sadly, there are powerful forces who do not understand that all important distinction, which is why they fail to differentiate between charity and taxes, wants and rights, etc. The result is the modern Democratic party, and the phenomenon of The One.
Too right. Which is why I shall probably never vote for another Democratic party candidate in my remaining lifetime.
Today I've heard the first joke about The One:
- What is Obama's solution to solve the global economic crises?
- The black market.
I feel stupid, but I don't get this joke.
I voted against Obama, but I am not devastated. Maybe what's happened is for the best. It will speed up history.
It’s raining in Oklahoma; we’ve gone from Regan’s “Morning in America” to Obama’s…
Félicie said...
I feel stupid, but I don't get this joke.
I voted against Obama, but I am not devastated. Maybe what's happened is for the best. It will speed up history.
Félicie,I'll attempt to both answer your question and respond to your observation.
First, do you mean you don't get the black market joke or you don't get the fable in the post? I'll presume you understand the fable and talk about the black market:
In order to understand why a black (uh-oh-- warning!warning!waycist*)
market...umm, let's call it an underground economy just to be safe... you have to know that the more something is regulated, taxed, or otherwise interfered with, the less affordable it is. That doesn't mean it becomes less desireable, just harder to come by.
That's where the-underground- economy-formerly-known-as-the- black-market comes in. The folks who work in the UE will supply at a cheaper price the product you could buy legally were it not so taxed and tariffed to death.
The best common example is cigarettes. It is (still) legal to buy them, but in..oh, say New York City...the price is so high that someone with a serious habit (an average habit is two packs a day) could put a serious dent in his or her income if they are unable to stop smoking.
Along come the tractor trailers with their contraband loads of tobacco from down south, where the tax is much lower because that's where the tobacco is grown.
Those states down south (VA is one) would have to answer to the tobacco growers' lobby and incumbency is a mighty tool to keep legislators in line -- i.e., keep the tax on tobacco very low.
So Marlboros or whatever keep being manufactured down here and slapped with a minimum tax.
I'm not sure how the black marketeers step in at this point to to get all their product. Some is actually bought, some is stolen. At any rate, it travels up the interstate to NYC, and at its southern price -- even given a hefty black market rise -- is a sweet deal for the poor schmuck who is stuck living in NYC with a smoking habit.
The taxes purportedly bring down the rate of smoking, but that is twaddle. All it does is raise the price and make sure that smokers have to interface with criminals.
Anybody out there know what a pack of cigarettes costs now in NYC??
-----------
*city councillors have gotten in trouble for saying things like "dark days"...there has also been talk of getting rid of the name of the cake "devil's food" because it is chocolate and therefore the name is racist. Having a "black heart" is no longer permitted either. And no, I'm not kidding. That's why you have to draw the waycist line somewhere...
------
My response to your observation --
I voted against Obama, but I am not devastated. Maybe what's happened is for the best. It will speed up history.
It must be confusing, then, to run into people who are indeed devastated. I am. I have no idea what the short-term future holds but it won't be pretty. Read my post-mortem post for a few ideas why. Or read The Late, Great, United States of America.
I am curious as to why you want to speed up history.
We have facing us a recession for sure, maybe an out-an-out Depression before O is done; we have Russia, Iran, and Palestine all delighted to have this lightweight in office. In fact, there isn't one anti-American leader (or follower)out there who is not thrilled with this election's outcome.
And then we have the dark (scratch that), black (oops, *really* smear that one out), bleak prospect of Israel losing its last friend on earth. America was it and now America is gone. What do think the Middle East and esp. Iran might be planning for *their* January surprise??
If history speeds up any faster, we'll all be killed when the world hits the wall. Hope you're belted in...
American Jews voted for and contributed overwhelmingly again to the Dems and Obama. So what is the explanation?
Their intelligence is over-rated?
They care less about Israel than about burnishing their liberal credentials?
They think Obama now owes them?
They agree with George Soros?
They're ostriches?
At least blacks voted for Obama out of racial pride (something they deny whites) and/or for more handouts, not admirable but at least understandable.
The Jewish vote is just bizarre.
American Jews voted for and contributed overwhelmingly again to the Dems and Obama. So what is the explanation?
We were slaves in Egypt, so we should make common cause with blacks. Every time a liberal Jew supports a black cause, it's like reliving Exodus. Why don't they like us? Well, everything's different now. We helped a black man succeed, they'll be grateful. I can't wait to have my picture taken with a group of happy black people.
Dymphna:"I am curious as to why you want to speed up history. "
What I meant is this. There is hope with Obama's presidency that the conservative core will wake up from its slumber, understand that things are serious, and start mobilizing itself. The sooner it happens, the better. Hard economic times are ahead of us, but, with Obama, things might come to a head sooner rather than later. I think it's a good thing. With MacCain, things would have a higher risk of festering, and the unraveling of our culture would come much further before the conservative base would wake up. We also had good fortune to get introduced to Sarah Palin. This time she was not ready to be in the office. But in four years, she might be, and some of us might support her bid for presidency. I think her heart is in the right place. I am being fatalistic in thinking that a major crisis is not to be avoided. This is why I think the sooner, the better. We'll be in better shape if it happens sooner.
Thanks for the explanation.
laine: "American Jews voted for and contributed overwhelmingly again to the Dems and Obama. So what is the explanation?
Their intelligence is over-rated?
They care less about Israel than about burnishing their liberal credentials?
They think Obama now owes them?
They agree with George Soros?
They're ostriches?"
LOL to latté island's comments. I concur. I'll just add that they do it on purpose, to prove that Kevin MacDonald's theory about the Jews being clannish and outcompeting other groups in an evolutionary race is wrong. Some evolutionary strategy!
Post a Comment