Everyone is talking about the middle class, the taxpayer, the common man. I wrote earlier this week about “the forgotten man” of the Great Depression, and how he was used as a scapegoat or hero figure in what may well have been a manifestation of the nation’s collective dysfunction as much as it was the result of greed and overblown spending. I think one danger we’re in now as a nation is a similar tendency toward polarization and scapegoating. In healthy families and collectives, there is no need to demonize people or paint them into one-dimensional roles. The fact that we are finger-pointing on a national level indicates to me that we are in danger spiritually as well as economically. Without some galvanizing outer event to bring us together, we will continue to splinter until we succeed at demonizing one segment while glorifying another. Theoretically, we may generate a world war, a national disaster, or an economic depression to achieve for us what we will not do for ourselves as a nation, which is to unite. I fear that we will take the wrong course and continue to blame and reject the “other,” and unconsciously bring disaster among ourselves until we can finally realize what we’ve done.
Joe the plumber
Joe Wurzelbacher is the Ohio plumber whose name has become a household word and a metaphor for the American dream. At an Obama rally outside Toledo on October 12, Wurzelbacher asked Barack Obama why Obama wants to punish him through higher taxes on the small business Wurzelbacher hopes to buy. Joe was mentioned several times in the most recent presidential debate, and has galvanized many small business owners and others who have struggled to get ahead and provide for their families to protest against Obama’s “spread the wealth” plan. In an already failing economy in which taxpayers will be footing the bill for a massive bailout, business owners are scared. What if they can’t keep their doors open? What if they can’t make their payroll? What if they can’t provide for their children? What if they lose everything they’ve worked for?
Many small business owners like my husband and I have survived two recessions during which we nearly lost everything we had. That bakery you buy from, the dry cleaners who clean your clothes, the restaurants you eat at, and the shop where you have your watch or auto repaired are all run by small business owners. They have a perspective that comes from starting with nothing and working their way up to becoming business owners—what we call “The American Dream.”
On the other hand we seem to have a lot of Americans who are angry with small business owners and large ones. They say business people are all greedy, that they’re selfish and have too much. They resent the fact 
that the middle class and upper middle class can drive better cars that get better gas mileage, can live in nicer neighborhoods and send their kids to private schools. They’re angry that their kids have to compete at school with children who have more stuff, wear more name brands, and whose iPod is more expensive. There are angry, hard-working Americans who want that stuff, too. And although the welfare and many of the working class pay zero in federal taxes, they want the people ahead of them to pay more so that they can get more free stuff that they didn’t work for, perhaps because no matter how hard they work or how many hours, they can’t get ahead. They want someone to help them along. They don’t always want to be the guy on the bottom, supporting the guy at the top so that he can buy his daughter the more expensive iPod.
It seems to all be about stuff and jealousy, and our human refusal to be content with what we have. And some level of discontentment can be good when it goads us to achieve. But when it goads us to achieve at another’s expense, or to generate a sense of entitlement that we think gives us the right to take what someone else worked for, what then? Are we even thinking about our assumptions?
John and Jane Q. Taxpayer
McCain and Obama alike refer to the taxpayer, to the middle class, to the American living on Main Street. But who is this American taxpayer? Based on statistics from the U.S. Census Bureau, the majority of Americans work at small firms and make under $50,000 a year. Over half of all Americans employed in the private sector are employed by small businesses, which produce more income and more jobs than the large business sector. Yet small businesses pay more per employee for government regulation and intervention than do large firms with over 500 employees, a fact published by the U.S. Small Business Administration.
The American taxpayer is you and me, and it’s probably also your boss, unless you work for a large company (500+ employees) or the local, state, or federal government. Our economy is run by small businesses and by middle-class Americans who are already struggling to make their payroll, their payroll taxes, their high business and unemployment tax payments, their outrageous comprehensive, liability and vehicle insurance premiums, as well as their personal mortgage payments, tuition for their kids, and contributions to their own retirements. After all, we small business owners don’t have guaranteed retirement as do our legislators. We don’t have government-backed retirement plans like government workers. In the past week alone, my husband and I lost 33% of the value of our retirements, money we saved all by ourselves and which is not guaranteed by anyone. How selfish is it of politicians to tell Joe the Plumber that he is making too much money when they themselves are multimillionaires with guaranteed retirements and health insurance?
How is that loving your neighbor as yourself? And if our lawmakers are not acting out of real love, then from what energy are they acting? Do we want to know?
It appears to me that the bailout bill and the economic plans being proposed do little to improve things for the segment of American businesses or citizens who actually produce the most jobs and income for most taxpayers. It appears to me that the new taxation being proposed against small businesses and the middle class will do nothing to help those of us who have already done more than our fair share. Instead, it aims to penalize us for working so hard. It aims to force us to “spread the wealth around” before anyone even asks whether there is any “wealth,” and whether the current tax scheme is fair. Why do we not ask more questions about fairness, when the word “fair” is being bandied about by both candidates for the American presidency?
there’s a top line, and a bottom line
As the co-owner of a small business, I’m concerned about how a new tax-and-spend congress and president may affect the future of our country and our own business. With only half of our umpteen children raised, we cannot afford to go bankrupt. My husband is almost 55 years old and has literally worked with his hands all his adult life. Like many other small business owners who have Subchapter S corporations or LLCs, any business “profit” we make—even money we set aside for the business so that we can pay our payroll and keep our workers employed when our contractors do not pay us or pay late—is taxed to us as individual income. What we actually live on and what the business makes are two different things. Right now, in spite of a so-called conservative congress and president having been in power for six of the past eight years, we pay enough in business-related taxes to employ 4.5 additional workers who we can’t hire due to the prohibitive costs of doing business. Instead of hiring new people, my husband works almost every Saturday. So when I see Joe on television, I want to pat Joe on the back and say, “Joe, I understand.” Lots of us work 10-12 hour days and have everything we own at risk as we run businesses that are being bled dry by a burgeoning welfare class and bureaucrats in Washington, D.C.
Most people do not run small businesses and don’t know what it takes to run one successfully. Over the years, we have had several employees who had similar attitudes to those expressed by so many bloggers, commenters, and others who are criticizing Joe the plumber for “making over $250,000 a year.” They say Joe is rich if his business makes over $250,000 a year. They say they deserve a cut, too, and they go out and start their own business, and most of them fail. They fail because many people don’t have the right combination of work ethic, determination, intelligence, experience, ambition, and hope to be able to open and maintain a small business successfully. But they direct jealousy and hatred at those who do, and they say that Joe the Plumber must be rich if his business makes $250,000 a year.
I have news: They don’t know what they’re talking about. And over the next few days I’ll be explaining how Joe’s plumbing business is most likely to operate based on government statistics gathered from people’s tax returns, and why revenues of $250,000 to a plumbing business by no means make Joe “rich.” I’m going to explain the top line and the bottom line of an income statement and a tax return so that people will (I hope) stop accusing Joe of being “rich,” when what he actually said was that he hopes to buy a plumbing business that makes $250,000 to $270,000 a year (that’s gross, my friends).
My hope is that people who shop and do business every day at small businesses will be more aware of just how many services they use are provided by people who own small businesses. Even that restaurant chain you eat at is actually owned by a small business owner who bought into a franchise, borrowing what he hoped to be able to repay through incredibly hard work. When you stop and think about how Bill and Betty the Business Owners are the ones who have to go in and work the 8-hour shift whenever someone they hired doesn’t show up, or how they borrowed against the home they live in to be able to open the doors of that business, maybe you’ll think twice before you assume you know how “rich” those people are or how selfish and greedy they must be.
And maybe, just maybe, we will start saying, “I’m not sure,” and maybe we’ll ask more questions of the people we do business with. Maybe we will pay as much attention to the internal revenue of our spirits, looking to our own hearts and our level of judgment and anger with as much vigor as we judge our neighbors.
One can always hope.
18 responses so far ↓
helenl // October 18, 2008 at 1:25 PM |
I think the big problem here is that we throw around terms like “the poor” and “middle class” without knowing what they really mean? That is, how they are defined by the government.
I think everyone should be able to eat and send his/her kids to school wearing coats and shoes. And I bet you do, too. No one seems to be complaining that destitute people pay little or no taxes.
The argument comes when we talk about people who have a little bit more. Now $250,000. seems like plenty to me (to be considered for no tax increases under Obama’s plan.) But a small business (in my mind) is six people, not 499. That a company. That’s big. And, of course, it’s going to make over $250,000 profit (or fold). Is JTP really planning to use his “savings” to buy a company from his boss that employs 499 people? I doubt it. If he CAN buy a business that large, he could probably retire right now.
“Middle class” has, by definition, both lower and upper limits. And we all want to know where we fit into each candidate’s plan.
Eve may have read more that I have, but I am mainly concerned with those who fall below middle class or, standing on tiptoe, stick their noses into it. The rest, in my book, already have quite enough to share.
davidrochester // October 18, 2008 at 1:39 PM |
Although I am not a small business owner, I am one of those people who is often perceived as making “too much money”; I’m a real estate broker. As an independent contractor, my expenses are prohibitively high. Just to hang my license costs me easily $20K per year. On top of that, I am in a higher tax bracket than just about anyone else — not because I make such a lot of money, but because I report on a 1099, which means that I pay both ends of my own Social Security tax, because I do not have an employer. I am unlikely ever to see any benefit from those contributions, but they are a huge part of my tax burden. On top of that, both the city and the county I live in think that realtors and small businesses make too much money, and collectively they tax me an additional 5% of my adjusted gross income because I have the gall to be an independent contractor. In addition to that, because I am responsible, I have a private health insurance policy that I pay for out of pocket. Then there are the expenses of marketing, promotion, advertising, driving around, and all the other things I do for my clients, to whom I am available literally 24/7/365 … last year I remember talking a client through a last-minute crisis on Christmas afternoon. I don’t remember the last time I took a vacation, because I simply can’t afford one.
I’m in the class of people who are penalized hugely for making “too much money,” when in reality I’m not making nearly enough based on what I do, based on the fact that I have a job intimately linked to the health of the economy, and based on the fact that I am actually responsible enough to pay my taxes on time and make sure I’m not a public burden.
I’d like to see a tax cut for self-employed people who pay their own health insurance. The premiums and my medical expenses used to be 100% deductible. That changed. It shouldn’t have, but it did.
Eve // October 18, 2008 at 2:17 PM |
Helen, these terms are defined. It would take a super long blog post to post my entire work on this in one day, so I’ve had to split it up to cover about five days’ worth. If you’ll wait til the end, probably most of your concerns or questions will be answered, and then when I’m finished, if you’re satisfied about the basic facts I’m presenting from government statistics, then we can discuss. I hardly think it’s fair for me to keep proving you wrong or mistaken when I am the one here running a small business and you seem to have no experience at it.
I hope that makes sense. I’m not “throwing around terms” without knowing what they mean. I actually do know what they mean because I have facts at my fingertips, because I have an interest in this topic and live, eat and breathe business (sometimes I feel to my misfortune, for this is not the life I had hoped or planned for!).
If you’ll bear with me I’ll make it as clear as I can. But even so I have few conclusions and many more questions as I work my way through this than I had at the outset. Frankly, I’ve always been happy to pay my taxes. But when taxpaying becomes robbing the rich to give to the poor, I want to know what qualifies Robin Hood to be better suited to rob me and make it legal.
You wrote about the destitute, but in America the only destitute we have are the homeless, who are largely mentally ill and homeless due to our broken government policies and the Supreme Court and other court rulings that mandated that we have no right to help the mentally ill and infringe on their rights to be destitute. There was a time in our history when we at least housed and fed the mentally ill and addicted. Now we do less, and there’s history behind that. But other than that, we do not have destitute people.
The U.S. Census Bureau gives a comprehensive statistical picture about our poor. As I’ve mentioned before, the American “poor” have at least one cell phone, one gaming system, and two televisions (two, not one!) in their houses. They have coats and shoes. This is a statistical fact, so the imaginary people liberals are helping do not exist in great numbers in this country, and the ones liberals need to be helping, which is the children without legal parents (mostly black children), the homeless mentally ill, and the illegal immigrants are those who remain unhelped. Why, if every American adopted just one child or sponsored a homeless person, or got one family in their church to adopt a child, we’d have the problem half licked. But we don’t seem to want to take personal responsibility or bring that type of person into our homes, do we? No, we’d rather imagine people who are going to be helped by more tax dollars.
So much of what people say and write about the “poor” in America is imaginary that it continues to be clear to me that what we have here is a spiritually poverty-stricken nation that needs to imagine the greedy, mean Dursleys on the one hand and the poor Harry Potter, locked in his closet under the stairs, on the other. I contend that the real poverty is our inner collective poverty, and that this, rather than actual statistical facts, are what’s driving this entire debate.
But you probably guessed that this would be my theory, didn’t you? ;o)
Eve // October 18, 2008 at 2:33 PM |
David, your comments so resonate with me. I too have worked on the holidays and can’t recall the last vacation we had. I think it was to Galveston, Texas about five years ago. We simply can’t afford to take them, and if we take time off, there’s nobody to run the business. That’s the way it goes.
But I’m not complaining, either. We have prospered and we’re blessed. I’d still rather take the risks we take and do the work we do than have to work a 40-hour week in an office run inefficiently by someone else. At least our work pays off.
About the health care. I couldn’t agree with you more. First we could deduct it, and then we couldn’t. What genius in Washington decided that was a good idea? No doubt someone who doesn’t have to pay for his own health insurance.
Sigh.
henitsirk // October 18, 2008 at 3:55 PM |
Eve, thank you for clarifying that many small businesses’ profits are taxed as personal income. That has confused me all along about this Joe the Plumber thing–I thought Obama was only talking about personal income, not business taxes. But now I see that they are the same thing in these particular cases. (Though I must admit, I still see stars when I imagine earning $250,000 a year. Moons and stars, actually.)
Taxes this year are going to be interesting for me. I’ll have worked much more this year than the last, and of course have to pay extra tax for being self-employed. On the other hand, we’ll finally be getting a childcare credit. So we’ll have to see how things work out. We are certainly far under that magical $250K threshold being bandied about.
I’m lucky that my husband works for a large employer (in fact, the state of Idaho) that offers good health benefits, and a generous retirement plan (for him). My own retirement is nonexistent at this point.
I have to say that I’ve never looked on small business owners as “too rich” or “greedy”. As Obama and Joe Plumber both said, nobody likes higher taxes–so why fault SB owners for feeling the same? As you pointed out, SB owners run the show. They take over when their employees call in sick, they make all the decisions and take all the risks.
And wasn’t it a large part of the American Dream to start your own business and succeed? When did we lose that ideal and start pointing fingers? Or maybe we haven’t lost it, but the pundits have. Certainly Congress seems to have, since they tax the self-employed the way they do.
I wonder if we provided health care and day care across the board, what would happen to our economy? Would more people be able to work, be able to work more, be able to start new businesses or get better educated or be able to save and invest more? I can say from personal experience that child care costs are exorbitant–and that’s even paying people a relatively small wage to care for our children! It starts running in circles: if I want to work more, I need more child care, which costs more, which means I need to work more. When do I ever get off that wheel and actually do something with the money I’m earning?
Yesterday I read Christopher Buckley’s article endorsing Obama, and something struck me: he described himself as “small government conservative who clings tenaciously and old-fashionedly to the idea that one ought to have balanced budgets” and libertarian on social issues. I have to say that might just be how I’m coming to describe myself as well. I just need to figure out how we’ll still help those in need (however we choose to define that) while maintaining a small government!
I really liked what you said about taking personal responsibility to help others who we normally imagine our taxes taking care of. I mean, liked it in the sense that it was a good point–not that it’s an easy pill to swallow. Certainly “those kind of people” (reminds me of the demonized welfare mothers of a few years back) are easier to imagine being taken care of by some government program, on the other side of town, so to speak. Not so easy to imagine directly involved in our own lives. But I think that that’s where real change happens, in our own lives, in relatively small ways. As you put it, if we all chose to make a change, do something different, take a risk, then a lot of these problems would be half licked.
Eve // October 18, 2008 at 4:37 PM |
Thanks for the link to Buckley’s article, Heni. A “small government conservative” might as well be a libertarian, if you ask me. And a balanced budget is both libertarian and conservative; I don’t see liberals calling for anything balanced (yet).
I’m not against paying taxes. Always, our churches and places of worship have had the responsibility of caring for the poor, but they’re not up to the task when the majority of regular churchgoers don’t even pay their tithes. Mostly Catholics (based on statistics) tend to live their faith out more than other Christian faiths. But the church can’t take care of everyone, evidently; and so we have the State.
I know or have known hundreds of welfare mothers, and to be frank, when I think of them I can only remember how much viable help they were given and how little they made use of. I am more in favor of the welfare reform that occurred under Clinton, which requires accountability from recipients and has limits. It’s surprised me how quickly people will learn to work once their five-year limit of benefits is cut off.
As I told Helen, I’ve always said that I approved of paying taxes. Many children I know were adopted because the states agreed to pay for their medical equipment, counseling needs, medical or dental care, etc. until the child was an adult. Otherwise, their care would have bankrupted the typical adoptive family. Taxpayer dollars fund adoption assistance programs and the foster care programs that have the potential of changing the lives of children who have lost everything. I have no argument with giving help to those who most need it.
I simply see other sides to it. Not every poor person is disabled or ill. I don’t want to fund young women who keep having children so that they can prolong their welfare and then don’t take care of these kids, and the kids end up in custody anyway. I don’t agree that men should be able to father lots of children and support none, and get away with it. I don’t think a burgeoning underclass ought to be able to destroy the standards of our public schools, making it impossible for other kids to get a good education. And I think that people who are paying taxes, including business owners, ought to get some say about whether and how their money is taken from them. I can’t agree when unqualified “shoulds” are thrown at us, or when a presidential candidate says he is going to “force” businesses to comply.
But most of all I’m especially fascinated by the hatred being expressed toward “fat cats” and people with money. Much of it is probably morally justified (such as the anger about the big company that was bailed out, and that then turned around and took its officers to the spa, or some nonsense like that). But much of it is not, and there’s a danger of a mob mentality occurring.
David Rochester // October 18, 2008 at 4:42 PM |
Eve — I agree, all the collective pains in the arse are well worth it not to have to answer to someone else … there are lots of reasons why I’m self-employed, and the fact that I’m basically unemployable because I’m a stubborn antisocial noncomformist is right up at the top of the list.
One of the greatest parts of the American Dream is that there are niches for stubborn antisocial nonconformists … our economic and social system has allowed me and people like me to invent our jobs. I really, really want that part of the American Dream to be preserved, as I know you do as well.
A big part of the gumption and determination that supposedly founded this country will be lost if folks like you and me can’t afford to make a living by sidestepping industry giants. There are still so many people who would rather support a local restaurant, a local co-op grocery, a local artisan tailor or weaver or printer or whatever. People need to have those choices, to support locally … and the government needs to leave us alone to do that.
This is the one issue where I believe much more strongly in the traditional Republican platform than in the Democratic platform. I think there’s a word for my political beliefs, but I can’t think of what it is … it’s something that sounds insulting, like “capitalist liberal” or something along those lines.
But what it boils down to, for me, is that I think people with enough energy and vision to make a living outside the “global economy” should be able to do it, and to employ people, and to live and act and spend locally. That’s not isolationism; it’s common sense. And damn it, I want to keep doing it.
Eve // October 18, 2008 at 5:10 PM |
David, haha, “capitalist liberal!” I love it! That sounds just about right to me! My father (a stone-age Democrat turned Republican) used to call me his “bleeding heart liberal” daughter. It’s downright laughable how my career and experiences have changed me into more of a capitalist liberal. Who’d a thunk it?
I was looking at government jobs today and learned that a government secretary at the GS-6 grade pay can earn $33,135 to $43,076 in my area, with the government paying 72-75% of their health care premiums, retirement, paid vacations, sick leave, family leave, personal leave, and paid holidays.
A look at the local paper tells me that a secretary in private industry can only hope to make about $14,600 to 22,000 a year without all those benefits. So the idea that private sector business owners are greedy pigs making more money is a little suspicious, unless it’s those horrid business owners making all the money while their poor secretaries starve.
So I called my son, an electrical engineer, to find out what he’s making at his private firm. Turns out electrical engineers working for the government make more money and have better benefits.
I’m starting to suspect that these tax dollars the politicos want are really going to go to the huge government machinery and into some GS-6’s salary rather than into poor Wendy the Waitress’s pocket. Is that cynical of me? I mean, the government wouldn’t act in its own self interest, would it?
Naaaaah.
davidrochester // October 18, 2008 at 7:39 PM |
Well, unfortunately I think the platform actually is that the small business owners are making money while their secretaries starve, and unless small business owners start speaking up to refute that, it’s a misapprehension that won’t be corrected. Because of course, Susan the Secretary has no idea how much money her bosses do or don’t make, but if asked, she’ll speak right up and say they make a lot more than she does.
Small business owners need a better voice, and since they don’t have one, they (I’d say “we,” but my voice belongs with the “I hate the 1099 rules” lobby) had better start speaking up, and in front of their employees, to get the word out that small businessowners aren’t greedy capitalists with secret Swiss bank accounts.
I voted today, as Oregon’s mail-in ballot allows me to do, and after much deliberation, and a little bit of a sinking feeling, I voted for Ralph Nader. I’m not sure I’d actually want him as president, but at least he’s consistent in his message, and a lot less susceptible to being “bought” than the two major party candidates. He doesn’t have much to lose, so he might as well shoot his mouth off, and he’s good at that.
I thought about putting myself as a write-in candidate under the Feline Promotional Party, but I’m not sure I want to move to D.C. I’m not sure I’d like the weather, and anyway, running on that platform would inundate me with crazy cat ladies, and my dating life is bad enough as it is.
Alida // October 18, 2008 at 9:54 PM |
“…business people are all greedy, they say we are selfish and have too much…” I’ve seen it first hand. I’ve heard the comments, “Ooh your mom drives a Benz!” I want to say, “yes *&cker, it’s was her 70th birthday gift from my father who has worked for 70 hours a week since he was 13…it’s well deserved!”
Yes, Joe the plumber made his point, but I’m not convinced that McCain is the better choice. Joe, stated that Obama’s plan was too “socialist.” Yes, well under our current administrations mis-management I think we’ve become ultra-socialist. What with the wire-tapping and if you criticize the war you are not a patriot. The unilateral decisions, the spending on…what exactly? Sounds just like a socialist hellhole to me. This from from Republicans as well as Democrats.
henitsirk // October 18, 2008 at 10:23 PM |
I thought it interesting that Buckley was saying that the social issues (gun control, abortion, gay marriage, etc.) were separate from the fiscal/bureaucratic issues, which I think points to the problem that these social issues have distracted us (or rather, we allowed ourselves to become distracted) from more pressing issues, like, say, the economy. Now all of a sudden the economy is all we can think about.
I agree with you that those who truly cannot help themselves, like the disabled or orphans that you mention, need to be helped, and that “faith-based” assistance has not risen to the occasion. And I see that another function of the government that resembles parenting is that of assisting, and then setting limits on that assistance. At some point, the kids need to leave home and get a job.
As for hatred of the rich, that’s really nothing new, except that there is such a sense of entitlement now. If, as you say, there is a burgeoning underclass, then their position is all the worse for a lack of either dignity or gumption, and perhaps they are projecting those negatives onto their opposites, the wealthy. And then our values get all twisted–like this sneering at Obama for being “elitist” when he achieved what we’re all supposed to achieve (at least that’s the presumption), namely, becoming well educated and successful. And as if pretty much all of our presidential candidates in recent memory weren’t well educated and successful, whether born to it or not! These people should be calling GW Bush elitist as well–he went to an Ivy League school and comes from a wealthy family. It starts to sound like mob mentality indeed.
Eve // October 19, 2008 at 9:52 AM |
Heni, such good points you’re making–about the distraction of social issues (we let them distract us, and then we don’t notice our constitutional freedoms and rights being eroded), the economy being all people can think about, etc. Kids leaving home and getting a job. If my kid is too comfortable and I make his life too easy, I know he doesn’t want to leave home. No reason to. Same for the collective “kid.”
The economy is the issue because unemployment is on the rise and the markers that define recession are adding up. Generally, though, recessions last an average of 8 months. And I read yesterday that the U.S. government finds that people in poverty rarely stay there. Only 2% of all people living below the poverty level stay there for over 36 months. That’s a surprising statistic, isn’t it?
I think it’s all about the economy and the imagined poor because when bad times hit, we don’t get to hear about it until they’re upon more and more of us. I was looking at the quarterly reports on the Department of Labor web site, and need to remind myself to do that at the end of every quarter, for it clearly indicates how well or poorly the economy is doing. It’s not doing well, and wasn’t doing well some time before this bailout.
My brother has his MBA from Wharton School of Business and tells me that they are taught that there are business cycles that occur as regularly as the seasons. Things go up, then they go down; they grow and then they go dormant. When I looked at a chart of historic recessions, I saw to my surprise that this is true. So railing against ups and downs in the economy might be as useless as railing against summer and winter–almost. As with the Great Depression, how human beings handle downturns can make or break an economy, for sure. But the rain is going to come, sooner or later.
Your last paragraph has me the most interested because you noticed something that I was talking with a friend about last week. I have the idea that all these powerful men had no available fathers. They had no accessible, warm, fathering fathers. G.W.’s dad was in public service all his life, and demonstrated that politics and making money were more important than children. Ditto for John McCain; his dad and grandad were career military men with a lot of responsibility. And then Obama had no dad who stuck around, and who in fact had several “wives” and produced numerous half-siblings for Obama, and thought that returning to Kenya with his Harvard degree and going into politics was the best use of his life. Is it any wonder that Obama is following in his father’s footsteps? It doesn’t surprise me one bit; no more than G.W. following in his father’s footsteps, or John McCain following in his. These things run deep, and can drive a person for a lifetime. I worry most about the unconscious drives because they can be so brutal, as we’ve seen with many a leader.
So these men grow up and they do what a man is supposed to do: “achieve what we’re all supposed to achieve.” As you said. But they’ve got this abandonment driving them, so they act out against the “man” object they think is to blame. For Obama, it appears to be the “man” who stays with his family and builds his business up and does it in a family group–the family-owned small business. This drive seems underscored by the fact that, of all the pastors he chose in Chicago, he chose the only one who specifically railes against “middleclassness” (and has coined a new word!). I am not the least bit surprised that Obama’s policies attack the middle class. We have everything he wishes he’d had, and everything he intends to give to lower class families. If you read his two books, you can see pretty clearly his drive.
And so many of these men are military or attorneys. Being an attorney is not family-based; it is firm based and a lot of other things, but it’s not the”let’s sit by the fire and let me read you a bedtime story” type of fathering like my husband does or your husband probably does. A man who runs his own business generally (from what I observe) takes his kids along sometimes, has them hanging around his shop, teaches them to do some of what he does, teaches them that they can work with their hands as well as their heads. He teaches them about money and being smart and frugal with it, and so on. Often the mom is involved, keeping the books, making the phone calls, etc. That’s an intact family.
Obama didn’t have that. I don’t think that if we had grown up with him or Bush or McCain that we’d see households that are middle class and have intact family values. They didn’t grow up with the norm, so what they’re doing now is the norm for them. It’s what, I think, will keep the populace forever divided from the ruling class, our elected officials.
Eve // October 19, 2008 at 9:56 AM |
P.S. The reason people don’t call G.W. elitist, in my opinion, is because he doesn’t come across as elitist, and Obama does. Obama is suave, very much self-absorbed, cool, ambitious to the nth degree, and a sort of archetype of what the modern American “man” object is supposed to be. It’s about personality and charisma, neither of which G. W. Bush has. G. W. comes across as even stupid at times, although he is not stupid and not uneducated.
Obama, on the other hand, uses words to weave magic. Fact-finders who researched both of his books discovered that much of what he wrote was not factual. He took “literary license” when writing his memoirs, which has had other people publicly ridiculed but which makes him a lesser god. It’s fascinating to watch, something I’m still trying to figure out. It reminds me of the Clinton and Kennedy charisma, though.
Eve // October 19, 2008 at 10:00 AM |
Alida, oh, interesting about your mom and her Mercedes. We have friends who, like us, started out poor and then succeeded in business. One year the hubby bought his wife a used Mercedes. She absolutely hated it, because everywhere she went, people judged her by her car. She was rich because she drove a Mercedes. She found it interfered with her ability to present herself as she really was, which was not “rich” in her head.
So they sold the Mercedes and she never bought another luxury car. They did, though, eventually move to an exclusive community.
People make so many assumptions and judgments without asking questions. I doubt it would take any more time to ask a question such as, “Wow, you drive a Mercedes! How did you become successful enough to afford one?” than it takes to say, “You drive a Mercedes. You must be rich!”
But people aren’t wired that way, and seem to be afraid to ask questions. God forbid we should be intimate with another person or achieve understanding.
helenl // October 19, 2008 at 10:08 AM |
RE: “People make so many assumptions and judgments without asking questions. . . . But people aren’t wired that way, and seem to be afraid to ask questions.”
C#1: “I think the big problem here is that we throw around terms like “the poor” and “middle class” without knowing what they really mean? That is, how they are defined by the government.”
Eve, these two statements, one by you, the other by me, express the same idea. Honest.
Eve // October 19, 2008 at 3:09 PM |
Helen, OK. As my kid says, “I feel ya.” ;o)
The more statistics I look through bleary-eyed, the more interesting the assmptions I’m hearing and reading–and sometimes making myself!
At the risk of boring everyone to death (myself included), I’ll post some soon. For instance, I had no idea that 14.5% of the populace work for the government, and the rest in private industry (or self-employed).
I also learned that shoe merchants have a 20% profit margin, whereas just about everyone else makes only about 5-8% profit in their industry. No wonder shoes are so expensive!
Finally, I learned that the majority of people using child care use a licensed day care center rather than family help or a private day care home. I know a couple of multi-millionaires who run day care centers and know I know why. Doggone, I went into the wrong field!
Veering wildly off topic, but… my head is full of useless statistics gleaned in the interest of informing myself and others. I think I’m going to be blurting them out in the checkout lane tomorrow. I’ll just consider it my civic duty. ;o)
Stephen VanNuys // October 19, 2008 at 5:45 PM |
Very interesting article and discussion! No comments, other than to say I think you are an excellent writer and a very perceptive observer. Look forward to reading more!
henitsirk // October 19, 2008 at 6:34 PM |
OK, I will have to admit that I haven’t seen either McCain or Obama in action, so to speak, because I don’t watch TV and don’t like to watch video on my computer that much. I read the transcript of the last debate, and of the Joe the P. interaction, for example. So what I see is Obama being well spoken, able to be very articulate on his feet. I don’t see anything wrong with that, and in fact it’s something I desire in a head of state.
But I will hold the possibility that he also comes across as “suave, very much self-absorbed, cool, ambitious to the nth degree”, which are a bit less desirable at least in their connotations. I’d have to see him speak.
And I will have to read his books and see what criticisms there are. “Literary license” is a tricky thing, depending on what the expectation of your content is. Is it a memoir? Is it a memoir that people really expect to be 100% truthful? Or is it more of an opinion piece, or a statement of position? Or something else? Genre isn’t real clear in publishing these days, anyway.