Bottoms Up!

The election is drawing near and if you haven’t made up your mind which candidate you are going to vote for it’s almost time you do. Just in case you are leaning toward Obama here is a suggested exercise so you can get a feel for his proposed tax plan.

When you get paid next take 25% of your paycheck in cash in $20 bills. Drive down to the nearest low income housing project and park your car on the street. Now be sure and leave the keys in the car with the windows rolled down. We want to be sure and be politically correct in this exercise and wouldn’t want to offend any of the good citizens of this area by implying they aren’t honest by locking our car and taking the keys. Besides, if someone steals your car they probably needed it worse than you did anyway. Take that handful of $20 bills and walk down the street. Each person you come by hand them a $20. Man doesn’t that feel good! You are building the economy from the bottom up! You are taking your hard earned money and giving it to these poor people that are surely going to go straight to your business or the company you work for and spend it so you can make more to give to them, right? Never would these good people spend it on drugs, liquor or gambling, they are going to do their part to build the economy just as you are. Don’t you just feel like going to the ATM and taking out some more cash so you can build the economy even more! Oh, and that nice car you drove up in; well some poor individual needed it worse than you so he took it. When you make next month’s payment on that car you can relax with the knowledge that whoever took your car now has a way to get back and forth to work.

If this sounds absurd it is. Nobody in their right mind would do something as asinine as give their money away now would they? Well my friends, this is exactly what Mr. Obama intends to do. To put this example in retrospect to his tax plan his intent is to “share the wealth”. What this means is if you work a larger portion of your money will go to someone that doesn’t. His philosophy of “build the economy from the bottom up” is the same exact thing as above. The only difference is the government will be the middle man and get their cut of each of the twenty bucks given away. This bottom up practice has been tried over and over and it has never worked before. Take our educational system for example. During the 60’s the prevailing though was to intermingle all the schools. This intent was the slower learners would progress to the level of the faster students. Instead what has happened over time is the standards have been lowered to allow the slower students to keep up with the faster ones. Now we have kids that graduate high school that can’t read or do basic math. We have middle class kids that think it’s cool to be “gangsta” or ghetto. This same thing has happened over and over since ancient times. It is human nature to take the path of least resistance. Our society has proven this even of late. It is hard to save money and actually pay for something you want so what do we do; we borrow and run up credit until it is through the roof and we can’t pay for anything.

Just as giving your money away to the poor in the manner described here is silly, we have the same thing happening on the other end of the perspective. Our government is, as you read this, giving billions to poor deserving banks and corporations that couldn’t manage their business and lost their asses. They are lining up like hogs to the trough to get their piece of the pie. As of yesterday there were over 600 lobbyists clamoring for the companies they represent share of the $700 billion congress allotted. The whole pretense of the bill that allowed this was for the government to buy up distressed mortgages. That was the pretense of all the failures and collapse of our economy right? So why are insurance companies, auto companies and ever other corporation lining up to get some of this sweet stuff? Because it’s free and they can! There are no stipulations in the bill on how the money is to be distributed or what it is to be used for. Banks are taking it and buying other banks. Hell, they can even use it to give their executives bonuses and golden parachutes for doing such a poor job. I am sure that Paulson feels like King George as he hands out billions to pay back political debits that have accumliated.

The bottom line of this is where does that leave the middle class man working trying to make a living? The answer to that question is right where he has always been; in the middle being squeezed from both sides. How about this concept; why don’t we build the economy from the middle out both ways? Since small business pays 90% of taxes and employees 90% of workers in this country how about something to give us an advantage? I don’t need an investment bank to do business nor do I need more of my money given to the poor. If I want the poor to have my money I will donate or give it away myself. I don’t need Obama to do it for me. Small businesses are the engine that drives the U.S. economy. Maybe if incentives were given to them things would get developed like more efficient energy and environmentally safe products. Instead, because the top and bottom levels are the squeakiest wheels the politicians want to take and take from the middle class. Pretty soon there won’t be anything left to take and then where will we be? Maybe it is time we as middle class and small businesses started to squeak a little?

Oh, and back to Obama’s tax plan and you doing your part to build the economy from the bottom up. If you go down each week on payday and give out enough $20 bills, after you recover from the mugging, you will probably have a good following that will vote for you should you decide to run for office.