joe the plumber, and irrational dreams
November 28th, 2008 • posts i've written
Sam the Dreamer
When Presidential Candidate, now President-elect, Barack Obama walked onto his front lawn in Ohio, Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher asked the candidate how his proposed tax plan would affect him once he purchased a plumbing business making over $250k per year. The answer was higher taxes. Zing.
Of course, now we know Joe the Plumber wasn’t an actual licensed plumber, his $40k/year income put him in no position to buy that business, he was delinquent on state income taxes, and Barack Obama’s proposed tax plan will actually lower his taxes. And the rest, sadly, is history.
But Sam the Dreamer is no different from you or I. Isn’t this our modern American dream? Forget protection from false imprisonment, separation of Church and State, most of the Bill of Rights (except for that second one), those poor and huddled masses–that’s not the America we struggle for anymore. According to the U.S. News and World Report, the average American with a credit file has $16,635 in debt, excluding mortages. (Source: U.S. News and World Report, “The End of Credit Card Consumerism,” August 2008) Our struggle and our dream these days is to live wildly outside our means, to match the lives of those people we watch on television and in the movies. I write this on ‘Black Friday’ as people literally trample others to make a purchase. As the world is being ripped apart by extremists, we’ve reduced ourselves to somnambulant shoppers. I fear we’ve become a grotesque caricature of our once proud former selves. Dreams should inspire hope, but we’re creating a putrid sense of entitlement by believing we’ll all be rich and disgustingly famous. What has happened to happiness? How did we let ourselves fill it with such empty calories? I’ve had enough.
Please wake up.
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I’m happy to report that I’m happy! I thank my lucky stars that I married the right guy; we paid for our wedding with cash; we bought half the condo our bank told us we could afford; we, with our two kids, take driving vacations that are pretty much paid for before we leave. I think the key is believing that you really cannot purchase the most important things: health, employment, well-behaved children with manners, etc. Would we like to have a bigger condo? Sure, it’s getting pretty tight with four people and a cat in 900 sq ft. But we’ll move when we have enough equity to move, and until then, we’re tight and happy. And rich.