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Joe the Plumber’s American Dream

The American Dream is a bit vague in political vernacular. I think the core American Dream is Joe’s. Joe represents the typical American.

The idea that the American Dream is simply a home with a white picket fence, a wife and 2.5 kids with a dog in the yard only provides the basics of the real American Dream. The house represents attaining enough financial stability to buy one. The wife represents an emotional stability to maintain a relationship, the 2.5 kids represents a legacy and social stability. The dog and picket fence just provides an appealing picture.

Financial stability and the American Dream is to become wealthy enough to be secure enough to allow one to do “whatever they want” including not being forced to work at a job they don’t enjoy. Material things take a back seat to this type of wealth, but is a byproduct of the primary goal of being financial independant.

The American Dream of financial security is a basic, and core classical American Dream.

The path to Financial Independence is through the Small Business venue, where Joe The Plumber can achieve this basic American Dream category. A Small Business that is successful includes hiring a staff. Employees. Joe is an employee like most of us. We all have this basic American Dream aspiration of financial independence. Policies that are designed to empower an employee to become an employer is the function of the government.

Government (US) is responsible for providing a safe and secure environment for this basic American Dream. Our military enforces the US population’s national stability. our judicial system allows the framework for a stable domestic environment to acquire this basic American Dream. our educational system provides the population the tools to be effective employees and employers. Our social programs provide the population from the normal, but expected, life tragedies that can ruin the American Dream. These are the core purposes of the US government and gives us the uniquely American, American Dream.

But when the government has policies that draw a rigid line between being an employee and being an employer, they are clipping the population’s basic American Dream to just being an un-attainable dream, and not allowing the realization of this basic American Dream. Turning it from a dream into a fantasy. The conservatives have been viewed as pro-business, while the liberals have been viewed as pro-employee. The antithesis to these are anti-employee, and anti-employer.

Conservatives are not Anti-Employee. The left argues that they are, pointing to minimum wage disputes, anti-union tactics, and anti-regulation on businesses. They do this from the vantage point of the oppressed employee and not from the role of government to foster the basic American Dream. The conservative opposes things that make it difficult for the employee to transition into an employer, thus clearing the path to realize the American Dream.

When liberals draw an ever-lowering line on what the government considers “rich” and then plans on building larger walls and obstacles to the realization, they are dooming the The American Dream.

They villanize the rich (currently defined as $250k/year and soon to be legislated at a government office near you) and they villanize employers, and they villanize the people who have made that transition. That core American Dream turns into a nightmare of government intrusions, mandates, and regulations. This liberal dream-wall serves what purpose?

The side effects, or even direct effects, is to keep employees as employees. To keep a clear stratification of classes. A separation of classes along economic lines feeds the employees with the human failing of envy. Envy is fueled so it becomes a hatred of the ‘rich’ (this can be seen on every TV show or movie), and in turn, that grants more power to the politician who claim to sympathize and enact more laws and specialized layers of stratification. Those laws serve the public appearance of quelling the discontent among the ‘poor’ employees, but they also have the hidden agenda of thickening the wall of dream transition.

As Democrats put more and more bricks into this wall, they attain more and more power to control both the employer and the employee. The employer is then beholden to the politicians for burden relief, and the employee is beholden to the politicians for more perks. A win-win for the politician, and a lose-lose for the American Dream.

Joe the Plumber works at his blue-collar labor intensive job, saving and making tough financial decisions in order to realize his American Dream. Once he has the financial ability he shall make that transition. But to get there, his income must exceede the average persons earnings to afford the leap. Either Joe needs to get paid more or work more or both.

The liberal keeps increasing his tax burden on his way there through their progressive tax policies, so his work load must exponentially increase just to maintain his quest of realization.

Once he takes the plunge, he is faced with even more financial burdens and regulations as he makes that transition from employee to employer. This brings him from the middle-class stratification into the ‘rich’ stratification just to put the same mac-n-cheese on his kid’s plates.

He will be forced to pay for the taxes that are hidden from the employee. He will have to provide for many mandates that cost additional money. He will be inspected and need layers of compliance proof. He will have maintain insurance policies that are priced to pay for the permissive judicial system’s induced risk of being sued by his own employees. He will have to pay additional business taxes in addition to his own income taxes. He will have to pay for a myriad of local, state, and federal requirements and regulations and mandates just to establish a firm footing into this side of the American Dream.

In order for Joe the Plumber to pay for these things that the liberals have forced an employer to pay for, he needs to charge more for his end products and services. After all, Joe the Plumber’s dream was to be financially secure, not just a plan to donate his time and lower his income. His customers must now be called upon to pay for his products and services and those government imposed costs. That is, assuming there are customers willing to hire Joe’s Plumbing Company versus the competition who has lower-rates and may or may not be complying with the laws... such as hiring illegal aliens, or cheating on his mandates, and taxes.

Joe’s Plumbing Company represents the classic American Dream, and in this dream, it is likely that JPC doesn’t want to be an Evil Company. Joe American would like to attract the best employees and treat his staff employees well. To do that, he must go a cut-above what is the ‘norm’ in his industry. He could offer things like health-care insurance, dental, child-care, retirement contributions, spiffy lunches on the house, holiday parties, company events, and other ‘perks’ that appeal to new employee prospects and provide his staff with a sense of being treated well. JPC wants to be an American Dream, and not a 3rd-world sweat-shop.

But in his post-transitional efforts to make JPC the best ever, the politician sees a dark lining where a dark lining doesn’t exist.

All of those perks has left other workers in other companies with that feeling of envy. Joe Politician sees JPC’s perks and threaten to soon to be mandatory requirements, under penalty of law. JPC must assist the Joe Politician’s dream of attaining that seat in his district, and it would be a really nice thing to do to help him fight against forcing additional requirements on his poor business (where prospective employees would now consider those perks as standard-issue, and his staff will say “Joe is only doing what he is required to do by law”...

Oh, look over there... is that a disenfranchised minority who felt wronged by JPC heading into that ACORN/EEOC/LaRazza/Rainbow-Coalition law office? I’ll bet that poor angry individual will change his mind once he finds out that JPC has just donated a large sum of money into Joe Politician’s candidacy, err I mean, funded a community outreach program to register more fictitious voters.

Lets just watch and see if that sunset in Joe’s American Dream is a pretty one or overcast by thoughts of redistributing his hard earned labor (represented as money) to those with no sense of ambition.