Joe Lives in Flyover Country

I live in flyover country, just across the Maumee River from Toledo, Ohio. A really nice guy, named Joe Wuzelbacher lives on the other side of the expressway in Holland, Ohio. Senator Barack Obama just happened to be in his neighborhood recently, when Joe was out tossing a football with his son. The candidate solicited a question from Joe and asked if he had any concerns. Joe replied that he was a plumber with thoughts of buying the small business from his employer in the future and what would happen to him, if his good luck should allow him to buy the business, hire a few more employees and start making more money. Would the government (under the Obama regime) take his profits away from him? Obama replied that certainly Joe must want people under him to have the same privileges by "spreading the wealth around". Now, if you have worked sixty hours this week, invested in four plumbing trucks for your plumbers to drive, hired a bookkeeper to keep Uncle Sam from sending you to the slammer for non payment of income taxes, hired an office girl to tend the phones when customers call for plumbing services and provided the office supplies and furniture..... would you think it is fair to take ....say $1000.00 and split it with the family down the street who has a plasma TV, I-Pod, Wii, kids with Nikes, a husband who smokes and drinks, but doesn't work? That's spreading the wealth around... it's also called Socialism. I've watched the news all week as different networks have hounded this poor man, his family and his neighbors. He has been vetted about his private life, but is just a private citizen and is not running for any public office. There have been about one hundred different reporters and television trucks in his neighborhood. It was said that he has no plumber's license.... in Ohio, you can be a journeyman plumber, but the license belongs to the owner of the business. Joe doesn't own the business....he is just a hard working plumber, who is trying to decide if he would ever want to work extra hard to own a business, since Obama would take his profits away and give them to non-producing slugs. They are saying that Joe owes back taxes. Why would any reputable reporter snoop into a private citizen's records? All the grief they have given to "Joe the Plumber" is an effort to diminish the importance of the question he asked Senator Obama. Why would he want to work harder, invest his life in a small business, if after all the effort.....Big Brother would come along and redistribute his hard earned money around like candy on Halloween?

A Lesson in Finance

Once upon a time, in a place overrun with monkeys, a man appeared and announced to the villagers that he would buy monkeys for $10 each.
The villagers, seeing that there were many monkeys around, went out to the forest, and started catching them.
The man bought hundreds at $10 and, as supply started to diminish, they became harder to catch, so the villagers stopped their effort.
The man then announced that he would now pay $20 for each one. This renewed the efforts of the villagers, and they started catching monkeys again. But soon the supply diminished even further, and they were ever harder to catch, so people started going back to their farms and forgot about monkey catching.
The man increased his price to $25 each and the supply of monkeys became so sparse that it was an effort to even see a monkey, much less catch one. The man now announced that he would buy monkeys for $50!
However, since he had to go to the city on some business, his assistant would now buy on his behalf. While the man was away the assistant told the villagers, 'Look at all these monkeys in the big cage that the man has bought. I will sell them to you at $35 each, and when the man returns from the city, you can sell them to him for $50 each.'
The villagers rounded up all their savings and bought all the monkeys. They never saw the man nor his assistant again, and once again there were monkeys everywhere. Now you have a better understanding of how the stock market works.
I always thought the stock market was monkey business!