Well, looks like Jeff’s reads were pretty much spot on. The New York Times reports that Joe is a registered Republican, along with quite a lot of other information about Joe that really isn’t any of our frickin’ business — and so the poor bastard is probably not entirely thrilled about his 15 minutes.
Key graf that made my day: “You know, I’ve always wanted to ask one of these guys a question and really corner them and get them to answer a question for once instead of tap dancing around it….”
Another example of the New York Times‘ downhill slide into oblivion, I’m afraid.
The top of the article implies that he’s some sort of criminal (“not a licensed plumber” and “owes a bit in back taxes”), that he used a false name (“his full name is Samuel J. Wurzelbacher”), and that he doesn’t know what he’s talking about (“his question . . . may . .. be flawed, according to tax analysts”).
The rest of the article proceeds to disprove each of these implications.
First, Ohio doesn’t require a plumber to be licensed (the article does say that Toledo requires a license, but doesn’t mention whether he does any plumbing work in Toledo at all). The union boss is, apparently, offended that he’s never done an apprenticeship and isn’t a union member, neither of which is, to my knowledge, required either. Remember – the guy makes $250,000 per year. He’s fixing someone’s plumbing, and apparently has enough of a clientele to grow his business, even without his precious union card. Oh, and this spur of the moment question he asked Obama is, according to the union official, “playing games with the world.” Also, according to the union official, “All contractors are licensed,” even though the article just finished telling us that that’s not true at all…
Then we go to his voting record and found out that his name is mispelled on his voter registration card (W-O-R… instead of W-U-R….). What a bastard, right? Lock him up & throw away the key! Also, we find out (in paragraph 19!) that his name is Samuel Joseph Worzelbacher, so his “alias” is really just his middle name. People going by their middle name isn’t exactly uncommon…
Finally, the “tax analysts” the Times refers to assumes that his $280,000 business is a 2-person parternship, not a sole proprietorship or a corporation (both of which are legitimate options for Joe). They also include retirement contributions, mortgage interest, and dependent exemptions which have nothing to do with his business, but make the difference between Obama and McCain’s tax plans look much closer in the above graphic.
And why the assumption that he has a partner? No one ever suggested he did, right? Once again, cutting his income in half makes the numbers look a lot closer in the graphic…
Bottom line: if Joe incorporates, Obama’s going to charge him a higehr corporate tax rate. If he doesn’t incorporate and files his 1040 as an individual (as most small business owners do), then he’s subject to Obama’s higher tax rate in the >$250,000 bracket. This is almost definitely what Joe was asking about, so I assume that’s what he’s planning on doing.
And finally, we find out that he “voted Republican in the March primary,” which is poorly worded enough to make me believe it was intended to deceive (it certainly decieved you). Ohio is a semi-open primary, meaning the fact that he voted Republican doesn’t mean he was a registered Republican until that very moment.
And oh, while we’re talking about deception: what’s up with this nonsense that Obama keeps spouting about 98% of small businesses make less than $250,000 per year (in the first debate it was 95%, btw). Maybe he’s defining “small business” as businesses that make $250,001 or less?” Because on the planet I live on, businesses can grow year over year. If my business earns $225,000 this year, it’s very likely it will earn more than $250,000 next year.
Another example of the New York Times‘ downhill slide into oblivion, I’m afraid.
Oh, Christ. Please don’t tell me you’re becoming one of those people.
Let’s be clear: for years I railed against both the Times and the Post for what I saw as largely inaccurate and biased pro-war reporting. So we both have issues with the mainstream media. But if you start to talk about the failure of the press as an institution, then it’s not long before you and I lose the capability to find common ground on anything, as our views of what’s “true” will be so divergent. This already happens one hell of a lot more often than I ever thought it would, and frankly, it scares the hell out of me each and every time.
We’re in agreement that some of this had no place in print. And by “some”, I mean his tax records. I think it is, however, relevant to point out that he doesn’t have a union card, as that says something about his political background. I.e., it seems to me that it’s easier to get plumbing work if you follow the path of apprenticeship, union, and license. You avoid that path mainly because, for some reason, you don’t like unions. Let’s note the blurb that says that Joe claimed union membership on Facebook, for whatever reason.
Remember – the guy makes $250,000 per year. He’s fixing someone’s plumbing, and apparently has enough of a clientele to grow his business, even without his precious union card.
Again, this is stuff that we shouldn’t give a damn about, but let me point out a few things about this sentence.
1. The sum total of what I know about Joe’s business is that he claims to be thinking about buying one that either grosses or profits $250-280K per year. That says nothing about his current business.
2. The blog post says he currently has a plumbing business, nothing about how large it is or what Joe does there. For all I know, he’s never held a wrench in his life and inherited the business from his great-uncle. (This is probably not true. On the other hand, I can tell you first-hand that most self-employed people who claim to work 10-12 hours a day are unconsciously exaggerating.)
3. “Precious” union card? Dammit, Brian, don’t make me say this again: we have unions because for the prior fifty years, post-Industrial Revolution, it was common to literally work people to death, lock them into their places of employment, place them in dangerous work environments, or lock them into neo-slavery with company scrip and company-owned stores. You and I are never going to need the protection of a union (although I’m in a few lines of work where joining one isn’t a bad idea). But many people do. For those people, it damn well is a precious union card. For the rest of us, I think it’s rather, well, self-damning to take on such a tone.
Oh, and this spur of the moment question he asked Obama is, according to the union official, “playing games with the world.”
Well, again, I think the whole point of the ensuing discussion of Joe is that it wasn’t spur of the moment, he intended to go there to argue a McCain talking point. I expect that the union leader’s hostility on this point perhaps stems from the possibility that this “everyman” working stiff is not, in fact, representative of the community of Ohioan plumbers which he knows, and perhaps because that union supports Obama.
Or maybe, as you imply, it’s all about union membership pettiness. I think it’s more likely that the union rep is acting the same way you would if I were accidentally and nationally spotlighted as speaking for the political views of the class of Wharton ’91.
Bottom line: if Joe incorporates, Obama’s going to charge him a higehr corporate tax rate. If he doesn’t incorporate and files his 1040 as an individual (as most small business owners do), then he’s subject to Obama’s higher tax rate in the >$250,000 bracket.
Bottom line: you’re kind of talking out your ass here. As best as I can tell, Obama is going to charge him the current corporate tax rate (McCain wants to lower the corporate rate to 25%), but will also have many new tax incentives for doing things like, say, hiring people. Depending on whether Joe is C-corp, S-corp, LLC, or what have you, he’ll have other options for practicing both new and existing tax-avoidance strategies. Like Obama said to the man himself, he might do better, he might do worse.
Note: I just spent 20 minutes in Google and talking to a buddy from the Heritage Foundation, and I couldn’t find word one of Obama wanting to raise corporate tax rates. His tax plan lists four tax breaks for small business (capital gains, job creation, healthcare, R&D), and lists a series of “loopholes” which he’ll close to increase corporate tax revenue. But I don’t see any mention of “increasing corporate taxes” either in his documentation or in Google, which means I can’t document a $250,000 ceiling for businesses.
If you’ve got a relatively nonpartisan reference here, send it my way. But at the moment it looks like we’ve both conflated Obama’s individual and business tax policies.
And finally, we find out that he “voted Republican in the March primary,” which is poorly worded enough to make me believe it was intended to deceive (it certainly decieved you).
No, it didn’t deceive me at all. Partisans vote in primaries. Independents do not. If you go to vote in a primary, you can call yourself an independent, but you’re generally lying.
At least, that’s my general understanding. But let’s turn to the numbers. 30.3% of the electorate voted in a primary this year. That number includes 19.4% Democrats and 10.8% Republicans. Assuming a 41/39/20 split (rounding the various numbers I’m finding in Google), just over 1 in 4 Republicans voted in the primaries.
So, you can take someone at face value when they say that they’re independent, but they were so moved by the Republican primaries that they made a one-time vote. Or you can look at the statistics which indicate that it’s generally only the dedicated partisans who show up in the first place.
what’s up with this nonsense that Obama keeps spouting about 98% of small businesses make less than $250,000 per year (in the first debate it was 95%, btw). Maybe he’s defining “small business” as businesses that make $250,001 or less?”
What I’ve heard him say is 95% of people, not businesses, make less than $250,000 per year. The US census says that 2.3% make $250,000 or more, so saying 98% would be an accurate shorthand rounding of 97.7% to the nearest integer.
Again, I’m not sure that the discussion of businesses is valid — that is, I’m hoping you can point me to some reference that indicates that there’s a corporate tax change for businesses like there are for individuals. But I did some Googling regardless.
The first place I looked led me to an SBA 40-page document that defines small businesses for every industry with a NAICS code. Not particularly useful — and it seems that the government definition of “small” is pretty damned big in many cases.
So let’s look at census data. There are 23,343,821 businesses in the US (in 2002); 75.6% of them have no employees. Businesses with employees average $3,872,141/year gross receipts; businesses without average $43,638/year.
Only businesses with employees have a breakdown by receipts: 22.7% make less than $100K; 41.9% make $100K-$500K. Making some silly assumptions about the $250K breakdown (i.e., the distribution within this group is the same as the ratio between <$100K and >$500K), 50.6% of businesses with employees make less than $250K. Including the non-employee businesses, at least 12.05% of all US businesses make over $250K.
That number is increased by non-employee businesses — but based on the average income of those businesses, I’d say it’s a small number. Making more silly assumptions based on the ratio of average gross receipts, and assuming the same distribution as the employer firms, I come up with 0.56%, for a total of 12.6% of US businesses making over $250K per year.
Finally, all of these numbers are gross receipts. Last I checked, businesses are taxed on profit, which implies that a) these numbers are actually far lower, and b) I just spent the least productive 90 minutes researching Google ever.
Just spotted a quote in today’s Obama speech: “98% of small business owners make less than $250,000 a year.” That’s different than saying that it’s 98% of small businesses — although given my back-of-the-napkin calculations that 87.4% of all businesses are in this category, it might not be too far off either.
I don’t have the numbers to document Obama’s claim, but it makes sense to me in light of the numbers I posted above. Most small businesses do not succeed, but a small percentage make their owners much more money than they could have made otherwise. Since 2.3% of households make more than $250K (i.e., with potentially more than one wage earner), I can certainly see that even if 8-10% of individual business owners successfully earn multiples of their income, that still leaves only 2% passing the $250K threshold. A median worker with a $40K salary could very successfully quintuple his income and still be in the 98%, satisfying both entrepreneurial lore and Obama’s statistical claim.
Now everyone is talking about the American economy and eclections, nice to read something different. Eugene