Class Wars

Joe the plumber had his fifteen minutes of fame in the last 24 hours. Aha. Fifteen minutes of fame can last longer than fifteen minutes. This hapless guy who only entered the spotlight because he asked a presidential candidate a question, has been hounded by media camped out in his driveway. Diane Sawyer joyfully said they had an interview with "Joe The Plumber". Man of the hour. Joe has now been vetted. Joe is really named Carl. Joe didn't pay all his taxes to the IRS. Joe doesn't have a plumbers licence. Under Obama's plan he would get a refund anyway. The strange world of Joe the plumber.

This politicos debated about tax plans of the candidates. It highlights how different classes will be treated. Everyone wants to help the "middle class". With few exceptions, we all think we are the middle class. Some with more money are upper-middle class. The upper class know who they are. A strange thing happened during the recent Wall St. party. When they shook that stock market did we all drop a class? Many fell out of the comfortable class. What are we now? Since the reduction in wealth was almost universal we may be able to keep our middle class designation. We certainly are in the middle of something.

Time to vent. I hate referring to people's class by the amount of money they earn. Are high earners really upper class? We have heard some stories of executives who raided millions from corporations with golden parachutes that I dislike calling upper class. Nothing classy about those guys. There are also hard working low paid people who are called low class. If you are hard working and do not make much money you are not low class. Low class should be reserved for bums who don't work. Low class should refer to druggies, criminals, perverts and badly behaving people. Low class should not refer to the impoverished person eeking out a living holding down two or three minimum wage jobs. They should be referred to as working class.

They work. They are working class and should be proud of it. My mom worked hard as a waitress to raise two daughters on low wages but she had a lot of class. She had way more class than those guys from AIG who partied hearty on $400,000. federal $$$ after the bailout.

Class. You have it or you don't. Even if we have lost some of our portfolio strength we haven't lost our class. Keep your chin up. Keep behaving. Keep on working. We are all in this thing together.

Class dismissed.