You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy.
Crumbs!
The Polarity in this country is disturbing.
Whether it is immigration or the economy, this country is divided like a smile with a missing tooth.
Tax Cuts is a perfect example of the canyon like divide that separates Americans.
Democrats said that tax cuts would benefit the rich.
Republicans argued that when companies do well, they invest more, create more jobs, and expand.
You know what? They’re both right.
But Democrats figure that if the rich benefit, then like a see saw in a school yard with a fat kid on one end, surely the equation cannot be balanced.
But what if it is balanced? What if Gordon Gekko in Wall Street was right when he said “Greed is good!”
What if more money for the company also equates to money for the worker, which equates to money for the country.
By the transitive property of fiscal rational, this is a win win for Anyone who has a light bill to pay.
Despite rhetorical spin doctors maligning the tax plan, the vote passes by the margin of a latex condom.
Republicans rejoice. Democrats grab their pitch forks.
Republicans declare victory. Democrats throw themselves down on the floor of the senate and bang their fists in a congressional temper tantrum.
Law makers moan with the passion of a Southern Preacher pushing the collection plate down the pew.
I hear fire and brimstone bitch sessions on CNN and MSNBC as sour grapes vomits a frothy spray in front of any camera attached to a satellite truck.
Democrats are spitting mad. They are ready to set their torches on fire and stick their prickly pitch forks in the president. The prevailing thought; run this economic Frankenstein monster out of town on a rail.
Then a funny thing happened?
The tax plan began to work. And not like give it a year and we’ll see if it works. I’m talking, it worked almost over night.
GOD DAMN IT’S WORKING? The Pelosi’s of the world thought.
RUH ROH!
Suddenly, American companies began packing their bags. American industries that couldn’t do business in the land of milk of honey, said “honey we’re home.”
That’s right, US Companies that were taxed to death because it was easier to set up shop in San Jose Costa Rica instead of San Jose California, suddenly said: Enough with this Banana Republic Bull Shit. Give me some good ole US of A.
And bam, if you cut it, they will come.
And during this reinvigoration almost over night, the Democrats continue to lambast the tax plan as a figment of our fiscal imaginations.
Don’t look at the man behind the curtain, they screamed in horror. The Great and Powerful OZ has spoken.
But it is working and they hate that it is working. That means they are wrong and God Forbid, Trump was right?
Blasphemy!
So I’m gathered before a massive video screen in my workplace the other day.
My company CEO is being beamed to huge TV screens across the USA, from Hawaii to California to Texas to Nashville. He is there in his golden telegenic brilliance telling me about our corporation’s plans for growth and expansion and innovation.
Hmmmmm, I think to myself.
A year ago, we were scared we were all going to be laid off during this quasi hostile take over.
They’re blood thirsty corporate pirates one employee whispered to the next. Old people? GONE!
There was a genuine fear that when this new company took over, this was the end as we knew it.
Now, the CEO is on the gigantic screen, teleconferencing with thousands of us and he is talking with a positive energy that would illuminate Luke Skywalker’s light saber.
Expansion? Growth?
And then the CEO blows the doors off this submarine when he announces that everyone of us is getting a $500 one time bonus.
FIVE HUNDRED US DOLLARS!
And he says the company will increase our 401k match from .25 to .50 on the dollar. Up to 3%.
I check my watch to see if it’s December 25th.
I look around the news room for a Christmas tree or a minora.
I look around the room at my openly liberal co-workers.
They are smiling a smile fueled by a President they hate, a majority they loathe, a policy they detest.
Yet here it is, like a boxing glove in their flatulent faces.
Tax Cuts = prosperity. For the rich. And for the not so rich.
Say it ain’t so Joe.
Can anyone say thank you President Trump?
He may be a fool with a twitter handle, but he may actually have a feel for this economic thing.
I look around the room and I’m overcome with excitement.
$500 dollars!!!
That’s free money. That’s a couple of car payments. That’s a mortgage payment. That’s jail bond for family members who might fall off the wagon.
And doubling my tax free 401k match? Well that’s a God Damn raise! The gift that keeps on giving. Paycheck after paycheck in perpetuity as far as I’m concerned.
I didn’t go to the Wharton School of business, just the school of hard F$&ing knocks. But in 5 minutes, my new CEO just gave me financial gifts that no CEO in the history of my life has ever given me.
Wow!
I walk into the newsroom and I hear the sports guy, a blatant, don’t care who hears him speak out loud – Trump Hating Liberal – discuss the new gift.
“Well it’s a drop in the bucket compared to the tax cuts corporations are getting. But doubling our 401k match! That’s like a raise.”
And there it is . Even the most visceral anti Trump co-worker in the building can’t deny that money out of thin air for us is good.
I silently laugh. What part of me getting $500 and a 100% bump in my 401k is bad?
“It’s Crumbs,” Nancy Pelosi says on TV a day later. I watch the frozen faced lawmaker, her eyes propped open by skin tighter than a boy scout tent in winter, extend her bony hand and rub her fingers together. The symbolism is analogous to a bris without anesthetic. OUCH! Like a pauper dumping pennies into a sea of despair, her body language symbolizes the American worker is somehow being slighted, robbed, ripped off.
I watch this woman and wonder who she is talking to. In what world is $500 pauper fairy dust?
Well surely her sentiments can’t be widely accepted. And then I turn on CNN and Fox and ABC and I’m stunned.
Over and over and over I hear that big companies that have never given their employees anything but a pink slip while slipping out of the country in the middle of night to escape horrific tax code implications, are rewarding workers with bonuses and raises. I’m not talking a turkey at Christmas or a salami for Italian Pride Day. It’s not a Starbucks gift card for a venti or a latte or a grande cup of who cares? I’m talking hard core cash in your next paycheck. Nobody told ATT or Bank of America or a growing list of corporations to do it. They simply decided to send the world a message.
The United States of America is open for business. We’re invested in our country and in our employees.
“Permission to come aboard Captain?”
CRUMBS?
Have Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer and other liberals become so tainted that their brains have boiled over like soup froth bubbling onto the hot plate?
These lawmakers are rich beyond the common man’s dreams. They say they fight for the common man, yet they live in swanky palaces with exclusive zip codes hidden behind electronic gates that keep ordinary Americans out. They are as rich as the Republicans they hate, yet they say they fight for the working man.
I’m not so sure their intentions are as pure as they say.
ATT and Home Depot and Starbucks all reinvested in their workers. So did former scum bags like JP Morgan Chase.
Walt Disney gave their employees more than Mouse ears. It said hey you 125,000 workers how about a $1,000 bonus. That’s $125 million dollars the company just gave away Nancy. A quarter of a BILLION DOLLARS! I know that fat cats are getting fatter under this new tax cut, but a 1/4 of a Billion Dollars to its employees?
Please sir, may I have some more?
That ain’t a Charles Dickens fairy tale. It’s hard cold reality.
Attention Wal Mart Shoppers “We got a windfall on Aisle 3”
That’s right, the shopping giant gave ONE MILLION WORKERS $1,000.
THAT’S ONE BILLION DOLLARS.
Do you know how many face lifts ONE BILLION DOLLARS COULD BUY NANCY PELOSI?
HOLY WE GOT IT WRONG BAT MAN.
Are the Democrats so angry? so hateful of Trump that they are blinded by the fact that I just got $500 out of thin air?
Regan famously coined the term TRICKLE DOWN ECONOMICS.
Consider this: I take my $500 and I go to dinner and spend $100. I leave the waiter a $20 tip. I only went to dinner on a Wednesday night because I had some extra cash in my pocket. If I don’t get my tax bonus, I’m eating a $2 box of Mac and Cheese.
So now I have $400 left. More on that in a moment….
But that waiter has 10 other tables. Perhaps 5 of those diners are like me and decided to go to dinner on a Wednesday night, a night when they normally pull the blankets over their eyes and dream of a way to make ends meet. And if they all spend $100 and tip the waiter $20 bucks, that waiter just made $120 he wouldn’t have normally had on a Wednesday night.
Now that waiter can buy a steak dinner for his family instead of Mac and Cheese. Now that waiter can pay his $40 light bill. Or that waiter can invest $100 in his new on line SHOPIFY platform and begin selling the glow in the dark guitar picks to the planet he has always dreamed of.
And what about the bus boys and cooks and bartenders who get hired because we all have more money and went out on a Wednesday night? Those people have more money and pay their bills and go out to dinner and so on and so on and so on.
Trickle Down economics Nancy Girl. It’s the dream that people have always known this country is about.
And back to me. I still have $400 dollars.
I can pay my mortgage for the month. I can help my children with their lives. I can give to the salvation army.
I can put the entire lump sum on Black and spin the wheel.
Always bet on Black I’m told.
crumbs?
People like Pelosi are detached from the reality that governs my life. I live in a real place where real deposits into my bank account equal real actions.
If you make a million a year, then $1000 is a speed bump.
If you make $40,000 a year, then $1,000 is 1/40th of your grossly income.
That’s almost an entire pay check for some people. That’s 20 tanks of gas. That’s a month worth of dinners for a family of 4. That’s a down payment on a car for a working mom who was riding the bus.
As SNL so famously uttered: Nancy Pelosi you ignorant slut!
Are the rich getting richer? Yep.
But in this instance, the poor are also getting richer.
And last time I checked, this is still the greatest country on the planet where an idea and a $1,000 can turn your dream into a reality too. Remember when Henry Ford was a guy with an idea about mass production and a $1000 burning a hole in his pocket?
And even if you buy 500 boxes of Mac and Cheese with your $1,000 then good for you and the digestive disorder most assuredly in your future.
If you don’t like $1,000 out of thin air, then get the hell out.
I’ll take my crumbs.
Thanks President Trump.
Life’s Crazy™