Welcome to the Party

A blue collar man came home from a long day’s work to find his idealistic daughter had dropped in while doing some local community organizing. Like so many others in his income bracket, he considered himself to be a God fearing conservative, and along with most conservatives, was very, very much against income and capital gains taxes, especially on the rich.

But today he was deeply worried about the economic future of his naive, liberal daughter and his two grandchildren. Based on stories his parents told him about the Great Depression, his own shallow prejudice, and selected morsels of misinformation fed to him by right-wing talk radio, he decided to confront her right there and then for her own good.

He started by calmly and politely pointing out that Barack Obama was a Muslim, not a US citizen, and the President-elect was going to raise taxes on millionaires and force government funded abortions on everyone -- even the men. Before the girl had a chance to respond to her father's breathtaking ignorance, he muttered something about unions being responsible and trailed off. The girl, sensing something more was going on, asked him instead about his own job.

A bit taken aback, the man admitted it was lousy.  Truth be told, he was slowly falling behind on his bills. And yet he knew was relatively fortunate: Half the plant had already been laid off when their jobs were outsourced to cheaper overseas labor. The managers had run the company into the ground even as they awarded themselves lavish bonuses, while the remaining unskilled workforce was slowly let go one by one for what sounded like trumped up reasons, merely to save the company from paying any unemployment in the man's Right to Work state. The man rarely missed a day of work in ten years, he had excellent employee reviews, and sometimes he even clocked out and worked for hours with no pay. But as a senior employee making more than newer ones, he was worried his job might be next. And if he lost his income and healthcare at the same time, years before Medicare or Social Security kicked in, his diabetic wife could go blind and the family might lose their home.

The girl said "Wow, that is awful. Well, too bad you’d turn down a million dollar raise.. "

The man shot back in surprise, "Why that’s crazy! I wouldn’t turn it down, I’d love it!"

The daughter replied coyly, "but to be fair you’d end up with less than $ 700,000 a year after taxes."

The man laughed and said with more than a trace of patronizing contempt, "That's almost twenty times what I make now! I wouldn't complain a bit!"

Then the daughter slowly smiled, winked, and softly said, "Welcome to the Democratic Party, dad."