A fine rant on Joe the Plumber not being a plumber

by Mostly Cajun who, although he sets up large commercial electrical power stations, is not a 'Licensed' Electrician. Go and read Wherein the Cajun expounds on Joe the Plumber and Life:

So the nation knows the name of �Joe the Plumber�. Libtards are aghast that a �plumber� might talk about $250,000 a year. Indeed, one fo them is quoted as saying that he didn�t have any plumbers making $250,000 in his neighborhood. The guy making this statement is an idiot.

Joe the Plumber is a lot closer to being me than any of the politicians running for national office, folks. $250,000? That�s a lot of money when you�re standing in line at Wal-Mart with your food stamps in your hand, but in small business, it isn�t much. Ask a farmer how much a new combine or tractor costs.

Back in the 1970�s when I was a drill sergeant at Fort Polk, I met the first son of a millionaire I ever met in my life. He was a draftee, and his family had a net worth of over a million dollars. Most of it was tied up in the special machines they needed to harvest lettuce in California.

A plumbing business? I don�t know about plumbing in specific, but I do know about electrical testing, and I do know that putting a technician on the road is gonna get you over $100 an hour for billable hours. I had an office with five of us. At our goal of 80% utilization, my little office pulled in roughly $800K a year. Of course you have to start jerking things out of that number like salaries, five vehicles, test equipment, the cost of an office and an office administrator with a snarky attitude, but still it�s a SMALL business.

I suspect that plumbers don�t need racks of electronic test equipment at $70K a knock and salaries might not reach the levels of prima donna test technicians, but it�s pretty easy to see $250K left over from that., making the owner an official RICH person as defined by the dimmocrat party, and therefore needing of punishment (my thought) or extra �patriotism� (Joe Biden�s thought) as he pays his �fair share� (dimmocratspeak) for �winning life�s lottery� (more dimmocratspeak).

Discount the fact that a small businessman is providing jobs for his employees.

And a bit on licensing:

Licensure is a government scam. Oh, sure, you can make a case for �weeding out the ignorant�, but the REAL reason for licensure is to restrict the playing field. I don�t have an electrician�s license or a professional engineer certification. Both are required to work in my field outside the fence of my employer. But when they want to know things they come to me. Wednesday a �real engineer� walked into my office to get my opinion on our electrical system�s capacity if we were to add another process to our plant. In two minutes I roughed out the power system. But I cannot legally go outside the fence and install a ceiling fan on my own and get paid for it. Why? Because of �licensing�.

Hell, in Louisiana you have to have a state-issued license to be a florist. You know? �Flowers and sh*t�? Of course before our legislature passed this regulation, people were dying by the droves due to corsages assembled by unregulated flower-mongers. Thank G-d for our legislature. Irrespective of whether or not one can pass whatever test goes along with licensure, there�s usually an administrative fee attached by the state for awarding you the privilege of earning income so they can tax THAT too.

Heh... I feel the same way. When I was working for MSFT, I was designing and building the infrastructure for large server test labs one of which had about 1,000 machines. Although I didn't do any of the actual wiring, I had to present the plan to the Electrical Engineers and have them do what was needed -- I learned a lot and after the first couple months (I already had a good working knowledge of low-power electrical wiring and electronics), I got what I wanted and there were no more calls back to correct one of my oversights. For the task that I was hired, I was fully qualified and within the boundaries of my work, there was no license required. Joe the Plumber wants to buy the business he works for -- the business will hold the licenses and liability insurance, it doesn't matter that he is not licensed. And Cajun is serious about the cost of the tools needed to do the daily work. Some of the most basic pieces of test equipment can cost over $500 with complex gear being upwards of $15K. And this is stuff for which there is no substitute -- when you need it, you really need it...