… and Ali the Taxi Driver, Ah Chong the Chicken Rice Seller, Gopal the Barber, Yomogun the Farmer.
If you have been following the US presidential election, you would know who Joe the Plumber is. He is, well… a plumber, who confronted Barack Obama over the Democrat candidate’s tax proposals.
Obama’s Republican rival John McCain, seized the moment in the last presidential debate on Wednesday (Thursday morning Malaysian time) and used the plumber’s exchange with Obama as a central piece of his argument against Obama’s tax policies, saying they would hurt average American businessmen like Joe the Plumber.
Joe the Plumber is rich by average Malaysian standards. Anyone who is planning to buy a plumbing company worth more than US$250,000 (RM850,000), like what Joe the Plumber was reportedly planning to do, is rich by Alis’, Gopals’, Ah Chongs’ and Yomoguns’ standards, assuming Joe the Plumber is living in Malaysia.
In Malaysia, an annual income of RM60,000 is already considered high by the standard of the average Joe, including this Joe.
Even then, with the increase in the cost of living, that amount is hardly enough for a family of four — with two school-going children, a mortgage to pay, a car loan to service and a house rent to pay — to have a decent living in cities like Kuala Lumpur.
Joe the Plumber would have been already an elite here, sitting securely up there in the economic and social strata.
