Pulling the double shift
By Chris Jungle

Now, you shouldn't kick a man while he's already down, but in this case I have to make an exception because he keeps talking the same trash. If he says it enough times, I'm really worried people are going to start believing it. So here's my note to Bob Dole. The extreme majority of people that take a second or third job do not do it to pay their taxes. The first time I heard that statement I just put it under the number of silly things people say during the long campaign, but I started hearing it multiple times a day in sound bites. Somebody on the Dole ticket bumped that idea all the way up to a major point in what's wrong with America.

Now, I've known many people who have had two jobs, and it is true that they needed more money. There have been others that don't get second jobs, but pull double shifts at the same job to make some extra cash. I've heard many reasons for why a person took an extra job or continually worked overtime and never has the answer been "Well, these federal taxes are killing my paychecks so bad that I need another job." Some of the more popular responses have been "I didn't think a car payment would be so much," and "My roommate took off and didn't pay rent this month." In general, people get extra jobs because of bad circumstances that have come their way. Federal taxes, however, are not included in that category. Taxes are constant, and after everyone's first paycheck in their lives, they have accepted them and take a little less money than the gross.

That does not mean we don't grumble about taxes, because everybody does. In the jobs I've had (somwhere between nearly minimum wage and slave labor), there is more complaining about the Social Security Tax. Since most of the people I've worked with are under forty, they don't even expect Social Security to be around when they get old enough (if they make it that far at all). It's one thing to have money taken out of checks that supposedly goes to running the country, but it's another to just give money to an idea that they will more than likely see no benefits from. Coincidentally, Social Security takes more than federal taxes in most low paying jobs.

When Bob Dole talks about people who work two jobs, I hope he's referring to the lower class‹those people I'm talking about in this column. If he's referring to a single person or family making over forty or fifty thousand dollars and getting a second job to pay off the Miata, I think the problem is poor financial planning rather than high taxes. It is always interesting to see the rich moan about how they're paying for America, but I could easily walk down the street and find about one hundred thousand people who will swap tax brackets with them any day.

The working lower and lower-middle class are probably the most amazing people in the United States. These are the people who work the same jobs for ten or twenty years slowly building their existence. They will take second jobs or put in for overtime during the lean times just to make sure everyone they take care of is fed or to cover the phone bill. There are also a lot of single people who are just hard workers and like the idea of making more money. When I worked at a twenty-four hour diner, I knew a guy named Skip who constantly took extra shifts and averaged fifty-five hour work weeks. He just loved the idea that while I made $4.50/hour he averaged $5.50/hour with overtime. I never heard him say anything like "Man, if they'd just stop taking that twenty-five dollars out of my paycheck, I wouldn't have to work so much." The truth was that he liked to tax his mind and body every now and then, and reap the rewards of this extra effort. Those who didn't enjoy such torture, like myself, just didn't make as much money.

Bob Dole's campaign statement of working more to pay for taxes adds to the misconceptions of hard workers. Maybe he truly thinks that if the government cuts taxes, no one will have to work two jobs anymore. Maybe he thinks this is the one issue he's right on. Maybe he should just hang out with Skip after he's worked one hundred and ten hours in a two week pay period. I'm sorry had to do this, Bob, but just because you're losing the election doesn't mean you should confuse the public about the working class.

Chris Jungle has rarely made enough money to worry about paying any sort of taxes, much less get near that near-mythical 38 percent tax bracket.

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