The Sacrificial Daughter (26 page)

"And you and your father think Supply side is better? Do you have any clue the harm that comes from this sort of laissez-fare attitude?" Jesse's eyes went a little wide; she didn't know the term laissez-faire. Mr. Irving explained: "It means
Let it be
. It's where there is no government intervention whatsoever and the people are at the mercy of business that can do whatever they want."

"Why do you assume businesses are evil? And why do you believe people are sheep in need of your protection? I don't see people that way." Turning to the class she said, "I bet most of your parents work for one business or another. How many of you think that your parents work for an evil company?"

No hands came up. Jesse didn't know if that was because of their dislike for her or not, she just went with it. "See? I bet there are no evil companies in Ashton. The people wouldn't put up with a company that was stealing or breaking the law. Either way, I don't think Supply-siders want no government, they only want less government. When you boil it all down, Keynesian is about control. Take away all those big words in that book that nobody..." Mr. Irving's eyebrows went up. "...I mean very few people understand and what you are left with is the government trying to control something that can't be controlled."

"What about here in Ashton?" a girl asked. Jesse turned and saw it was the same freckled-face girl from her English class. "My dad says that the town manager is also taking away rights and regulations."

"What rights?" Jesse asked. She had never heard of her father trying something like that.

Even Mr. Irving looked skeptical. The girl started turning a little pink in the cheeks about having said anything at all. "He said the town wasn't going to enforce labor laws anymore."

"Oh that," Jesse said with a feeling of relief. "He does that in every town. He says if a ten year old can be employed watching over an infant or mowing grass, why can't they do other things? If their parents are ok with it why should we keep them from earning a few dollars? And he hates useless regulations. He says they are the quickest way to kill the economy."

Mr. Irving rolled his eyes. "And how do they possibly do that?"

Jesse hopped up and went to the blackboard. "I could explain, but it's easier if I showed you."

"My father made me do this once when I was eight-years-old." As she spoke, she took a piece of chalk and drew a big T. At the top left she wrote Supply-side and on the right, Keynesian.

"You see, I wanted to have a lemonade sale, so I asked my dad for ten dollars to buy supplies. But he wouldn't give me the money until I wrote out my business plan. You know: how much were the lemons and sugar, how much was I charging per cup, what sort of interest rate he could expect..."

Mr. Irving laughed loud and long. "He charged you interest? His own daughter? How much did he charge?"

"I never got the loan..." She had to stop because half the class was now laughing along with the teacher. Jesse was even able to smile...but that was only because it had been nine years. When they settled down she went on, "He was trying to teach me that there was more to running a business than just slapping a sign on a folding table. Inadvertently, he also showed me how government intervention can kill business."

She paused, feeling strangely confident. Every pair of eyes but one, was upon her and for once they weren't mocking. They were interested. "We'll use the lemonade stand as our proposed business. And we'll keep the ten dollars as our capital to purchase supplies and such."

She turned to the board and wrote on both columns: sugar, lemons, ice, cups, sign, folding table, pitcher.

Although she knew what answer would come to her, Jesse asked the class, "How much are we going to charge per cup of lemonade?" She was suddenly in teacher mode, a mode she did not know she possessed.

"Twenty-five cents," two different students said.

"If we sell fifty cups what will our profit be?" she asked, writing the number twenty-five in each column.

"Twelve-fifty."

Mr. Irving was watching all this intently and was silent up to that point, "She said profit."

"Oh, two-dollars and fifty cents."

Jesse turned back and choked on the words that were about to come out of her mouth. For some reason her eyes had gone straight to the back of the classroom. Ky still wasn't watching her, but he was no longer reading either. His head was turned the slightest bit toward her—he was listening. He was interested. Her heart did a little skip jump in her chest.

"Um...right," Jesse spat out before regaining her composure. "Here both columns are equal...the profit is the same. Can anyone tell me how an interfering government might affect the Keynesian side but not the Supply-side?" Silence greeted this. Even the crickets were quiet.

"I'll start with an easy one," Jesse said, wondering if she would have to fill in all the blanks. "Sugar from Brazil is half as cheap, but the government sticks a tariff on it to protect American sugar farmers. That's great for the few of them, but all the rest of us just got screwed over bad since sugar is the most costly item in your lemonade. There goes seventy cents in profit. What else?"

"A lemon tariff?" someone asked.

"No, but the government is using subsidies to push for all things organic. Organic lemons are being grown more and more and are more expensive. With fewer trees available for normal lemons, what happens to their price? It goes up and you just lost another ten cents."

"What about nutrition labels," the freckle-faced girl added. "The government makes you put them on everything."

"What's your name?" Jesse asked. In her heart there was always hope for a friendship. She searched for signs of it in everyone and this girl had looked Jesse right in the eyes when she had spoken. There had been shyness in them, but no hate.

"Sandra," the girl replied.

Jesse went to the board and began filling in the Keynesian side. Marking off seventy cents for the sugar and ten cents for the lemons. "Sandra is right. Nutrition labels have to be added to each cup—two cents. What else might have to be added to the cups?"

"A warning label?"

"Yes, thank you." Jesse said, nodding to a boy who had earlier that day rhymed runt with an obscene word in his limerick, and received only a very slight reprimand as a result.

"We don't have warning labels on soda and junk food yet, but there has been lots of talk...two cents lost." She turned to the board to add the new figures when Mr. Irving spoke up.

"That is a future
maybe
at the most. It shouldn't go up there."

"Then I have to add a penny for both lobbying and PR to make sure it doesn't happen," Jesse replied. "Every time someone floats these silly ideas, someone else has to fight them and someone has to pay and it's always the business. Anything else..." the room was quiet, but it was a nice sort of quiet. The kids were thinking.

"What about OSHA?" a girl asked, meekly putting her hand half way up before speaking. "When I worked at The Dim Sum I had to watch all these stupid safety movies. There was one that was like a half hour long about washing your hands and another one about not mixing bleach with ammonia and we didn't even use bleach or ammonia. It was such a waste of time."

"Good one. Complying with those sorts of rules cost money, one more cent. Anything else?" Jesse didn't really think any more ideas would come so she only paused a moment. "There's a hundred more that we aren't thinking of. Everything from what sort of markers you use to make your sign, to the height of your table, to what your cups are made of can be regulated and you have to pay for it all..."

"There's also the luxury tax. Don't forget about that." This came from a pale looking boy and it had a sobering effect on the classroom. Everyone looked away from him. Some cast their eyes out the window and others looked to their books.

"Gordon, its lemonade. It's not a luxury item." Mr. Irving said.

"To me it is," Gordon said. "I haven't had lemonade since I don't know when. All I get is water and with the town threatening to turn it off, pretty soon I won't even have that."

Now the room was dead silent. Clearly Gordon's family was on the brink. Jesse didn't know what to do. Did she keep going, and if so, would that appear insensitive? Or did she just wait and let Mr. Irving go back to teaching. If she did wait, Mr. Irving would likely brush over the boy's comment.

"Gordon is right, Mr. Irving." Jesse said. "Anything can be construed as a luxury item. There..."

"In Ashton, used cars are a luxury item," Gordon said quietly. The room remained still. Jesse gave Sandra a look that said
what's going on?

"Gordon's family," Sandra began, keeping an eye on Gordon to see how he would react. "Owned Triple A Autos. It was a used car lot and it went under a couple of years ago because the town passed a luxury tax."

"It probably wasn't all because of the tax, Sandra," the teacher said.

"It was," said Gordon. "You could get the same car in Barton as you could here but for six hundred dollars cheaper. Who wouldn't want to save six-hundred dollars in this economy? My dad cried when that tax was passed and he cried when the bank took the last of his cars."

What followed that was one of the most painful silences Jesse had ever been a part of. It went on for a half a minute and during it she would have bet money that Gordon was also going to cry. His eyes went red and his face looked hot, but he didn't cry.

"Ok. I think we've heard enough from Miss Clarke," Mr. Irving announced, heading for the blackboard.

"I wasn't done," she replied in a quiet voice. She had a need inside of her to finish and a part of it was because of Gordon. He had a lost look about him, but there was also a desire to
know
in his eyes. Obviously, he had never heard another set of ideas beyond what he had been spoon fed by Mr. Irving.

"You are done when I say you're done."

A little louder she said, "I was just getting to the best part. The
pièce de résistance
if you will. Who wants to hear how this ends?" The kids looked at each other and Jesse was profoundly disappointed when only five hands went up. She thought that she had captured more of their attention than that. Mr. Irving gave her a sour smile and it so angered Jesse that she tried again...from another angle.

"A show of hands…who wants to hear Mr. Irving?" Giggling swept the class, but not a single hand went up. The teacher's mouth came open, but Jesse jumped in first. "The people have spoken. Take a look at our grid...so far, on one side you have a profit of two-dollars and fifty cents and on the other, one-dollar and seventy-five cents. But now, as Gordon has reminded us, we are at tax time and this is where the rubber hits the road. Can anyone tell me what the corporate income tax is?"

No one knew. They were lucky. It meant that they had normal human dads. "The tax rate is thirty five percent, the highest in the world."

A few eyebrows went up and Jesse began to worry that she had over-sold her big finish. "So what is the profit after corporate tax?" she asked.

"About a dollar and fourteen cents," Sandra supplied.

Without looking at the real teacher, Jesse wrote this on the board. "Are we now done?" A few shrugs and Jesse shook her head in a sad way. "I wish. We haven't even paid ourselves. Now instead of a ten-dollar lemonade stand let's say that was a million dollar business. At the end of the day we have either two-hundred and fifty thousand dollars under supply side or one-hundred and fourteen thousand dollars under Keynesian. How much of that do we keep and how much do we put back into the business to help grow it?"

More shrugs came to her.

"On the Keynesian side let's just say we put in twenty thousand to help grow our business...so our take home pay is ninety four thousand dollars...but wait! Now we have to pay our own personal income tax on top of everything else! What would that combined federal and state tax rate be?" she asked Mr. Irving.

He gave her the smallest shrug—
you're on your own, kid
—it said to Jesse. "My guess it would be at least forty-five percent. So that means after working your tail off every single day and risking everything you own...you risked your house, your cars, your children's college tuition...you get to take home about fifty two thousand dollars.

"Some of you may be thinking that's pretty good, but what happens when the sugar tariff goes up? You're out five thousand. What happens when a competitor moves in across the street? You're out fifteen thousand. What happens when the economy starts to slide and the town needs money for their budget?" Jesse left that unanswered, after all Gordon—exhibit A—was right there.

"Now on the Supply side," she said, tapping the board. "You have two-hundred and fifty thousand dollars of profit. Take away the ten percent tax and you are left with two hundred and twenty five thousand dollars." She wrote that number under the Supply-side column and then wrote fifty-two under the Keynesian. "This is the best case scenario. Compare the bottom line of these two; which would you rather have?" This brought out the smiles Jesse was hoping for.

"This is what my father is looking to do—he wants to get the government out of the way of business. Right now the government takes all this money and a lot of it is supposed to help the poor, but look at how many poor you still have, and the numbers of poor people is only growing!" Jesse underlined the larger sum on the chalkboard. "How many more people can the Supply-side hire compared to the Keynesian? With these jobs, how many more people will be lifted out of poverty? Our unemployment rate would practically be zero and there would be almost no need for welfare. In my mind, that's truly helping the poor."