Joe the Plumber hits the jackpot

October 29, 10:39 PMDenver News ExaminerEd Duffy

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  (AP Photo/Amy Sancetta)

Joe Wurzelbacher was just a guy turning wrenches until one fateful day when he decided to walk up and ask Barack Obama a question.

Now, he's been propelled into the spotlight. The spotlight wasn't kind to him at first, but now it seems things have taken a dramatic turn for Joe. He has a management firm now to handle his appearances and may be on the verge of signing a big record deal. That's right, Joe the singer. As it turns out, Joe can sing and while he's not JImmy Hendrix, he can also play guitar, and he's likable.  Yes, Joe's going to be paying some serious taxes after all.

I don't begrudge Joe his success, but it does point out a phenomenon in the music industry that I think is representative of the economy as a whole. I haven't put my finger on the exact cause of the problem, but it's obviously not fluid and efficient enough. Joe can sing, play an instrument and he's not a jerk. How many people could make that cut? It's got to be millions. Yet the music industry is able to keep the market to a few dozen superstars. The same is very evident in the modeling world. They may be among the top 1% as far as physical beauty (which is a subjective call anyway). That puts the talent pool at around 60 million globally, yet somehow only a handful are isolated and paid ridiculous amounts of money.

It's true in many industries. On Wall Street professional money managers are able to outperform the index's a mere 15% of the time. My cat could do that. Yet, they take home multi-million dollar bonus checks.

The barriers to entry may not be obvious or easy to spot from the outside looking in, but they are there. The stats prove it.  You can even extend it to the presidential campaign. No matter who you're voting for, doesn't it strike you as astounding that this is the best we could do? These two guys are the cream of the crop?  Out of over 300 million Americans? Really?

Both our economic and electoral systems need to be carefully examined. We don't need change for change's sake. We need to find the bottle necks and open them up.