Matt Kuchar and Trickle-Down Economics

Matt Kuchar can't be blamed. Well, not really.

And he was big enough to apologize and try to make it right. Good for him.

But his initial comments about giving his rent-a-caddy just $5,000 of the $1,296,000 he claimed by winning a pro tournament earlier this year were the ones that caught right in my craw:

• We had an agreement: Uh-huh. Now you can run and hide with $1,291,000. Never mind that the agreement, made with a handshake, was made with your perfect knowledge that it was entirely possible for you to scoot home after stiffing this caddy way, way below what the PGA tournament players usually pay out--10% being the norm.
• Tipped him another two grand to make it five: See above.
• This is a non-story: We know you would think that. We know you would think that it's time to move on.
• Didn't lose any sleep over it: Did the caddy? Have you made any comments about him yet? Or is this all about you?

Kuchar comes off as a good-guy, hail-fellow-well-met type. He has immense talent and has finished in the top ten in several major tournaments. This was not his first victory, either; he has won multiple times. He also makes TV ads for golf shoe manufacturers, as if he needs that extra cash.

Because he has won 46 million dollars on tour. 46 million. Yes, he worked very hard for that money, and continues to do so. I've played the game competitively, and it's amazing how much work it takes to get good enough to be competitive.

But it doesn't remove him from having to be compassionate, fair, and aware.

When he came very close to winning the British Open tournament two years ago, his family (wife and two children) surprised him by flying to Scotland to see him. That couldn't have been cheap. He couldn't have spent his last earned dollars on that trip.

He's a good interview, friendly and engaging. He's what the PGA Tour prefers, as close to an All-American guy as you'll get, squeaky clean and smiling more often than not--which is fairly rare in a sport in which tension must be dealt with deeply, and mistakes can never be made up.

But he's pure American in another sense. There he stands, tall and white. There's his temporary caddy, short and Hispanic. Kuchar said it himself; making 500 bucks would have been a good week for him.

Would he have said that if a white guy would have caddied for him? Would he have given him just five grand for a $1.3 million windfall?

You don't have to be racially condescending on purpose. You can be completely thoughtless, too. You can just forget all about everyone else and make everything a business proposition. You can say that you ignored the other person's race in an attempt to make everything equal, everything the same.

But you can't. Because it isn't. Why doesn't America look good lately? Or, to be more direct: Why have so many of us recently learned how bad we look to the rest of the world?

You can say to yourself that you'll never see this guy again, and giving him something is better than nothing. After all, he's part-time help. Part-time help, regardless of the tasks involved, don't deserve what full-time people get.

Especially if they're from, you know, there. He should be lucky to have gotten what he got paid. Right? 

Here we sit with a made-up crisis on that international border, where those people are getting barrier after barrier thrown up against them in their desire to become citizens of this country--just like us. So how does this look, since the tournament was played in Mexico? In the holy, completely false world of the so-called 'free market', wouldn't a 'free market' allow--actually, demand--that the caddy have a chance to cross the international border and work in America??

Ohhhhh, noooooo. Can't have that. Real Americans need big-time caddy jobs. So we need to wall all that off. Literally. Right?

Here we sit with Fight-For-Fifteen demonstrating for $15 per hour while 45 jams up federal employees with his temper tantrum-laden government shutdown. What's the deal? They should be happy they have a job, right? $15 an hour will make the business owners less rich, won't it? That will raise prices, won't it? So opposing it will be a brave stand against government interference, even socialism, and will be doing the laborers a favor because they can take the pittance they're making and pay less for fewer things. Right?

It's difficult to consider such folks fairly if you're a multi-millionaire, earning your money at a sport in which you earn, or don't earn, every single dime. It's you against the field. It takes a hardness of spirit, a grinder's mentality, to stay competitive. It takes hundreds of hours of work, month after month, to keep one's skills fresh. You don't belong to a team, unless you count your caddy. 

But it isn't a team, as such, outside of being referred to in a very token way. A pro golfer can (and they have) fire a caddy in the middle of a round and pick another one out of a crowd. They can, and have, kept caddies for years, then dropped them with a thud like the heavy bags they carry. It isn't easy to be a caddy, but neither does it take tremendous individual skills. Anybody can carry a heavy bag, hand a person a club, rake sand traps, hold the pin, and shut up while your guy's swinging. It's a bonus if golfers rely on caddies for any advice, and the golfers have the last word. Let's call it for what it is: paid servitude.

Though they need them to get through their rounds--and couldn't possibly play as well without them--pro golfers look down their noses at caddies automatically. They're just employees with no contract, no health insurance, no pension. The condescension is palpable. It's easy to add the subtleties of race to that and ignore what should be obvious: That while paying that Mexican caddy five thousand would be an incredible payday for him, a regular American caddy would get a hundred grand, no sweat.

So Kuchar split the issue and paid him $50,000, along with an apology and an admission that he didn't do any of that well. Good, but had he not been ratted out by a fellow pro, would any of this have happened?

If some public workers' unions have next to no collective bargaining rights, as is true in Wisconsin, will the news of dropping wages and watering down pensions get anywhere near the front pages? Talk about stiffing the help....

Is the proposal of taxing people making millions of dollars per year 70% of their earnings all that outrageous?

Is the fact that people are paying far more in federal taxes this year, after being told the convenient lie that they'll benefit from putting the nation into a two trillion dollar debt to reduce corporate taxes and make fat cats even more corpulent with their corporatism, the least bit surprising?

It's where the rich are in America: Taking money endlessly, spouting the holiness of the 'free market' that they control, right down to the last dime they can pinch, and then whining about having to give that last dime away to maintain that very society in which they thrive, or to give somebody else a break. Strange how most of the rest of us don't respect that, because we have just seen--again--the true definition of 'trickle down' economics, where the very rich allow their money only to trickle, only to the degree to which they don't get caught at being outright miserly--which they prefer.

Because they don't respect us. Like the person who said he would make America great again but is dragging it down to ruin, there are those who have money and those who don't, and those who don't, well--you lost. Loser.

To which I respond: Try a mirror. And the minute caddies organize into unions, I'll be back with a ringing endorsement.

Be well. I'll see you down the road.


Mister Mark