Reply #13: I wish I could remember this properly... [View All]

[HawkerHurricane]

Tax Cuts - A Simple Lesson In Economics

This is how the cookie crumbles. Please read it carefully.

Let's put tax cuts in terms everyone can understand. Suppose that every day, ten men go out for dinner. The bill for all ten comes to $100.

If they paid their bill the way we pay our taxes, it would go something
like this:
The first four men (the poorest) would pay nothing. They would also eat crackers and drink water.
The fifth would pay $1. He would get a burger and water.
The sixth would pay $3. He would get a burger, fries, and water.
The seventh $7. He would get a salad, a double burger, curly fries, soda, and desert.
The eighth $12. He would have salad, a steak, choice of patato, soda, and desert.
The ninth $18. He would have soup and salad, a steak, choice of patato, a nice wine, and desert.
The tenth man (the richest) would pay $59. He would have vichisois, chef's salad, filet minon, fois gras, a fine wine, and his choice from the desert cart.

So, that's what they decided to do.

The ten men ate dinner in the restaurant every day and seemed quite happy with the arrangement, (well, the guys with just crackers were bummed, but who listens to them) until one day, the owner threw them a curve.

"Since you are all such good customers," he said, "I'm going to reduce the cost of your daily meal by $20."

One of the men, who knew something of basic math, asked how he could afford to reduce the cost.

"Oh, that's easy. You see, burgers really only cost me 50 cents. And soda is cheap, it's really only 10 cents. Water's free, and the crackers I buy in bulk for pennies a box. Salads are a little worse, they're about a buck each. What really kills me is the cost of the filet minon. That's $40 buy itself, and the wine's another $20, and the other fancy stuff..."
"Wait a minute" says the smart one, "you're telling us that most of the cost is in the one fancy meal. In fact, that one fancy meal actually costs MORE than the man pays! What's up with that?"

"Oh, I can't stop giving him the good meal... he owns lots of things, and if he stopped coming he'd tell his friends and they'd go somewhere else..."

"BUT" said the smart one "WE are the ones paying for HIS MEAL!"
"Well, yeah, but he's wealthy and all..."

So, the guys in the middle decided to go someplace else to eat. Unable to afford to give the rich man his fancy meal at a reduced cost anymore, the resteraunt owner was forced to raise his prices to reflect what the wealthy man actually should pay as his share. The wealthy man left in a huff, going elsewhere also. Which left the poor with no choice but to also go elsewhere, and the resteraunt owner went out of business.

And that, boys and girls, journalists and college professors, is how our tax system works. The people who the most benefit from our system don't pay thier fair share, and whine when they don't get even more. And if they keep it up, the people who pay more than thier fair share are going to get angry and start going after them. After all, if we could get rid of thier greedy, cheating ways, maybe more in the middle will be able to become rich too... and maybe some of the poor will make it to the middle.