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The Truth about Taxes
by Anonymous
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;
The fifth would pay $1:
The sixth would pay $3;
The seventh $7;
The eighth $12;
The ninth $18.
The tenth man -the richest- would pay $59.
That's what they decided to do. The ten men ate dinner in the restaurant
every day and seemed quite happy with the arrangement-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." So
now dinner for the ten only cost $80. The group still wanted to pay their
bill the way we pay our taxes. So the first four men were unaffected. They
would still eat for free.
But what about the other six- the
paying customers? How could they divvy up the $20 windfall so that
everyone would get his "fair share?"
The six men realized that $20 divided
by six is $3.33. But if they subtracted that from everybody's share,
then the fifth man and the sixth man would end up being
"paid" to eat their meal.
So the restaurant owner suggested that
it would be fair to reduce each man's bill by roughly the same amount, and
he proceeded to work out the amounts each should pay.
And so the fifth man paid nothing, the
sixth pitched in $2, the seventh paid $5, the eighth paid $9,
the ninth paid $12, leaving the tenth man with a bill of $52 instead
of his earlier $59.
Each of the six was better off than before. And the first four continued
to eat for free. But once outside the restaurant, the men began to compare
their savings. "I only got a dollar out of the $20,"
declared the sixth man.
He pointed to the tenth. "But he
got $7!"
"Yeah, that's right,"
exclaimed the fifth man. "I only saved a dollar, too. It's
unfair that he got seven times more than me!"
"That's true!" shouted the
seventh man.
"Why should he get $7
back when I got only $2? The wealthy get all the breaks!"
"Wait a
minute," yelled the first four men in unison. "We didn't get anything
at all. The system exploits the poor!"
The nine men surrounded
the tenth and beat him up.
The next night he didn't
show up for dinner, so the nine sat down and ate without him. But
when it came time to pay the bill, they discovered something
important. They were $52 short!
And that, boys and girls, journalists and college instructors, is how the
tax system works. The people who pay the highest taxes get the most
benefit from a tax reduction. Tax them too much, attack them
for being wealthy, and they just may not show up at the table
anymore. Unfortunately, Liberals cannot grasp this
straight-forward logic!
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