POINTER94
Vice Admiral
- Joined
- Oct 12, 2003
- Messages
- 5,031
This may or may not have been posted b4, but I have never seen it here.<br /><br />_____________________________________________<br />Today's Economic Lesson in Taxation<br /><br />Let's put tax cuts in terms everyone can understand. Suppose that every day, ten men go out <br />for dinner. The bill for all ten comes to $100. If they paid their bill <br />the way we pay our taxes, it would go something like this:<br /><br />* The first four men (the poorest) would pay nothing.<br />* The fifth would pay $1.<br />* The sixth would pay $3.<br />* The seventh $7.<br />* The eighth $12.<br />* The ninth $18.<br />* The tenth man (the richest) would pay $59.<br /><br />So, that's what they decided to do. The ten men ate dinner in the <br />restaurant every day and seemed quite happy with the arrangement, until <br />one day, the owner threw them a curve.<br /><br />"Since you are all such good customers," he said, "I'm going to reduce the <br />cost of your daily meal by $20."<br /><br />So, now dinner for the ten only cost $80. The group still wanted to pay <br />their bill the way we pay our taxes.<br /><br />So, the first four men were unaffected. They would still eat for free. But <br />what about the other six, the paying customers? How could they divvy up <br />the $20 windfall so that everyone would get his 'fair share'?<br /><br />The six men realized that $20 divided by six is $3.33. But if they <br />subtracted that from everybody's share, then the fifth man and the sixth <br />man would each end up being 'PAID' to eat their meal.<br /><br />So, the restaurant owner suggested that it would be fair to reduce each <br />man's bill by roughly the same amount, and he proceeded to work out the <br />amounts each should pay.<br /><br />And so:<br /><br />* The fifth man, like the first four, now paid nothing (100% savings).<br />* The sixth now paid $2 instead of $3 (33% savings).<br />* The seventh now paid $5 instead of $7 (28% savings).<br />* The eighth now paid $9 instead of $12 (25% savings).<br />* The ninth now paid $14 instead of $18 (22% savings).<br />* The tenth now paid $49 instead of $59 (16% savings).<br /><br />Each of the six was better off than before. And the first four continued <br />to eat for free. But once outside the restaurant, the men began to compare <br />their savings.<br />"I only got a dollar out of the $20," declared the sixth man. He pointed <br />to the tenth man "but he got $10!"<br /><br />"Yeah, that's right," exclaimed the fifth man. "I only saved a dollar, <br />too. It's unfair that he got ten times more than me!"<br /><br />"That's true!!" shouted the seventh man. "Why should he get $10 back when <br />I got only $2? The wealthy get all the breaks!"<br /><br />"Wait a minute," yelled the first four men in unison. "We didn't get <br />anything at all.. The system exploits the poor!"<br /><br />The nine men surrounded the tenth and beat him up.<br /><br />The ne xt night the tenth man didn't show up for dinner, so the nine sat <br />down and ate without him. But when it came time to pay the bill, they <br />discovered something important. They didn't have enough money between<br />all of them for even half of the bill!<br /><br />And that, boys and girls, journalists and college professors, is how our <br />tax system works. The people who pay the highest taxes get the most <br />benefit from a tax reduction. Tax them too much, attack them for being<br />wealthy, and they just may not show up at the table anymore. There are <br />lots of good restaurants in Europe and the Caribbean
