That's just calling out to be spoofed.

Alternate Ending I...by Che...anyone else?

Tax Cuts -- A Simple Lesson In Economics

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.

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.

So, the ten men ate dinner in the restaurant every day and seemed quite
happy with the arrangement, until one day, the PRESIDENT threw them a curve.

"Since taxes are so high," he said, "I'm going to reduce them by 20%."

"We'll just reduce services because big-government is bad."

Some time later they went to eat and by coincidence, Che Guevara's
step-grandson rode by on his Norton. He watched as the ten dutifully
split the bill as they always had, and he looked on in disbelief. He
addressed the poorest six, big burly dudes:

"You mean to tell me every day you show up with a collective $4 to your
names while this clown has a wallet full of cash? Why don't you smack
him over the head and take all his money? God knows he's got more back
at the mansion. You'll live like kings for the rest of your lives. It's
not like he earned it you know, he's the guy who owns the company that's
paying you a dollar a day to pick rocks."

"We don't want to get caught" they said.

"Caught? Are you kidding man, didn't you get the memo? There isn't a cop
around for a hundred miles, they cut half the force when they ran out of
money."

The rich guy tried to reason with them, but unfortunately, he used a lot
of big words that the poor and uneducated proles couldn't understand.
They'd long since privatized the school and they couldn't afford to go.

The nine men surrounded the tenth and beat him up. They took his Rolex,
grabbed the keys to the Benz, drove to the compound, gathered up the
family gems and headed for the hills with his wife in tow. "I've always
had a thing for 'bad boys'!" she exclaimed.

And that, boys and girls, journalists and college professors, is how our
tax system works. The ones who get the most REAL BENEFIT FROM A STABLE
GOVERNMENT are those who paid in the most. Tax them too LITTLE, and they
just might get mugged by a bunch of uneducated goons who can beat the
snot out of them, and don't really have much reason not to. God knows
it's happened before.

-Che

BreadWithSpam[at]fractious.net <BreadWithSpam[at]fractious.net> wrote:
- quote -

That "absurdity" is known as the Laffer curve.

Try http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laffer_curve for an explanation.

Basically, it states that, after a certain point, increasing the tax
rate won't increase the tax revenue.

Anecdotal evidence shows that in certain high-tax environments, taxable
income is decreased in favor of non-taxable benefits. Why make an
additional $Xk/year taxed at a high rate when the company will give you
a nice company car and large office instead?

The rich may not "disappear", but the monies they pay taxes on will
decrease after a certain point.

However, it is absurd that most of them will move to Canada or Europe,
IMO.

- Jesse Meyer

PS: I follow the belief that the Laffer curve is different for each
income level, due to a variety of complex reasons. We already see some
indications of this -- putting money in tax-exempt bonds, for example.
Of course, this may be due to the different tax brackets in the US.

"albert" <albert.h[at]nospam.net> writes:
- quote -

<snip
- quote -

What Albert is point to here is David Kamerschen's web page
over at UGA. This particular incarnation of the "How Taxes Work"
article was falsely attributed to Dr. Kamerschen. The article,
with some variations, has been going around the 'net for several
years and has been wrongly attributed to several different folks
along the way.

Snopes has a very nice page about it, including some of the
variations and some investigations into who might actually
have written it:

http://www.snopes.com/business/taxes/howtaxes.asp

Nevertheless, after all the lack of knowing who actually
wrote it, and after excising the absurd recent addition
to it wherein the claim is made that rich folks are likely
to move to the Carribean or Europe(!), the bottom line is
that the parable does reasonably demonstrate what happens
when there is a progressive tax structure and taxes are
cut. It really says nothing about whether tax cuts are
sensible or not, particularly once one removes the whole
"but the rich will go away completely" absurdity.



--
Plain Bread alone for e-mail, thanks. The rest gets trashed.
No HTML in E-Mail! -- http://www.expita.com/nomime.html
Are you posting responses that are easy for others to follow?
http://www.greenend.org.uk/rjk/2000/06/14/quoting

Check the first paragraph.

http://www.arches.uga.edu/~davidk/


albert





"HW "Skip" Weldon" <skip5700removethis[at]hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:iibnn0l81fmfi70pnh6csfdgkp7mvb249b[at]4ax.com...
- quote -

John A. Weeks III wrote:

- quote -

Plus, regardless of where they go, they will still owe US taxes
(unless they revoke their citizenship).

MTW

In article <iibnn0l81fmfi70pnh6csfdgkp7mvb249b[at]4ax.com> , HW \"Skip\"
Weldon <skip5700removethis[at]hotmail.com> wrote:

- quote -

My question is where are they going to go? We already see poeple
such as rock musicians moving to the US to escape the tax system
in Europe. We still pay far less taxes than most any other
modern developed coutry in the world. Our system is the goose
that lays the golden egg for so many people, so they shouldn't
complain about feeding the goose, even if the goose eats a little
too much from time to time.

-john-

--
================================================== ==================
John A. Weeks III 952-432-2708 john[at]johnweeks.com
Newave Communications http://www.johnweeks.com
================================================== ==================

I saw the following post at misc.taxes.moderated as submitted by Linda
Dorfmont.

-----------------Begin copy...

Sometimes Politicians can exclaim; "It's just a tax cut for the
rich!", and it is just accepted to be fact. But what does that really
mean? Just in case you are not completely clear on this issue, we
hope the following will help.

Tax Cuts -- A Simple Lesson In Economics

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.

So, 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 each 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, like the first four, now paid nothing (100% savings).

The sixth now paid $2 instead of $3 (33% savings).

The seventh now paid $5 instead of $7 (28% savings).

The eighth now paid $9 instead of $12 (25% savings)

The ninth now paid $14 instead of $18 (22% savings).

The tenth now paid $49 instead of $59 (16% savings).

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 man "but he got $10!"

"Yeah, that's right," exclaimed the fifth man. "I only saved a dollar,
too. It's unfair that he got ten times more than me!"

"That's true!!" shouted the seventh man. "Why should he get $10 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 the tenth man 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 didn't have enough money
between all of them for even half of the bill!

And that, boys and girls, journalists and college professors, is how
our tax system works. The ones who get the most money back from a
reduction are those who paid in the most. Tax them too much, attack
them for being wealthy, and they just may not show up at the table
anymore.

There are lots of good restaurants in Europe and the Caribbean.

David R. Kamerschen, Ph.D
Distinguished Professor of Economics
536 Brooks Hall
University of Georgia

----------end copy.


-HW "Skip" Weldon
Columbia, SC