The following "story" is one that democrat-haters are passing around. I'm about the beat the hell out of this story and if you care about accuracy in folklore, pass this back to the originators of this myth.
The following is the myth, in it's entirety as posted by a good friend of mine (with different political views). After posting the myth, I will then post it again, in it's shredded form after I beat the living shit out of it with my logic stick. You won't recognize what the original author intended when I'm done, but you will see the truth. It's after midnight, so forgive any grammar mistakes, or trivial percentage flaws... or don't. I don't care.
First, the myth, as posted by this friend (in red):
Remember when those Dems start spewing false facts about taxes, this is how it works.
Suppose that every day, ten men go out for beer and 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 would pay $7.
The eighth would pay $12.
The ninth would pay $18.
The tenth man (the richest) would pay $59.
So, that's what they decided to do.
The ten men drank in the bar 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 beer by $20." Drinks for the ten now cost just $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 drink for free. But
what about the other six men - the paying customers? How could they
divide the $20 windfall so that everyone would get his 'fair share?'
They 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 drink his beer. So, the bar 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 pay $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 drink 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 I!"
"That's true!" shouted the seventh man. "Why should he get $10 back when I got only two? 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 drinks, so the nine sat
down and had beers 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 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 anymore. In fact, they might start drinking
overseas where the atmosphere is somewhat friendlier ......
Next, the same myth posted with my comments in green (may appear black depending on your video settings):
Remember when those Dems start spewing false facts about taxes, this is how it works. (Erm, no.)
Suppose that every day, ten men go out for beer and 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 analogy is insane off of the starting block. First, these men buying beer are voluntarily going out, purchasing (or drinking free) a specific product that they want, and then using this strange, non-linear tax-code formula to pay for said goods. WTF? With tax collection, you are paying non-voluntarily for a non-specific product (or service) that you can't possibly know if you want! It is not apples and oranges, it's apples and goddam orangutans.
The first four men (the poorest) would pay nothing. (Is that right? Go out to a bar with a group of guys with varying incomes, and when you're done drinking, say, "I'm not paying anything" and see what happens. See if that rich man will cover you. Let us know how that works out).
The fifth would pay $1.
The sixth would pay $3.
The seventh would pay $7.
The eighth would pay $12.
The ninth would pay $18.
The tenth man (the richest) would pay $59.
So, that's what they decided to do.
Whoa, Nellie. Since the Bush Tax Cuts, the period-adjusted millionaires are paying their lowest tax rates since 1945, when they paid 66.4%; now they pay 32.4%! So in the above analogy, the tenth man would be paying more like $45, then scale it down from there. But let's leave it intact and continue because I don't need help destroying this ridiculous analogy.
The ten men drank in the bar 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 beer by $20." Drinks for the ten now cost just $80.
Stop this little merry-go-round right here as the original storyteller is trying to make you dizzy. Equivalent of the above "curve"=federal, state, or local government stating, "We're now reducing your taxes by some percentage, requiring your commitment to go down to as low as $0. For those already paying $0, you will see no change. For those who currently pay a lower amount than the actual amount of the discount, your new payment will be $0. For those paying a higher amount than the amount of the actual discount, you will see a discount (using this storyteller's analogy) of larger amounts based on your larger expenditures; this will be on a sliding scale."
None of this includes any state, federal, or local taxes that people are paying, poor and rich alike, for commercial products and services. The four poor men that walk out of the bar drunk just SO HAPPEN to be the most likely to be arrested for drunk in public and other illegalities, imagined or otherwise, discovered during the investigations, statistically (don't play dumb here--get your Google on) and will pay fines, which will go directly into a local tax fund--a fund the six richest men haven't dropped a penny into. They may have to serve jail time, immediately lowering their chances of finding well-paying jobs in the future. They didn't have the "connections" like many of the wealthier folks do to get out of such tickets/infractions/trouble. (Don't make me cite sources; just Google, "Rich people getting away with crimes").
Moreover, our government(s) have tax brackets that people clearly fit into based on their incomes. If you want to shove that square peg into this round-hole analogy, you must first determine the actual income of each person, then apply the cost in taxes as a percentage, then give each man a discount based upon what his cost in taxes, as a percentage, is, as a result of his income bracket.
The group still wanted to pay their bill the way we pay our taxes so
the first four men were unaffected. They would still drink for free. Got one thing right. Again, I ask any "poor" person to go out and try to drink for free and see how that works out for ya. Makes the analogy a bit moot, but let's entertain it all the way through.
But
what about the other six men - the paying customers? How could they
divide the $20 windfall so that everyone would get his 'fair share?' Well, I thought you would never ask. As referenced above, the new $20 windfall would automatically negate the four men who paid nothing, leaving only the six to divide it amongst. Using their standard tax bracket percentages paid, and then deriving from that the differences paid between each of the men, by percentage, then those percentages would then be applied to the $20, giving each man his legal share of the discount.
Now, let's get jiggy with it. Who was paying what, in the beginning?
First four men: 0%, 5th man: 1%, 6th man: 3%, 7th man: 7%, 8th man: 12%, 9th man: 18%, and the 10th man: 59%. (keep in mind that to correlate the difference in percentages of taxes paid between the 9th man and that horribly abused 10th man whose rate jumps up to 59%, that would require his income to put him in a bracket of paying 59%, while the richest people in America are only paying 32.4%.
It's this effing simple, people; if the men want to keep on paying based on that formula, which the original storyteller said they wanted to do, the new $20 windfall brings the following truths: 100-20=80. The bill is now $80. That makes the men pay the following: 5th man pays 1% of $80, or $0.80. 6th man pays 3% of $80, or $2.40. 7th man pays 7% of $80, or $5.60. 8th man pays 12% of $80, or $9.60. 9th man pays 18% of the $80, or $14.40, and the 10th man pays 59% of the $80, or $47.20. I will call this paragraph the "True Math" paragraph, because I will be referring to it again.
They 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 drink his beer. So, the bar 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:
Wait a minute: the bartender (being a government authority for this analogy, correct?) suggested (no... enforced? yes) that it would be fair to reduce each man's bill by (get this) roughly the same amount (can you possibly get any more vague as to how this bartender reached the amounts below?) So he proceeded to work out the amounts each should pay (or, in more accurate terms, WOULD pay, unless they wanted to go to jail).
The fifth man, like the first four, now paid nothing (100% savings).
The sixth now paid $2 instead of $3 (33%savings). (A product of the ambiguity of the mind of the bartender, this $1 savings, as are all the savings that follow in the next four lines.)
The seventh now pay $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. (True). And the first four
continued to drink for free. (True again) 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!" Stop. Wrong again. These men "got" NO dollars. They got discounts! They received a lesser burden through an authority bringing a discount upon them. These men had NO complaint as they used a firm mathematical formula to pay the amounts early on in the story. And even though these totally arbitrary discount applications the bartender gave to each man were not the exact same as the formula used before, they were relatively close. No dollars were given out! Only discounts on money that was guaranteed to be collected were given out.
So this sixth man, who, before, had NO problem with the charge for beer being on a sliding scale based on income--who had NO problem with the fact that those richer than him paid more, while those poorer than him paid less, is now LIVID because a larger dollar discount but lower percentage discount was given to the wealthier men! Even as he, the sixth man, was paying less that he had been? Work with me here; he had NO problem with the richer men paying more of an amount, but a SERIOUS problem with them getting a summarily larger discount for what they were bringing to the table, even though the percentage discount still fit exactly within the framework they had ALL agreed was an acceptable one. Matter of fact, the only thing that was changing was who was getting more of a break.
"Yeah, that's right," exclaimed the fifth man. "I only saved a dollar, too. It's unfair that he got ten times more than I!" And the bitching goes uphill...
"That's true!" shouted the seventh man. "Why should he get $10 back when I got only two? The wealthy get all the breaks!" Rinse and repeat...
"Wait a minute," yelled the first four men in unison. "We didn't get anything at all. The system exploits the poor!" First of all, the poor have never believed that they were being robbed by taxes; they have believed that they were being exploited as cheap labor, and as maltreatment and politics and racism and sexism and all of the other isms kept them from climbing to a respectable level of success, they stayed quiet, and nothing changed, and one day they are walking home from work or leaving a doctor's office after having their severe disability treated and somebody yells, "You are the scum of America!" THAT'S the exploitation happening to the poor, of both sexes and all races, but especially among minorities. This pucktarded bar analogy saying that the poor were mad because they were already paying $0 for drinks and now they can't get paid cash for drinking the drinks because a $20 discount falls upon the group is preposterous!
By letting the Bush Tax Cuts expire, there would be about 4% increase in the tax on the richest 2% of Americans. 4%. Check out a nice conglomerate of charts for understanding what's really happening here: http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2011/02/income-inequality-in-america-chart-graph
The nine men surrounded the tenth and beat him up. Honestly? They beat him up. In your analogy, this beating meant that they demanded that since he made more money, he should not be given unfair tax breaks on investment income or other income taxes. Republicans and those on the far right believe that if we can just keep this rich man happy, he'll buy so much beer that all the others will have all the beer in the world that they can possible drink. How fragile an argument that is. Compare it with reality.
That rich man, first of all, isn't buying anybody shit, especially the poor unless he's forced to. Secondly, although he could open businesses directly or with investments that would employ people, which would, theoretically open up an entire complex of businesses to support that business, anybody can (and does) do that with loans from the government and foreign investors. So there they all are, making their money and employing people, and it's all a happy world because the little rat people (the poor; just using the wealthy's terminology for us) are getting crumbs that are falling off of the wealthy peoples' tables, but they've forgotten one little factoid; 50% of new businesses fail in their first 5 years.
So flip a coin; the supporting complex of business supplying the failed business follows suit, and the rats scurry away, looking for crumbs from somewhere else, grabbing some tax dollars for unemployment because the rich don't want to give up one effing red cent that might help the people of this country who can't afford it get an education and spread their own entrepreneurial wings, come up with their own inventions, deliver their own ideas that only an educated mind can produce. Nooooo no. Greedy. Clinging to every penny while our country goes straight to hell. Long as they got theirs, that's good enough. Fuck America, they say; I'm rich.
So by asking for the extra 4% in taxes from the rich; for asking for the old tax code to be put back in place which they had no problem with before, we're beating the rich man up? Oh, my. Beware, my friends that believe that. If this gets much worse, you will see what will amount to some real beating-up. The rich won't give up a penny. The poor are stuck in a mine shaft. The government is the only entity with the power to close that gap to keep this "beating-up" from taking on a more literal shape.
The next night the tenth man didn't show up for drinks, so the nine sat
down and had beers 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! Wrong again. The 10th man may go somewhere else, but if he still lives in America, he will pay his dues. If he goes somewhere else permanently, Americans don't want him here anyway. We are a land of patriots. We are a land of neighbors. We will not let an oligarchy run our country. WE, the people, run our country, and if he doesn't like it, he and his money can get the F out. The nine men left would simply form a new group (in this ridiculous analogy) where the total bill didn't equal $100 and/or find more rich folks to join in and participate.
That's really what this is about.
Don't make the rich help out a little more; don't "punish" them, because if they pay a higher tax rate, why, they may have to settle for only 14 beach-front houses instead of 16, and what a travesty that would be. What a terrible robbery! Have those rich folks explain that logic to the woman paying the 30-odd percent on income tax while she's working two jobs as a janitor to try to save up enough to go to a community college so she can then earn enough to get her two kids through college which would make THEM more valuable additions to society, further strengthening this country and adding a bunch more "tenth" men. Go explain about your two less beach-front houses with your 4% tax hike.
And that, boys
and girls, journalists and college professors, is how our tax system
works. The people who pay the highest taxes get the most benefit from a
tax reduction. And that, boys and girls and everybody else, is bullshit. See the truth not as my version or another version; see the truth as it actually is. Do your research. Become empowered; otherwise, you're just another servant to the ruling class... and if you get motivated, hey, what the hell; fix it.
Tax them too much, attack them for being wealthy, and
they just may not show up anymore. In fact, they might start drinking
overseas where the atmosphere is somewhat friendlier ...... Au
revoir... don't let the door hit ya. The ones left believe in this
country, and those are the only ones we want. Go run your sweatshops
and screw your customer base; you have no conscious anyway, so enjoy
your new, worry-free life. When natural disasters hit, we'll still be there to bail you out. That's who we are.
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