{"id":4185,"date":"2011-08-31T09:31:05","date_gmt":"2011-08-31T14:31:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kevinbryant.com\/?p=4185"},"modified":"2011-08-31T09:31:05","modified_gmt":"2011-08-31T14:31:05","slug":"beer-and-taxes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kevinbryant.com\/kbarchive\/beer-and-taxes\/","title":{"rendered":"beer and taxes"},"content":{"rendered":"

Suppose that every day, ten men go out for beer and the bill for all ten comes to $100.00
\n<\/span>If they paid their bill the way we pay our taxes, it would go something like this…<\/p>\n

The first four men [the poorest] would pay nothing.
\nThe fifth man would pay $1.
\nThe sixth man would pay $3.
\nThe seventh would pay $7.
\nThe eighth would pay $12.
\nThe ninth would pay $18.
\nThe tenth man [the richest] would pay $59.<\/p>\n

So that’s what they decided to do.<\/p>\n

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 ball.\u00a0 “Since you are all such good customers,” he said, “I’m going to reduce the cost of your daily beer by $20.”\u00a0 Drinks for the ten men would now cost just $80.<\/p>\n

The group still wanted to pay their bill the way we pay our taxes.\u00a0 So the first four men were unaffected.\u00a0 They would still drink for free.\u00a0 But what about the other six men?\u00a0 How could they divide the $20 windfall so that everyone would get his fair share?<\/p>\n

They realized that $20 divided by six people is $3.33.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

So, the bar owner suggested that it would be fair to reduce each man’s bill by a higher percentage the poorer he was, to follow the principle of the tax system they had been using.\u00a0 He proceeded to work out the amounts he suggested that each should now pay.<\/p>\n

So, the fifth man, like the first four, now paid nothing [a 100% savings].
\nThe sixth man now paid $2 instead of $3 [a 33% savings].
\nThe seventh man now paid $5 instead of $7 [a 28% savings].
\nThe eighth man now paid $9 instead of $12 [a 25% savings].
\nThe ninth man now paid $14 instead of $18 [a 22% savings].
\nThe tenth man now paid $49 instead of $59 [a 16% savings].<\/p>\n

Each of the six was better off than before.\u00a0 And the first four continued to drink for free.\u00a0 But once outside the bar, the men began to compare their savings.<\/p>\n

“I only got a dollar out of the $20 savings,” declared the sixth man.\u00a0 He pointed to the tenth man, “but he got $10 in savings!”\u00a0Yeah, that’s right,” exclaimed the fifth man.\u00a0 “I only saved a dollar, too.\u00a0 It’s unfair that the richest among us got ten times more benefit than me!”\u00a0“That’s true!” shouted the seventh man.\u00a0 “Why should he get $10 back when I got only $2?\u00a0 The wealthy get all the breaks!”<\/p>\n

“Wait a minute,” yelled the first four men in unison, “we didn’t get anything at all.\u00a0 This new tax system exploits the poor!”\u00a0The nine men surrounded the tenth and beat him up.<\/p>\n

The next night, the tenth man didn’t show up for drinks, so the nine sat down and had their beers without him.\u00a0 But when it came time to pay the bill, they discovered something important.\u00a0 They didn’t have enough money between all of them for even half of the tab.<\/p>\n

And that, boys and girls, journalists and government ministers, is how our tax system works.\u00a0 The people who already pay the highest taxes will naturally get the most benefit from a tax reduction.\u00a0 Tax them too much, attack them for being wealthy, and they just may not show up anymore.\u00a0 In fact, they might start drinking overseas, where the atmosphere is somewhat friendlier.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Suppose that every day, ten men go out for beer and the bill for all ten comes to $100.00 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 man would pay $1. The sixth man would […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-4185","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2gEQ0-15v","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kevinbryant.com\/kbarchive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4185","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kevinbryant.com\/kbarchive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kevinbryant.com\/kbarchive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kevinbryant.com\/kbarchive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kevinbryant.com\/kbarchive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4185"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kevinbryant.com\/kbarchive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4185\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kevinbryant.com\/kbarchive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4185"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kevinbryant.com\/kbarchive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4185"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kevinbryant.com\/kbarchive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4185"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}