[GCFL-discuss] Here is how the US tax system works

[Discussion of the Good, Clean Funnies List]

I was raised to never trust a social worker. Every since social work
emerged from Jane Addams's privately organized Hull House to become
government work, it has consisted of waves of graduates who emerged from
schools of social work absorbed in some theory of How People Should Think
-- whichever one was in vogue during their four years of study, only to
be marginalized by a new wave steeped in a new theory some years later,
leaving lawmakers and families equally confused. Somehow, field work
never seems to require actually living for any extended period of time in
the neighborhoods that social workers are theoretically supposed to be
improving, which Jane Addams in fact did. I don't need anyone to tell me
how to think, or what is The Right Way to Live, or why my family should
do things exactly the same way as every other family, all according to
some out of date textbook.

To that list I will now add economics professors. Every economic collapse
was caused by an economics professor, or a school of economic thought.
Generally economics professors acquire their reputation by explaining
that any period of growing prosperity was due to application of their pet
theory, even though their theory may never have been considered by either
legislators or regulators, nor consulted by consumers before making
purchases. However, five years of statistics will get any economics
professor the ear of someone in Washington, who will then inscribe the
apparently infalliable theory into law, just in time for it to cause an
economic slowdown, by missing several dozen other factors of greater
importance, resulting in a law of diminishing returns.

OK, on to Professor Kamerschen.

If government were like drinking beer, I would be an anarchist. I don't
like beer.

What if paying taxes were like buying keflar suits for soldiers serving
in Iraq?

(Note: Paying taxes IS, among other things, about buying keflar suits for
soldiers serving in Iraq. It may also involve subsidizing the beer they
can buy at the Px, which I don't bedgrudge them at all.)

Ten soldiers are being deployed to Iraq.

The families of four soldiers cannot afford the keflar suits.

The families of two soldiers can afford about one fiftieth the cost.

The families of three soldiers can afford about one eighth the cost.

The family of the tenth soldier can afford to buy all ten suits without
breaking a sweat.

Ninety other families aren't sending any soldiers to Iraq at all. Forty
of them can't afford to contribute much of anything to buying a keflar
suit for any of them. Twenty can afford to contribute maybe 5% of the
cost. Thirty can afford to contribute about 10% of the cost. Ten can
afford to buy all ten suits without breaking a sweat.

So, it is agreed that twenty families will pool their money to buy one
suit, thirty families will pool their money to buy three suits, ten
families will cough up the money for five suits, and the family of one
soldier will buy their son his own suit. Nine families will not have to
pay for their sons' keflar suits, because even though some of them could
afford a small part of the cost, they are making a much more important
sacrifice than the rest of us, so its the least we can do.

Then the eleven wealthiest families say, why should we have to pay? We
can borrow the money from the National Bank of China, and keep our own
money for our own purposes. Everyone thinks that's a good idea, and all
110 families sign a note to pay the interest on the loan. Each family is
responsible for 1/110 of the interest, and the principal.

When the soldiers come back from Iraq, they are so incensed at the slick
way their families were rooked into paying interest they can't afford on
a loan that wasn't necessary, that they beat up all the males in the
eleven families who came up with this plan, and burn their houses down.

Which just goes to show, boys and girls, that when you send someone's
sons off to fight in a war, it is not a good time to cut taxes on the
wealthiest ten percent of your community, while paying for the war on
borrowed money.

Siarlys

P.S. Always beware of an analogy. They sound logical, but there is no
reason to assume one situation is in any way similar to the other. Why is
a raven like a writing desk? The Mad Hatter didn't know, and I don't
either. A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle. What if
Playboy magazine were like a Christmas fruit box catalog?
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