The Tale of Two Faces

(on the same man)

You see certain politicians had all along been buying votes. Where did they get the money? It was easy; they simply taxed (face 1) or stole (face 2) from the people. Which people - the productive ones of course? Whose votes did they then buy? Why the ones having the greatest number - that should come as no surprise – especially if the aim is to get elected. Who might they be? Why the poor and the lower middle class, since they constitute the most votes, that's who.


It's such an easy sell as the pitch goes. One, the poor are the victims of the rich and are justified by the forceful taking of the rich person's ill begotten money. Two, the rich don't need all that money anyway. Why that sounds like outright stealing you say! Well yes, if you have the courage to look it in the face. So how bad was this stealing?

To make the math simple lets just say there were four citizens. One paid no taxes but got a refund anyway in the form of a credit. Never mind he was also getting food stamps, heating and housing allowances and other direct payments for not working. The second fellow, because he worked but had little in the way of scarce skills, did receive a small income from which taxes were taken out of his paycheck. His entitlement was to get it all back, which of course, as you would expect, he did.

The third person had great ability and determination and was rewarded a handsome salary - that is before taxes. His tax bill was $21,000 or 30% of his salary. The fourth person worked even harder and risked her career on starting a company that produced a product the other three wanted and needed.

In fact she hired person two and three as employees and so, because of her they had a job. Of course she made a lot of money and that made her a prime target for legalized theft. She paid $1,000,000 or 50% of her profits in taxes. You see her company paid taxes too.

Now comes along a new President and says something "ain't" right here. We got to do something about these high taxes. First he said lets give back a small refund and then in the future lower the tax rate. In the President's plan, the fellow who did not work got no refund given that he had paid no taxes to be refunded. Ooops! Lost that vote! The second fellow got nothing either since he had already been refunded everything that had been taken out of his paycheck. “Dang”, lost that vote too.

Well the third hard working fellow got back $300, as did the 4th rich company owner. The third fellow had gone to Harvard and felt a little guilty that the first two folks had got nothing. The 4th lady felt no guilt and realized she had gotten back very little that had been stolen from her. She would just work harder and had the future rate reductions to look forward to.

Up to this time the taxable Gross National product had been $2,070,000 and the politicians running the government had managed to have the government steal $1,021,000 so they could buy the votes of the unfortunate and pay themselves their own nice salaries.

With the rate reductions the following happened. The rich lady's rate was being cut back to 38% instead of the 50% she had been paying. With the extra money left in her pocket she invested in a new company that a fifth man started up. He was very successful and ended up with $1,000,000 taxable himself. That was after his company had paid a dividend to the rich lady of $50,000 of which she would be taxed 38% or $19,000.

Also since more people had money to spend because of the reduced taxes, her business sold more goods and she had $3,000,000 taxable this next year. Even though her rate was now only 38% but on $3,019.00 her tax bill was $1,147,220 – a good deal more than the previous year. The third fellow got a nice raise and now earned a taxable salary of $100,000.

His tax rate had been reduced to 20% from the 30% he had been paying. So his new tax bill was $20,000 - a $10,000 savings in tax and coupled with his higher income he had $80,000 left in his pocket instead of the $49,000 he had had the previous year.

His tax of $20,000 plus the $1,147,220 from the fourth lady and the $380,000 from the new business owner (38% of his million) produced a total of $1,547,220 collected by the government where as before it had only collected $1,030,000. That was a tidy $517,220 increase. Also to be noted is that now there are two additional people reaching adulthood and they elect to not take employment as that means work and besides the government now has the money to take care of them nicely.

A Harvard graduate looked at the plan and yelled, "But the rich lady got a 12% reduction and the working middle class man only got a 10% reduction and the other two got nothing. That's not fair." The poor fellow, having been taught little in the art of cognitive thinking, conveniently overlooked or deliberately withheld the fact that the government now had an extra $517,220 to dole out in benefits to the first two fellows and their two new companions. Also worthy of note is that under the original theft, the third, hardworking middle class, fellow had paid 2% of all the national taxes and now he only pays 1.3%. The other two rich productive people are now paying 98.7% instead of the lesser 98% they had been paying of all the national taxes.

Over and above the Harvard fellows inability to think even though everyone is better off, he also remains void of morality; because, with a grin, it suddenly occurs to him that there are two new faces (votes) he can still buy with the rich people's money. Why that’s a thought to bring on a whistle.

Short version of the story:

A gangster robs two fellows at a local bar each week. He takes $1 from the poorer of the two and $100 from the richer of the two. After doing this for 56 years, the gangster, in his old age, feels a tinge of guilt and decides to steal less. He thinks to himself that he can afford to reduce his weekly theft by $10.10 and will now only take 90 cents from the poor fellow and $90 dollars from the rich guy. Hey it's a 10% reduction for both – what could be fairer? However, that plan produced a lot of screaming from somefolks at Berkley, so, the crook decides to ask a Harvard professor his views.

The Harvard fellow quickly responds that it is most unfair. To his thinking, a 100 times more money had been stolen from the rich man than the poor man so he should get a correspondingly lesser reduction. Being more of a liberal arts type, he consulted an MIT professor who was good at math. Between the two, they concluded that the rich man should get 100 times less benefit from the reduction of the amount being robbed. Previously, a total of $101 dollars had been stolen each week. Now it was only going to be $90.90 or a reduction in theft of $10.10.

The robber said, "Yes, that's all the reduction I can afford. " With the help of a calculator and creative rounding, the two professors came up with a plan. They reasoned that out of the $10.10 reduction, it would only be fair that the reduction in theft should benefit the poor man by $10.09 and the rich man by only1 cent since the rich man didn't need much benefit anyway. So under this plan the robber would steal $99.99 from the rich man and give $9.09 of that to the poorest fellow. Now the robber felt quite smug that he was now stealing $10.10 less from the two than he had been stealing before. The third fellow, instead of being robbed of a dollar, was now given $9.09 and the rich man who didn't need the money any way also saved a penny. It’s doubtful it could have turned out any better in heaven.

Moral of the story:

Crooks, statist politicians, and liberal professors from the top schools are alike in their failure to think and they share an equal absence of morality and cognitive thinking..