Posts Tagged “Email”

I received this via email, and felt the need to share. Though I normally tend to stay away from politics on this blog, I just couldn’t resist this one.

Bar Stool Economics

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=2 0man, 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 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 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.

David R. Kamerschen

Ph.D. Professor of Economics

University of Georgia

For those who understand, no explanation is needed.

For those who do not understand, no explanation is possible.

Tags: Array, Bar Owner, Bar Stool, beer, Blog, Curve, Drinks, Economics, Email, Fair Share, Four Men, Six Men, Sixth Man, Tenth Man, Windfall

Random Unrelated Image: Hillbilly Vibrator (possibly NSFW)

I have been clamoring for a new blog design for quite some time now, but every time I get right to the point of no return, I back out. I have been with this current design going on two years now, and it is starting to get a little stale. I began working on a custom design, and fired off an email to my good buddy Canucklehead to ask him if he could help me out with a good tagline that would appear in the header.

He asked me why I was changing it, and I told him, and he convinced me that it probably wasn’t a good idea.

But I have to do something, I thought. It just the same ol’, same ol’, day in and day out.

He proceeded to send me a couple of taglines anyway, and I thought of an idea. Why not use the same header image with rotating taglines? I requested a few more taglines from him, and well, he did not disappoint, as I knew he wouldn’t. He has a knack for this kind of shit.

Anyway, if you scroll back up to the top of the page, and hit the refresh button on your browser, you will notice that the tag line changes with each refresh. Pretty fuckin’ cool, eh?

These are the current taglines in rotation:

• Putting the ‘ill’ in hillbilly.
• This blog runs on moonshine.
• Red neck, White lies, Blue collar.
• Coal mining and moon shining!
• Making Molehills out of Mountaineers since 1979.
• West Virginia: One Big Happy Family … Literally!

And of course the classic one that has been up there for a while: If you have ever stopped by my house, you came on purpose, because I live on the way to nowhere.

Now that is a great start, but I need some more. So if any of you are feeling creative today, just leave a little tagline in the comments section, and if I like it, I will put it into rotation, and you will get a link to your blog in my footer. Such as Canucklehead has.

So get to it. Come up with a good HillBilly / Hick / Redneck / West Virginia tagline. Let’s see what ya got.

Tags: Array, Blue Moon, Coal Mining, Comments Section, Current Design, Email, Footer, Good Buddy, Happy Family, Header Image, Hick, Hillbilly, Knack, Line Changes, Moon, Mountaineers, Point Of No Return, Quite Some Time, Red Neck, Redneck, Tag Line, Tagline, Taglines, West Virginia