I have an old email hoax about taxes and using men in a bar and $100. I'm looking for a ready

made rebuttal because I don't want to do all the math and the research. I know it has been around for awhile but I just got it again.

EDIT: I realized that I confused the money to pay for the beer with the amount of money each beer drinker had. The whole thing is one slight of hand trick but there must be a way to rebut it and make a point.


So does anyone have the rebuttal from this teabagging email about taxes and beer. They have all the numbers screwed up, (using $100 they distribute it as if it were distributed in the US) the "wealthiest" pays $59 which I assume means he is paying 59% taxes. It does not mention how much money he actually has but I'm sure the real representative number for the wealthiest Americans is over $99.00 but I wonder if someone has the exact numbers.

It is all a big clusterfuck and now my eyeballs are spinning. I would still like a good rebuttal about how the wealthiest man would have $99.99 in his pocket and the poorest would have less than $1.00. This I believe is much more representative of what our wealth distribution in the country really is.

Thanks, Maraya



OBAMA'S TAX STRATEGY

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 wealthiest) 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 ball. "Since you are all such good customers," he said, "I'm going to reduce the cost of your daily beer by $20"(Bush Tax Cuts). Drinks for the ten men would 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 ? 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 George, 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, and he proceeded to work out the amounts he suggested that each should now pay.

And so the fifth man, like the first four, now paid nothing (100%saving).
The sixth now paid $2 instead of $3 (33% saving).
The seventh now paid $5 instead of $7 (28% saving).
The eighth now paid $9 instead of $12 (25% saving).
The ninth now paid $14 instead of $18 (22% saving).
The tenth now paid $49 instead of $59 (16% saving).

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

"I only got a dollar out of the $20 saving," 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 the wealthiest got ten times more benefit than me!"

"That's true!" shouted the seventh man. "Why should he get $10 back, when I got only $2? The wealthiest American's get all the breaks!"

"Wait a minute," yelled the first four men, who were paying nothing for their beer, "we didn't get anything at all. This new tax 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 their 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,liberals and government bureaucrats, is how our tax system works.

The people who already pay the highest taxes will naturally 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.

...all the men enjoy the same quantity and quality of beer daily.

It's a gross oversimplification upon which this entire misleading story depends.

In reality, the richest man is being paid some number or HUNDREDS times as much as the average of the ten of them and so enjoys more enrichment even when paying a higher tax rate.

:patriot:

"Good Bye, and Good f***ing riddance!"

see $1 is bigger than $10 because the first one is 33% and the second is only 16%.

Secondly, since business clearly is not that good any more, we clearly need the $20 back - plus interest.

According to IRS data, in 2008 the top 1% paid 38% of all Federal income taxes. They paid a tax rate of 23.3% whereas in 2000, they paid a tax rate of 27.45% and in 1986 they paid a rate of 33.13%. Their income was $1.685 trillion. So in 2008 they saved $67.4 billion in taxes.

In 2000, the bottom 50% paid an average tax rate of 4.59%. In 2008, they paid an average tax rate of 2.59%. A savings of 2% on $1.0745 trillion. So 2% of that is a total of $21.49 billion in savings. About 1/3 as much for 50 times as many people.

really pay less than 32%

It represents how much money they have in real wealth.

Out of $100 the wealthiest man has $99.98
The next 2 men have $5.00
And the next 7 have less than 50 cents each.

I think it's about a bar owner though? It's very similar.

in the case of Bush the bill has actually gone up. Spending went through the roof with Bush, so the final tab isn't taken down to $80, it's just pushed down the road for the next time they have beers.

when they come up with these over-simplified "analogies," is that is not the way a progressive tax structure works. Forget about beers for a minute and just look at the actual tax code. Let's say the top rate is 35.5% (which I think it is, but couldn't swear to it ) on incomes over $250,000. And let's say that on incomes over $100,000, the tax rate is 29%. and that anything under $100,000 is taxed at 15%....

What this means is that the person making $250,000 per year is not paying 35.5% on that entire amount. Instead, they're paying 15% for the first $100,000, then 29% for the next $150,000, and THEN 35.5% for anything above $250,000. If they made $275,000 for example, they'd only pay the 35.5 rate on that last $25,000.

So under the beer scenario, the rich guy would not pay X percent for all his beer, but a progressive amount for the amount he drank. But the analogy falls apart because beer is consumption, not income. Feel free to pass this along to any tea baggers.

disgusting quantity.

If wealth were beer, these people would have to be 100 feet tall with a proportional beer gut to down what they own.

The wealthy, in particular business owners, use the commons (roads, police, firefighters) to a much greater extent than everyone else, so the whole things falls apart.

We don't get each get one beer for our taxes.

linkity
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=20XAS3ORhEg