By Nancy Thorner -
Several days ago Chicago-based lawyer Robert A. Morris shared with me a delightful and entertaining short parable in video form, Taxation and Tax Reform: Explained in Beer by an Australian Accounting Firm, that relates a message that those on the Left will never understand.
Once you view this short video, you will never once doubt why taxing the rich doesn't work out so well for those who pay no taxes or very little in taxes.
View here the short video.
Following are my reflections upon viewing the delightful video:
Oh, the complicated web we spin and tales we tell. If you do not earn enough to pay taxes, that makes some of you dense enough so logic and math escape your thought process, leaving the same dumbfounded and disbelieving. How could a tax system be so unfair to the non-tax payers?
And yes, tax policy will cause a change in behavior, like moving to another place where the system is more fair to the tax payer. But its hard to be fairer to the non-tax payer than 0% (0 tax); however, fairness is not the question. Better stated is what's in it for me? Or even better yet, do not try to confuse me with facts and mathematics; I still want a break if others are getting a break!
And do not use that old chestnut; 20% of zero is 0, it must be something more than that, and I am going to complain because it does not even sound fair. I know, I will get a credit! Ops, that doesn't work either, that is the same thing, a 20% credit applied to 0 is still zero. OK, how about, say a cash payment of say, 20% of the poverty level, that is $26,000 for an average family of 3.5 and amounts to $2600.
Even though Nancy Pelosi and Chuckie Schumer think it’s crumbs, I'll take it, at least for a while, until I think I can complain to the political class and the press, and index it to inflation. Good, because that is a lesson in compassionate and good govenance.