This Week on “This Old Box”

Les Caniches de Chavez Le Monde Diplomatique isworked up about « Liberalisme » that barely exists at all in the public discourse in France:

His first act, the “tax shield” offers special protection to very large fortunes from get hit [by taxes], however measured of the tax department. The cost to the Treasury of the delicacies which the right-wing parliamentary majority has just offered to future heirs: approximately 13 billion euros. As has just been pointed out it the daily newspaper Les Echoes, it is almost exactly the same sum that François Mitterrand spent in his 1981-1982 economic renewal plan. The left devoted a good part of this money to the creation of 240 000 public jobs.

At the time the pitch, according to them, was that this would inconsiderately add to the burden of the national debt.

The writer says that, of course, as if 240 000 more piglets suckling at the public teat for the next 35 years is a good thing. Absent is the realization that any cent that passes through the digestive tract of government comes out very slowly and half the size. By that measure, Mitterand was acting with the same sophistication of crack smoking Washington DC mayor Marion Barry who made people fully aware that expanding government and handing out jobs can be made to look like an economic band-aid on a sucking flesh wound, but was actually nothing more than a way of buying votes.

If the government of Mr. Sarkozy is quite as generous (or as much of a spendthrift), it’s not towards the same recipients. What it loses in revenues from taxes, it saves it in use of civil servants: 22 700 jobs will be eliminated next year. As for the debt, whereas last October the government of Mr. Dominique de Villepin, for whom Mr. Sarkozy was a minister of State had committed to European authorities to bringing France’s public debt into balance by 2010. Mr. Francois Fillon is pleading now for an additional 2 year grace period.

Good heavens! They might even exist, and they might even have an agenda! How dare they trim away part of the “to hell with the future” left’s fifth column in any way!

And they actually think that that’s economic Liberalism. They, and this really is shared by the mainstream left, genuinely believe that taxing the rich more will make them not leave the country, and that the progressive nationalization of the greatest number of jobs will improve the economy. They seem to have missed what 6 decades of commie-nomics did to ravage Eastern Europe and are completely and utterly hopeless.

Because it involves a stupefiante, they might understand this oft-emailed old saw:

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:

1. The first four men (the poorest) would pay nothing.
2. The fifth would pay $1.
3. The sixth would pay $3.
4. The seventh would pay $7.
5. The eighth would pay $12.
6. The ninth would pay $18.
7. The tenth man (the richest) would pay $59.

So, thats what they decided to do.

The ten men drank in the bar every day and seemed quite happy with the arrangement, until on day, the owner threw them a curve. Since you are all such good customers, he said, Im 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 everybodys 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 mans bill by roughly the same amount, and he proceeded to work out the amounts each should pay.

And so:
1. The fifth man, like the first four, now paid nothing (100% savings).
2. The sixth now paid $2 instead of $3 (33%savings).
3. The seventh now pay $5 instead of $7 (28%savings).
4. The eighth now paid $9 instead of $12 (25% savings).
5. The ninth now paid $14 instead of $18 (22% savings).
6. 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. Its unfair that he got TEN times more than I! Thats 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!

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.

For those who understand, no explanation is needed.

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

And that is precisely the sort of journalist we’re talking about.

You would think even faded impressions from the 1970’s of their own preoccupation with rebellion would ward off trends toward collectivization, central authority, and a remaking of the economy in the image of mid-century Army life would leave their mark. They haven’t. I don’t think that the people who entertain notions of a huge civil service as a form of idealized worker society are even intelligent enough to question it because they carry on as if the last century and its’ horrible treatment of the individual never happened – and yet they never seem to make the connection between this statist fetish of the left and the totalitarianism it inevitably brings down on people.

It’s as if finding them a few basic needs can make them fall for anything. Good God, it’s sad how cheaply their will can be bought for.