Group-
I had to check the date of these posts after reading them....thought they
must be dated 9/10/01! Here we are fighting for the survival of our nation
and way of life and the old saw about 'tax cuts for the rich' gets
resurrected!!! Please read the following..............

A Parable: The Tenth Man
By William F. Buckley Jr.
The following parable just came in from a friend, via the Internet. It's
possible everyone
else in America has seen it. On the other hand, it's also possible that only
my friend and I
have seen it.
Every night, 10 men met at a restaurant for dinner. At the end of the meal,
the bill would
arrive. They owed $100 for the food that they shared. Every night they lined
up in the same
order at the cash register. The first four men paid nothing at all. The
fifth, though he
grumbled about the unfairness of the situation, paid $1. The sixth man,
feeling generous,
paid $3. The next three men paid $7, $12 and $18, respectively. The last man
was required
to pay the remaining balance of $59.
The 10 men were quite settled into their routine when the restaurant threw
them into
chaos. It announced that it was cutting down its prices: Now it would charge
only $80 for
dinner for the 10 men. This reduction wouldn't affect the first four men --
they would
continue to eat for free. The fifth person decided to forgo his $1
contribution to the pool,
and the sixth contributed $2. The seventh man deducted $2 from his usual
payment and
now paid $5. The eighth man paid $9, the ninth, $12, leaving the last man
with a bill of $52.
Outside of the restaurant, the men compared their savings, and angry
outbursts began to
erupt. The sixth man yelled, "I only got $1 out of the total reduction of
$20, and he" -
pointing to the last man - "got $7." The fifth man joined in the protest.
"Yeah! I only got
$1 too. It is unfair that he got seven times more than me." The seventh man
cried, "Why
should he get a $7 reduction when I only got $2?" The first four men
followed the lead of
the others: "We didn't get any of the $20 reduction. Where is our share?"
The nine men formed an outraged mob, surrounding the 10th man. The nine
angry men
carried the 10th man up to the top of a hill and lynched him. The next
night, the nine
remaining men met at the restaurant for dinner. But when the bill came,
there was no one to
pay it.
Well, parables do have their weaknesses. But they can be useful. Mrs. Clare
Boothe Luce had
the habit, in search of analytical clarity, of chopping off seven zeroes to
illustrate her
points. Thus the population of the world was 800 (read 8 billion) and that
of the United
States, 30 (not 300 million).
By these devices, it is true, clarifications are more nimbly arrived at. As
the parable above
informs us, 10 percent of the American people (the 10th dinner guest) pay 59
percent of all
the taxes. The lowest 40 percent pay none. The fifth quintile, 1 percent;
the sixth, seventh,
eighth and ninth, respectively, 3, 7,12 and 18 percent of the taxes.
The parable, of course, then brings in the drama: The proposed tax reduction
of President
Bush (news - web sites) would reduce income taxes by a total of 20 percent,
and the
benefits of that reduction are distributed along the lines suggested for the
10 diners.
And yes, the protests arise, reaching maximum volume in the matter of
relieving the 10th
man from his customary contribution of $59 toward the common meal to a
contribution of
$52.
OK, but the drama is then taken to what one might call a fourth act, which
is one too many.
The 10th diner isn't going to be lynched, because his survival is too
necessary to the other
nine diners. What they will do is attempt to diminish the reduction in his
allocation of his
benefits from the reduced dinner price and spread it among themselves.
They'd like to see
the 10th man continue to pay 59 percent of all taxes. That way it doesn't
hurt.
Ah, but the parable writer obviously believes that it would hurt, in the
long run. Because if that 10th diner
tires, or is crushed into diminished productivity, he won't have the $59 to
contribute to the pool, and that
would be very, very inconvenient. Perhaps even life-threatening. If the
restaurant has to go without that
critical subsidy from the 10th diner, it might just have to reduce the
rations paid out.
Granted, if the parable were refined even further, it would have to ask,
what was it that caused the 10th man
to be so obliging in the first place? Were they threatening to lynch him if
he didn't put out? Did the 10th man
plot to protect himself? Was he the critical voter in Florida in November
2000?