Total bummer!

“Dude, I'm feeling majorly shafted. Like, I was reading the newspaper – well, not really reading it, I was, like, watching "Fantasy Island" (Mr. Roarke is SO boss) and dropped my pepperoni slice right on top of my roommate's paper. Oops.


Anyway, I ate this 'roni off of this headline about "A Tax Cut Without End." The government is giving away all this money, see? And it might be, let me look at the paper again, $320 billion over 10 years. Or it might be, like $800 billion, 'cause, y'know, once you're gettin' all the free loochie, why stop?


I was doin' my end-zone dance cause I figured I'm a millionaire now, right? That's mucho zeroes to split – $800,000,000,000!!!!! Then my roommate came home.


I call him Dr. Doom because to him, everything sucks. He sucks. He's always bugging me to take out the empties and saying if I don't recycle the world's going to end.


So told him I'm a millionaire! Uh huh, uh huh!


Dr. Doom totally harshed my high. He was, like, you're not gettin' any of this money, dude. First off, he said, you're on unemployment, remember? I told him it wasn't my fault I got fired from the copy shop... and he said, no, listen, that even if I got back on the 9-to-5 groove, I wouldn't be seeing any serious cash.


Why not? I said.


'Cause, he said. 'Cause it's not for people who work, it's for people who make all this money off of stocks. Take the Doomster, for example. He's making good loot for a patchouli-smelling guy, almost fifty G's for writing stupid articles. And he's going to get back, like, $300 a year.


He got all bitter, see. Three hundred bucks a year! He pays three hundred bucks a month for health insurance. And then he went off on how he had to live with a pig like me so he could save money for his own place, but he didn't want to be home it stinks so bad, and why was the kitchen full of empties?


I said, dude, calm down, don't get all personal and stuff. But I really wanted to know where my million dollars was going.


Dr. Doom said that that heart attack guy, the Vice President, is the kind of guy who gets the cash. The Vice Prez was the tiebreaker vote on this tax cut, and he was gonna get 85 extra G's just the first year, even more the next. The Prez was getting back $33,000.


So, like, the Prez and Heart Attack Dude are getting my money? I said. Whoa.


Dr. Doom said they were getting back his money. He got all pissed again, saying how he was working and my parents were paying my rent. For him to get back the four grand he paid for health insurance each year as a tax cut, he'd need to make over 250 grand. And then, y'know, he wouldn't care if he had to pay for insurance. Plus, 25 percent of people who aren't geezers on Social Security don't have insurance at least part of the year. If only we had nationalized health care, Doom said. That would be a friggin' tax cut.


I said, what was nationalized health care?


The Doomster just sighed. He pulled up this site on the internet, the Freelancer's Union. It's this thing he just joined so his healthcare would cost less. He said that 30 percent of the people who work in NYC are freelancers like he is. But unless you make over a hundred grand a year, you can't afford decent insurance. So these guys, the union, are trying to make a stink about it. They call working and not having insurance "middle class poverty."


My roommate said a lot of other stuff too, about how the schools are screwed up now but just wait 'til there's even less money 'cause of the tax cut, and raising the cost of the subway was like taxes too, and, y'know – when was I going to take out the empties?


Fine! I can take a hint. Is raising the cost of beer like taxes, too? If so, I was thinking – and I hate to say it – Dr. Doom might be right.”

“Sounds about right to me!”

“Is a Tax Cut reduces the amount of taxes paid by the PEOPLE WHO PAY TAXES.

A Handout is giving away OTHER PEOPLES HARD EARNED MONEY.”

“I was having lunch with one of my favorite friends last week and the conversation turned to the government's recent round of tax cuts. “I'm opposed to those tax cuts,” the retired West coast college instructor declared, “because they benefit the rich. The rich get much more money back than ordinary taxpayers like you and me and that's not fair.”

“But the rich pay more in the first place,” I argued, “so it stands to reason that they'd get more money back.” I could tell that my friend was unimpressed by this meager argument.

So I said to him, let's put tax cuts in terms everyone can understand. Suppose that every day 10 men go to a restaurant for dinner. The bill for all ten comes to $100. If it was paid the way we pay our taxes, the first four men would pay nothing; the fifth would pay $1; the sixth would pay $3; the seventh $7; the eighth $12; the ninth $18. The tenth man (the richest) would pay $59.

The 10 men ate dinner in the restaurant every day and seemed quite happy with the arrangement until 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 meal by $20. Now dinner for the 10 only costs $80.

The first four are unaffected. They still eat for free. Can you figure out how to divvy up the $20 savings among the remaining six so that everyone gets his fair share? The men realize that $20 divided by 6 is $3.33, but if they subtract that from everybody's share, then the fifth man and the sixth man would end up being paid to eat their meal.

The restaurant owner suggested that it would be fair to reduce each man's bill by roughly the same percentage, being sure to give each a break, and he proceeded to work out the amounts each should pay. And so now the fifth man paid nothing, the sixth pitched in $2, the seventh paid $5, the eighth paid $9, the ninth paid $12, leaving the tenth man with a bill of $52 instead of $59.

Outside the restaurant, the men began to compare their savings. “I only got a dollar out of the $20,” complained the sixth man, pointing to the tenth, “and he got $7!” “Yeah, that's right,” exclaimed the fifth man. “I only saved a dollar, too. It's unfair that he got seven times more than me!”

“That's true,” shouted the seventh man. “Why should he get $7 back when I got only $2? 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 man and beat him up. The next night he didn't show up for dinner, so the nine sat down and ate without him. But when it came time to pay the bill, they discovered something important. They were $52 short! And that, boys, girls and college instructors, is how America's tax system works. The people who pay the highest taxes should get the most benefit from a tax reduction. Tax them too much, attack them for being wealthy, and they just may not show up at the table any more.”

“Jesus this stuff is TIRED!!!”

“Right, they might renounce their citizenship and move to Sri Lanka.”

“Roseymonster, yeah so is the libs "tax cuts for the wealthy" song.”