Geese, Golden Eggs, & Government

Flopping Aces ^ | 03-03-10 | Aye Chihuahua

[Starman417]

Once upon a time, Aesop wrote a fable about a Countryman who possessed the most extraordinary goose you can possibly imagine. Every morning when he went to visit the nest, the goose had laid one single beautiful, glittering, golden egg.

The Countryman took the eggs to market and soon began to get rich. But it was not long before he grew impatient with the goose because she gave him only a single golden egg each day. He was not getting rich fast enough and was becoming quite greedy.

Then one day, after he had finished counting his money, the idea came to him that he could get all the golden eggs at once by killing the goose and cutting it open.

But when the deed was done, not a single golden egg did he find, and his precious goose was dead.

The Countryman learned the hard way what the Government is about to learn as well. For years now, we've heard the cries of "tax the rich".

We've heard about those "evil millionaires" and "fat cat bankers."

We've listened as people referred to the Bush tax cuts for all taxpayers as "tax cuts for the rich." Of course, in reality, during the Bush years the tax burden actually shifted more heavily toward those with higher incomes and everyone who pays taxes received a tax rate reduction.

Now, we are hearing President Obama speak of increasing the taxes on those in the upper percentages of income. In 2007 those in the the top 10% of income brackets paid 71.22% of all of taxes collected by the Federal Government. The top 50% bears 97.11% of the burden.

President Obama plans to raise taxes on people making over $250k by over $1 trillion over ten years.

What happens when the tax rates grow into too much of a burden to bear?

What happens when government, the equivalent of Aesop's Countryman, becomes greedy -- wanting more and more and more?

Read more at floppingaces.net...

[KarlInOhio]

The article talks about the Laffer curve, but one thing I've never seen published (maybe it is in academic economic journals) that the tax rate giving a long term maximum tax income on the Laffer curve is probably a lot lower than the short term maximum. People may not move or quit their jobs because taxes are too high, but they won't invest in factories and businesses (at least in the U.S.). Thus the long term growth of the country grinds to a halt even without a lot of people going Galt.

[algernonpj]

The Democrat and Republican elite have not only killed the goose, they have sold the seed corn.