Quote Originally Posted by lisvaneblue View Post
Suppose every day ten men go into a bar and the bill for the drinks comes to £100. If they paid the bill the way we pay our taxes it would go something like this...
The first four men ( the poorest) would pay nothing
The fifth would pay £1
The sixth would pay £3
The seventh would pay £7
The eighth would pay £12
The ninth would pay £18
the tenth ( the richest) would pay £59
So that's what they decided to do.

The ten men drank in the bar every day and seemed happy with the arrangement until one day the owner said that they have been good customers so the bar bill will be reduced in the future to £80
The group still wanted to pay the bill the way we pay taxes...so the first four men were unaffected, They would drink for free.
But what of the other six? The paying customers.
How could they divide the £20 windfall so that everyone had their fair share?
They realised that £20 divided by six is £3.33. But if they subtracted that from each share the sixth man would end up being paid to drink his beer.
So they decided that it would be fair to reduce each man's bill by a higher percentage the poorer he was.
So the fifth man, like the first four paid nothing ( 100%)
The sixth paid £2 instead of £3 ( saving 33%)
The seventh paid £5 instead of £7 ( saving 28%)
The eighth paid £9 instead of £12 (saving25%)
The ninth paid £14 instead of £18 (22%)
The tenth( the richest) paid £49 instead of £59 (16%)
Each of the six was better off than before and all was well until the sixth man said ..I only saved £1 of the £20
That's right said the fifth man, I saved £1 too, but he got £10 back
True said the seventh man, he got £10 and I got £2...The rich get all the breaks
Wait a minute said the first four men...We got nothing at all. This just exploits the poor
So...the nine men surrounded the tenth man and beat him up.
The next day they met again at the bar but the tenth man didn't show. And when it came to pay the bill they discovered that without him they didn't have enough money to pay even half the bill.
So that boys and girls, MPs and journalists is how the tax system works.
The people who pay the highest taxes will naturally get the most benefit from a tax reduction. Tax them too much and they may just not show up anymore
For those who understand no explanation is needed.
For those who do not understand, no explanation is possible
It's a pretty shit analogy.

Directly they are recieving the same thing (the pint) but it doesn't take into account the additional significant indirect benefits that the richer members of society experience when paying for vital services, these are exponential.

Take a future billionaire at 3 years old and stick him in Somalia, does he still become a billionaire? Very unlikely... That billionaire has benefited incredibly from just being in the UK and continues to do so as they do business.