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 he
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, ten 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 ten men were quite settled into their routine when the restaurant
threw them into chaos. It announced that it was cutting its prices:
Now it would charge only $80 for dinner for the ten 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 got only $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 got only $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 got only $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 tenth man.
The nine angry men carried the tenth 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.
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 tenth dinner guest) pay 59 percent of all the taxes.
The lowest 40 percent pay none. The fifth quintile, 1 percent; the
6th, 7th, 8th, and 9th, 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 would reduce income taxes by a total
of 20 percent, and the benefits of that reduction are distributed
along the lines suggested for the ten diners.
And yes, the protests arise, reaching maximum volume in the matter
of relieving the tenth man from his customary contribution of $59
toward the common meal, lowering it to $52.
Okay, but the drama is then taken to what one might call a fourth
act, which is one too many. The tenth 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 tenth 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 tenth 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 tenth 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 tenth man to be so obliging
in the first place? Were they threatening to lynch him if he didn't
put out? Did the tenth man plot to protect himself? … Was he
the critical voter in Florida in November 2000?
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