The ANT
AND THE
GRASSHOPPER
This one is a little different ......
Two Different Versions .....
Two Different Morals
The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter.
The grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away.
Come winter, the ant is warm and well fed. The grasshopper has no food or shelter,
so he dies out in the cold.
MORAL OF THE OLD STORY:
Be responsible for yourself!
MODERN VERSION:
The ant works hard in the withering heat and the rain all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter.
The grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away.
Come winter, the shivering grasshopper calls a press conference and demands to know why the ant should be allowed to be warm and well fed while he is cold and starving.
CBS, NBC , PBS, CNN, and ABC show up to provide pictures of the shivering grasshopper next to a video of the ant in his comfortable home with a table filled with food. America is stunned by the sharp contrast.
How can this be, that in a country of such wealth, this poor grasshopper is allowed to suffer so?
Kermit the Frog appears on Oprah with the grasshopper and everybody cries when they sing, 'It's Not Easy Being Green..'
ACORN stages a demonstration in front of the ant’s house where the news stations film the group singing, We shall overcome.
Then Rev. Jeremiah Wright has the group kneel down to pray for the grasshopper's sake.
President Obama condemns the ant and blames President Bush, President Reagan, Christopher Columbus, and the Pope for the grasshopper's plight.
Nancy Pelosi & Harry Reid exclaim in an interview with Larry King that the ant has gotten rich off the back of the grasshopper, and both call for an immediate tax hike on the ant to make him pay his fair share.
Finally, the EEOC drafts the Economic Equity & Anti-Grasshopper Act retroactive to the beginning of the summer.
The ant is fined for failing to hire a proportionate number of green bugs and, having nothing left to pay his retroactive taxes, his home is confiscated by theGovernment Green Czar and given to the grasshopper.
The story ends as we see the grasshopper and his free-loading friends finishing up the last bits of the ant's food while the government house he is in, which, as you recall, just happens to be the ant's old house, crumbles around them because the grasshopper doesn't maintain it.
The ant has disappeared in the snow, never to be seen again.
The grasshopper is found dead in a drug related incident, and the house, now abandoned, is taken over by a gang of spiders who terrorize and ramshackle, the once prosperous and peaceful, neighborhood.
The entire Nation collapses bringing the rest of the free world with it.
MORAL OF THE STORY:
Be careful how you vote in 2012.
I've sent this to you because I believe that you are an ant!
You may wish to pass this on to other ants, but don't bother sending it on to any grasshopper's because they wouldn't understand it, anyway.
I usually don't write about political issues, but I couldn't pass this one up. My husband and I are certainly financially sound. I am a retired pnysician, and my husband always has a lot of business sense. He invested properly during our early years together and has conserved a lot of that capitol. But we also worked out butts off both in our jobs and in managing our finances, as well as raising a family. We also both did our share of giving back to the community and still do. We know that we have paid a lot of tax and still do pay a lot of tax. Below is a quote from statistics that gives the actual proportion ot taxes paid by various income levels of the American people.
Here is a quote from various organizations on the Internet which are mentioned in the body of the material. They show that indeed wealthier Americans are paying progressively in the income tax bracket. They are paying their fair share. Read below.
Who pays how much
To put it in numbers, according to the analysis, the top 1 percent of earners account for 20.3 percent of total personal income in the United States and pay 21.5 percent of all federal and state taxes. The middle 20 percent of households earn 11.6 percent of US income and pay 10.3 percent of taxes. The lowest 20 percent account for just 3.5 percent of income, and pay 2 percent of all taxes.
The numbers were reported by Citizens for Tax Justice, a research group that supports progressive tax rates, and drawn from calculations by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy.
Note that these numbers look at the broad mix of US taxes, not just income taxes. Federal gas taxes, payroll taxes, and state sales taxes offset the progressive tilts of the income tax and estate tax.
The report also sheds light from another angle, showing the percentage of income that each group pays in total taxes. Lower-income groups pay a smaller – but still significant – share of their incomes in taxes. For example, the lowest fifth of earners pay, on average, 16 percent of their income in taxes. At the higher end of the scale, the top fifth pay a bit more than 30 percent of their income in taxes, not much higher than the next fifth down.
And within that top tier, the top 1 percent pay 30 percent of their income in taxes, which is actually a bit less than the 31 percent of income that the next 9 percent of taxpayers pay.
Another research group, the Tax Foundation, which supports low tax rates, offers an analysis of the federal income tax in isolation. According to the Tax Foundation, the top 1 percent of earners account for 20 percent of "adjusted gross income" (an Internal Revenue Service measure) and pay 38 percent of income taxes. That shows how the income tax itself is progressive.
Other taxes often regressive
The contrast between this number and the tally by Citizens for Tax Justice also shows how other taxes levied in the US are often regressive in their impact on different income groups.
The current structure of tax brackets has rates that start at 10 percent of income at the low end and rise to 35 percent for the highest earners. In the middle are brackets of 15, 25, 28, and 33 percent. That top bracket doesn't mean the rich pay 35 percent of their adjusted gross income in taxes. Deductions and other factors lower their effective rate to 23 percent of income, the Tax Foundation reckons.
For comparison, the average tax rate for all taxpayers is 12 percent of adjusted income.
The question is: Are the rich paying "fair enough?" Well, I certainly wouldn't want to pay more taxes but could I afford to pay more taxes? Yes, I guess our household could absorb more taxes and still live the same lifestyle. Does that mean that the government should raise taxes until we are equally financially challenged as those in lower tax brackets? Does "fair" mean "take away all of what we have gained by working our butt off all those years?" Knowing how my husband and I worked to put ourselves through college and graduate school, with part time jobs, etc; then how hard we worked all through our work lives, we feel we deserve some financially secure and relaxing time now, and not to have to worry about whether we have the cash to pay the bigger tax bill. This is why I get so angry when I constantly hear on the news, the statements by our President and the Democratic Party that we "are not paying our fair share" like the "working people" are, implying that we didn't and don't "work." The only implied words missing in these statesments are "lazy deadbeats."
Here's an idea -- if households making over $250,000 per year (the cutoff that Obama seems to like to use) need to pay progressively more percentage of the tax bill, why not charge these people progressively more for the items they buy. How about 20% more for their gas, 20% more for their groceries, $5.00 instead of $3.50 for a bowl of ice cream at the ice cream shop; $12 instead of $8.50 for a movie; "For you, Ma'am, that dress will cost $104 instead of the listed $82." etc. After all we probably can afford to pay more, right?
Let's just redistribute the wealth as quickly and efficiently as we can!
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