Lisa's Blog

This is a RE-Post of a blog that got lost some how ...

Best explanation to share with your friends, who may not
understand this complex principle.

Suppose that every day, ten men go out for beer and the bill for all
ten  comes to $100. If they paid their 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 man (the richest) would pay $59.

So, that's what they decided to do.

The ten men drank in the bar every day and seemed quite happy with the
arrangement, until one day, 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 beer by $20.' Drinks for the ten now cost just
$80.

The group still wanted to pay their bill the way we pay our taxes so
the first four men were unaffected. They would still drink for free. But
what about the other six men - the paying customers? How could they
divide
the $20 windfall so that everyone would get his 'fair share?'

They realized that $20 divided by six is $3.33. But if they subtracted
that from everybody's share, then the fifth man and the sixth man would
each end up being paid to drink his beer. So, the bar owner suggested
that it would be fair to reduce each man's bill by roughly the same
amount, and he proceeded to work out the amounts each should pay.

And so:

The fifth man, like the first four, now paid nothing (100% savings).
The sixth now paid $2 instead of $3 (33% savings).
The seventh now pay $5 instead of $7 (28% savings).
The eighth now paid $9 instead of $12 (25% savings).
The ninth now paid $14 instead of $18 (22% savings).
The tenth now paid $49 instead of $59 (16% savings).

Each of the six was better off than before. And the first four
continued to drink for free. But once outside the restaurant, the men
began to
compare their savings.

'I only got a dollar out of the $20 declared the sixth man. He pointed
to the tenth man, 'but he got $10!'

'Yeah, that's right,' exclaimed the fifth man. 'I only saved a dollar,
too. It's unfair that he got ten times more than I!'

'That's true!!' shouted the seventh man. 'Why should he get $10 back
when I got only two? 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 and beat him up. The next night the
tenth man didn't show up for drinks, so the nine sat down and had beers
without him. But when it came time to pay the bill, they discovered
something important. They didn't have enough money between all of them
for even half of the bill!

And that, ladies and gentlemen, journalists and college professors, is
how our tax system works. The people who pay the highest taxes get the
most benefit from a tax reduction. Tax them too much, attack them for
being wealthy, and they just may not show up anymore. In fact, they
might start drinking overseas where the atmosphere is somewhat
friendlier.

For those who understand, no explanation is needed.
For those who do not understand, no explanation is possible.

This was reported to be from: David R. Kamerschen, Ph.D. Professor of Economics, University of Georgia. so I can not take full credit for it

Barack Obama discovers a leak under his sink, so he calls Joe the Plumber to come and fix it. Joe drives to Obama's house, which is located in a very nice neighborhood and where it's clear that all the residents make more than $250,000 per year. Joe arrives and takes his tools into the house. Joe is led to the room that contains the leaky pipe under a sink. Joe assesses the problem and tells Obama, who is standing near the door, that it's an easy repair that will take less than 10 minutes. Obama asks Joe how much it will cost.  

Joe immediately says, "$9,500."

"$9,500?" Obama asks, stunned. "But you said it's an easy repair!"

"Yes, but what I do is charge a lot more to my clients who make more than $250,000 per year so I can fix the plumbing of everybody who makes less than that for free," explains Joe. "It's always been my philosophy. As a matter of fact, I lobbied government to pass this philosophy as law, and it did pass earlier this year, so now all plumbers have to do business this way. It's known as 'Joe's Fair Plumbing Act of 2008.' Surprised you haven't heard of it, Senator."

In spite of that, Obama tells Joe there's no way he's paying that much for a small plumbing repair, so Joe leaves.

Obama spends the next hour flipping through the phone book looking for another plumber, but he finds that all other plumbing businesses listed have gone out of business. Not wanting to pay Joe's price, Obama does nothing. The leak under Obama's sink goes unrepaired for the next several days.

A week later the leak is so bad that Obama has had to put a bucket under the sink. The bucket fills up quickly and has to be emptied every hour, and there's a risk that the room will flood, so Obama calls Joe and pleads with him to return.

Joe goes back to Obama's house, looks at the leaky pipe, and says "Let's see ? this will cost you about $21,000."

"A few days ago you told me it would cost $9,500!" Obama quickly fires back.

Joe explains the reason for the dramatic increase. "Well, because of the 'Joe's Fair Plumbing Act,' a lot of rich people are learning how to fix their own plumbing, so there are fewer of you paying for all the free plumbing I'm doing for the people who make less than $250,000. As a result, the rate I have to charge my wealthy paying customers rises every day.

"Not only that, but for some reason the demand for plumbing work from the group of people who get it for free has skyrocketed, and there's a long waiting list of those who need repairs. This has put a lot of my fellow plumbers out of business, and they're not being replaced. Nobody is going into the plumbing business because they know they won't make any money. I'm hurting now too, all thanks to greedy rich people like you who won't pay their fair share."

Obama tries to straighten out the plumber: "Of course you're hurting, Joe! Don't you get it? If all the rich people learn how to fix their own plumbing and you refuse to charge the poorer people for your services, you'll be broke, and then what will you do?"

Joe immediately replies, "Run for president, apparently."

I am 46 years old. For 30 years, I have done one of 3 things: worked 2 jobs, gone to night school, or risked whatever money I had to start a business. During that time I have met lots of folks. They all wanted to get ahead, just like I did. Some of them did something about it and some did not.

Once, for 3 years, I worked 40 hours a week at one job, 2 nights a week at another, and went to school on Friday nights and all day Saturday. I worked with a whole lot of guys who said I was crazy for doing so. A lot of them would go out and get drunk while I was at school. As far as I know, they all still work at the same place.

I missed a lot of my kids early years because I worked at a second job. You know, nights and weekends. You name a type of business and I have worked in it.

More than once my wife and I have put all of our eggs into one basket. I mean everything. We have lost it all on more than one occassion. To recover meant working 2 jobs again.

I could have just went out and landed some govt type job. 8-5 during the week, with weekends off. Go out and borrow money to buy a cheap used car. Live in a small tract home with cheap furnishings. Be home every night and play every weekend. Watch lots of TV and party Saturday night. Look forward to a small retirement check. Get jealous everytime I see a guy driving a Porsche. Wonder how anyone could afford such a big house. Get mad everytime a bill comes in the mail. Hate anyone who is "rich".

The answer to being a success is written above. Hard work. Harder work. If anyone is out working you, work harder. Take chances beyond a savings account and a safe job. Spend every extra moment learning, achieving, or working.

Work beyond the ordinary will eventually bring success beyond the ordinary.  

Why should all of us who have worked, scrimped, and busted our ass for a long time, have to pay for those who have not? I do not know the answer, but I do not want to find out either.

No Obama.

This is a copy of an email sent to me by a friend. It is unaltered. Please do not blame me for the grammar and spelling. THIS IS WHAT BUSH MIGHT SAY IF HE WERE TO QUIT.

Bush quits     ----- 
President Bush's address to the nation

Normally, I start these things out by saying 'My Fellow Americans.' Not
doing it this time.

If the polls are any indication, I don't know who more than half of you
are anymore. I do know something terrible has happened, and that you're
really not fellow Americans any longer.

I'll cut right to the chase here: I quit. Now before anyone gets all in
a lather about me quitting to avoid impeachment, or to avoid prosecution
or something, let me assure you: There's been no breaking of laws or
impeachable offenses in this office. The reason I am is simple. I'm fed
up with you people. I'm fed up because you have no understanding of what's
really going on in the world. Or of what's going on in this once-great
nation of ours. And the majority of you are too damned lazy to do your homework and figure it out.

Let's start local. You've been sold a bill of goods by politicians and
the news media. Meanwhile, all you can do is whine about gas prices, and most of you are too damn stupid to realize that gas prices are high because there's increased demand in other parts of the world, and because a small
handful of noisy idiots are more worried about polar bears and beachfront property than your economic security. We face real threats in the world.

Don't give me this 'blood for oil' thing. If I were trading blood for
oil I would've already seized Iraq's oil fields and let the rest of the country go to hell. And don't give me this 'Bush Lied...People Died' crap either. If I were the liar you morons take me for, I could've easily had chemical weapons planted in Iraq so they could be 'discovered.' Instead, I owned up to the fact that the intelligence was faulty.

Let me remind you that the rest of the world thought Saddam had the
goods, same as me. Let me also remind you that regime change in Iraq was official US policy before I came into office.

Some guy named 'Clinton' established that policy. Bet you didn't know
that, did you?

Now some of you morons want to be led by a junior senator with no
understanding of foreign policy or economics, and this nitwit says we should attack Pakistan, a nuclear ally.  And then he wants to go to Iran and make peace with a terrorist who says he's going to destroy us. While he's doing that, he wants to give Iraq to al Qaeda, Afghanistan to the Taliban, Israel to the Palestinians, and your money to the IRS so the government can give welfare to illegal aliens, who  he will make into citizens, so they can vote to re-elect him.  He also thinks it's okay for Iran to have nuclear weapons, and we should  stop our foreign aid to Israel. Did you sleep
through high school?

You idiots need to understand that we face a unique enemy. Back during
the cold war, there were two major competing political and economic models squaring off.  We won that war, but we did so because fundamentally, the Communists wanted to survive, just as we do. We were simply able to out spend and out-tech them.  That's not the case this time. The soldiers of our new enemy don't care if they survive. In fact, they want to die. That'd be fine, as long as they weren't also committed to taking as many of you with them as they can. But they are.  They want to kill you, and the bastards are all over the globe.

You should be grateful that they haven't gotten any more of us here in
the United States since September 11. But you're not. That's because you've got no idea how hard a small number of intelligence, military, law enforcement, and homeland security people have worked to make sure of that.

When this whole mess started, I warned you that this would be a long and
difficult fight.  I'm disappointed how many of you people think a long and
difficult fight amounts to a single season of 'Survivor.' Instead, you've grown
impatient.  You're incapable of seeing things through the long lens of history, the  way our enemies do.  You think that wars should last a few months, a few years, tops.

Making matters worse, you actively support those who help the enemy.
Every time you buy the New York Times, every time you send a donation to a cut-and-run Democrat's political campaign, well, dang it, you might just as well Fed Ex a grenade launcher to a Jihadist. It amounts to the same thing.

In this day and age, it's easy enough to find the truth. It's all over
the Internet. It just isn't on the pages of the New York Times, USA Today, or on NBC News. But even if it were, I doubt you'd be any smarter. 
Most of you would rather watch American Idol or Dancing with Stars.

I could say more about your expectations that the government will always
be there to bail you out, even if you're too stupid to leave a city that's below
sea level and has a hurricane approaching.

I could say more about your insane belief that government, not your own
wallet, is where the money comes from. But I've come to the conclusion that were I to do so, it would sail right over your heads.

So I quit. I'm going back to Crawford. I've got an energy-efficient
house down there (Al Gore could only dream) and the capability to be fully
self-sufficient for years. No one ever heard of Crawford before I got elected, and as soon as I'm done here pretty much no one will ever hear of it again. Maybe I'll be lucky enough to die of old age before the last pillars of America fall.

Oh, and by the way, Cheney's quitting too. That means Pelosi is your new
President. You asked for it. Watch what she does carefully, because I still have a glimmer of hope that there are just enough of you remaining who are smart enough to turn this thing around in 2008.

So that's it. God bless what's left of America.

Some of you know what I mean. The rest of you, kiss off.

PS - You might want to start learning Farsi, and buy a Koran.

I Quit....

The "Joe the Plumber" episode of a week ago has brought to light that free enterprise as an economic system is not real popular with many Americans. That's a real disappointment. It's a little like saying that Americans don't like parades, high school football games, or apple pie.

Free enterprise is the backbone of this country - where any person regardless of their means, station, background, or education can set themselves up in business and attempt to make a go of it. Some are successful, many are not. That's not the point. The point is that we can do it.

Many of the great inventions that we enjoy in this country came about because someone persevered with an issue until they conquered it and then were able to market their solution to hundreds or thousands of others - at a profit.

Profit has become a nasty word in this country. I'm not talking about big business but entrepreneurial business - and if we can't make a profit, we can't create jobs, do business with other small businesses, be good corporate citizens in our community, perform volunteer work, and provide for our families.

Realtors, brokers, independent contractors, decorators, mortgage brokers, builders, stagers, home inspectors, consultants, trainers, commissioned salespeople, and anyone else on Active Rain that runs their own business or is totally responsible for their own income - unite. Free enterprise is our platform for success.

All that said, I have started a new group "Celebrating Free Enterprise," and anyone is welcome to post as long as it pertains to the common good of business generation or success. Just click on link to Join Group.

It's up to us to keep this country strong!

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For more information on my coaching services or sales tips visit my website stevehoffacker.com or my blog homesalesinsights.com.