Barack Obama: "Just a few more passengers.."

Well.

So, as I guessed, Barack Obama is throwing more tax dollars into the black hole of "stimulus spending" in order to assist the unemployed.

Lovely idea, very Keynesian.

Problem is this:

The U.S. taxpayer, who, at the end of the day, funds things like social security, and medicaid, and other federal entitlement programs must be feeling very weary with the weight on their shoulders.

With unemployment at 9.1% and with 47% of U.S. households paying no income tax at all, the burden on the working American tax payer is a heavy one.

So. 

When the call is for increased taxes on the wealthy, one might fairly ask, "At what cost?"  At what point does a person say, "enough is enough".

While we talk in abstractions about relative share of wealth and so forth, the reality is that when half of all American households pay not income tax at all, that burden is being carried by the rest.  And statistics, in fact, show that the burden is falling upon the top 25% of the income earners who pay over 86% of all income tax.

One might ask, "who cares"?

Well.

To illustrate my point.

Let's suppose that the group of "top 25%" of tax payers own a boat.

And let's suppose the President, we'll call him Obama, suggests that a law be passed to assure that the people without boats get to ride for free at the expense of the guy who owns the boat.

And.

So.

The boat owner, being a good citizen, says, "That's fine, I don't mind sharing my good fortune with others - so I'll help them get from their homes to their jobs on my dime."

However, while at first, there are two or three free riders, over time that number keeps growing and growing, until soon, 47% of the people in the city are entitled to ride the boat for free.

And the boat owner is feeling, regardless of his good fortune in owning a boat, the pain of this burden.

And his boat starts to look, well, something like this:




So.  Then.

The Boat owner says, "enough is enough". 

But then, the President says, "Oh, I'm sure adding a few more passengers won't hurt..  ", and he passes a law adding more free riders to the boat.

What could go wrong with that plan?