Wednesday, October 15, 2008

Democratic Math...

So a good friend of mine and I were chatting about raising kids.(something i will admit i know little about) But the conversation drifted to allowances and what and how they should be paid. The conversation drifted into this little story.

For the last year my friend was giving his oldest a child a monthly allowance of $10. Now in my personal opinion that isn't alot, but still is something, considering the child doesn't have to buy anything of necessity.

Recently the child came to his parent and asked for a raise in the allowance. Being a fairly just parent, my friend asked "How much are thinking you should get?" The child shot for the moon and replied "$20 a month." The brake lights went on and my friend said "Whoa there, I think we can do something about getting you more, but that would be double"

So after a discussion with the spouse they decided to up the allowance to $15 a month. Well the child appeared to be happy with that, until reports started to come in from parents of this child's friends. It seemed the child was telling people, my friend had cut the allowance in half.

When i was first told this story, I just started to laugh, it just shook me as unbelievably funny. until i realized my friend wasn't joking. My Friend chatted with the child and the child justified the statement by claiming he asked for a $10 raise and only got a $5 increase and that is half.

It suddenly donned on me, that sounds like democratic math when they don't get all the money they wanted for some special interest yet the amount given to them is more than the previous year. They like to call that a cut.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

This also goes into the concept of never being able to cut taxes per se. Well maybe taxes are cut, but all that truly means is that they are not increased on a yearly basis to adjust for inflation, or raises other may find necessary.

-Dan

Jase said...

No, to Cut taxes, is to decrease the percentage the government collects from you. that would be a cut. both figuratively and legitimitely. ALthough, the actual amount you pay may be more, due to inflation or greater income.

Which surprisingly is what normally happens when you cut taxes, the government actually collects more in revenue. So cutting Taxes = Raising Taxes? Not at all. Cutting Taxes is Cutting taxes. but cutting Taxes doesn't mean cutting Tax burden or Cutting government revenue. That is the difference.