by Jeff Thomas, International Man:
Here we have a standard credit card receipt from a coffee shop.The diner understands that he’s not obligated to order anything that he doesn’t want to receive, but that, for whatever he does order, he must pay the price on the menu.
The subtotal is printed in large type on the charge slip. He may then decide whether or not the service he received was of particular value to him. Diners typically choose to pay somewhere between 10% and 20%, depending on the value they feel they’ve received.
TRUTH LIVES on at https://sgtreport.tv/
But the receipt above differs from the norm. After the “Tip” line, another line exists for “Voluntary Tax.”
This is a very special coffee shop. In this shop, the owners and servers pay no involuntary tax and therefore, no tax is passed on to the diner. In this coffee shop, the diner decides what level of tax he feels he should pay his government, in accordance with what he feels his government’s contribution has been to his meal.
This particular diner has decided that his government deserves something, but not as much as either the coffee shop’s owners or the servers. He has generously allowed a $1.00 tip as his “voluntary tax.”
Of course, as the reader already understands, this is a hypothetical coffee shop. Were its owners to operate in this fashion with regard to the payment of taxes, they’d find themselves in prison for a lot longer than, say, an illegal immigrant who’d murdered someone.
But, what if this was the system that we operated in? What if the people of a country had the freedom to decide every day how they felt about their government’s performance and could reward them through voluntary taxation?
Well, the first reaction might be to write a zero on the line provided. But, at some point, most people would say to themselves, “Come on, now, it’s not as though they do nothing for us. Let’s see… they do a very good job building roads and maintaining them. Maybe 5% for that? How about the Fire Department? Pretty good – let’s say 4%. The schools? Bad and getting worse – 2%. And the Police? – they’re a travesty. I’ll give them 0% only because I can’t go any lower.”
And so, we might arrive at a tip of 2% to 3%.
Over time, people would learn to provide a “reasonable” tip, because, without any tip at all, Government would shut down. (And we still want those nice roads to be maintained.)
Read More @ InternationalMan.com
