Thursday, August 07, 2008

An eye-opening demonstration that half our nation are freeloaders

I came across this article via Wizbang! and it was so shocking I had to post it. Last year, ExxonMobile earned $40 billion in after tax profits. So how much did it pay in federal income taxes? $30 billion. That's right. $30 billion. But that isn't the shocking part.

The shocking part of the article is that ExxonMobile's 2007 federal income tax bill was greater than the combined bill of the entire bottom half of all U.S. federal income tax return filers (notice how I didn't say "payers" since many of those in the lower half who file returns don't pay federal income tax at all). In other words, just one corporation paid more in federal income taxes than 50% of the entire tax return-filing population of the United States. Yet ExxonMobile is villianized by the press, Democrats and RINOs alike.

Two undeniable truths at work here. The government who robs Peter to pay Paul can always count on the support of Paul. And a democracy cannot survive as a permanent form of government; only as long as it takes 50.1% of the voting population to figure out they can vote themselves a largess out of the public treasury, at the expense of the other 49.9%.

We'll eventually need a Constitutional amendment prohibiting income and/or wealth redistribution to survive.

Friday, August 01, 2008

Thanks Derb

You should read everything John Derbyshire writes anyway, but I'd like to thank him for putting a puzzle I emailed him in his July Diary "Math Corner" here (it's on page 2, near the end, puzzle #3). Can you solve? (Bragging a bit, I got the puzzle in an easier version and, upon solving it relatively quickly, realized it could be made more difficult but still solvable, and sent that more difficult version in my email to Derb, which is the version he published.)