Manuel Lora of The Swamp Land Exile copies and pastes a great little story over at his site titled Income Tax Explained. From his (copied) post:

Sometimes politicians, journalists and others exclaim; “It’s just a tax cut for the rich!” and it is just accepted to be fact. But what does that really mean? Just in case you are not completely clear on this issue, I hope the following will help. Please read it carefully.

Let’s put tax cuts in terms everyone can understand. Suppose that every day, ten men go out for dinner 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.

Read the rest at his site.

With great happiness I read the most recent Mises Institute e-mail notification about their newest product, the Mises Money Clip. I have almost all their products — received for various gifts and presents, or purchased by myself. I love their ties, their books (I have them all, thanks Jess!), all their T-shirts which I wear daily, and other neat stuff.

So just as I was about to order my Mises Money Clip, I realized there is a big problem with it — it doesn’t work. I know, because I have other “money” clips and they all fail to work, too.

Why is this? Because no money clip will properly hold my money — bullion. I’ve tried them all, but they barely hold one coin of real money.

It is so often that we forget some of our most basic premises for freedom, and one such time is when we call fiat dollars “money” when they are in fact nothing but paper promises backed by promises of coercion and war. Is it time that libertarians and anarcho-capitalists stop calling a dollar “money” and instead call the dollar what it is — broken promises.

Maybe the Mises Institute should change the product name to “Broken Promises Clip.”

Until then, I return to my “money clip” — the bullion sack:

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