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Ten men, who served on the same Patrol Boat in Vietnam, ate dinner together every Friday night. They always went to the same restaurant.
The restaurant owner was a carrier sailor in Nam, and he charged the group $100. One must now understand that the original story was some sort of right-wing bullshit fantasy, because in the real world the ten men would have each thrown ten bucks into the pot and had pizza and beer along with the kind of stories that start out "now, this is no shit." But some kid who read "Atlas Shrugged" one time too many wrote this thing, so the ten men were forced to pay their bill the way Americans pay income tax:
The first four men (the poorest) would pay nothing for a whole freshly-made pizza The fifth would pay $1 for a mess of crawdads The sixth would pay $3 for a chef's salad The seventh would pay $7 for a 12-ounce sirloin and a baked potato The eighth would pay $12 for a 16-ounce sirloin, a skewer of grilled shrimp, steak fries and ice cream for dessert The ninth would pay $18 for a 12-ounce ribeye and a half-pound of crab legs along with a dressed baked potato and a huge salad The tenth man (the richest) would pay $59 for a steak that looks more like a pot roast, two one-pound lobsters and about six sides.
Okay, so far so good. What they're not telling you is that the first four men work at Wal-Mart, the fifth is a schoolteacher, the sixth works at Home Depot, the seventh is a doctor still trying to pay off his college loans, the eighth is a contractor, the ninth owns the hardware store all the Home Depot associates keep sending people to when they need something Home Depot doesn't carry, and the tenth man is the mayor.
Anyway, everyone's real happy here. The four poor fuckers who work at Wal-Mart enjoy eating free, the five men in the middle find their bills to be truly reasonable and their meals satisfactory, and no one's yet figured out where the last guy is putting all the food they bring him.
Well, by the by, the restaurant owner decides to retire. The fact that the mayor eats at his place every Friday night, and everyone in town knows it, has made him rich beyond his wildest dreams. He sold the restaurant, strapped a snow shovel to the hood of his car and drove south looking for a place where no one knows what it is. The new owner, who is a chickenhawk freeper, decides that he must "do something" for the ten men to thank them for their patronage (and to keep the mayor coming in every Friday night), and cuts their bill to $80. He makes the new bills as follows:
The fifth man, like the first four, now paid nothing (100% savings) The sixth now paid $2 instead of $3 (33% savings) The seventh now paid $5 instead of $7 (28% savings) The eighth now paid $9 instead of $12 (25% savings) The ninth now paid $14 instead of $18 (22% savings) The tenth now paid $49 instead of $59 (16% savings... the least proportionate savings)
That sounds real good until you realize that the first nine men were served hamburgers so the restaurant owner could afford to feed the mayor even more food than before. So the ten men--yes, even the mayor, who's far better off than before--approach the new owner. "We understand what you were trying to do, but we don't like it. Everything was okay the way it was when John owned this restaurant. Our meal was hugely profitable, Frank (pointing at the mayor) eating here every week increased John's business, we were happy and John was ecstatic. So we'd like you to raise our bills back to where they were." The chickenhawk freeper refused, citing the Huge Savings they all received. Said the fifth man, "what 'huge savings' are you talking about? I paid a dollar. I know schoolteachers don't get paid much, but I could afford a dollar a week. Mark (pointing at the Home Depot guy) paid $3, and now he pays $2. Frank couldn't hold everything you served him, and we didn't know that was possible. The only person who's actually saving money here is you." The freeper refused to budge.
Outside the restaurant, Frank was the first to speak. "Fuck that asshole. Pizza and beer sound good for next week, $10 per man?" Mark pointed at the pizza parlor next to the chickenhawk's restaurant. "Sounds good. Let's meet there." All agreed.
The next week, the chickenhawk's restaurant was deserted while the pizzeria next door was packed to the rafters. The chickenhawk went out of business shortly thereafter and his place was purchased by the pizza guy, who knocked a hole in the wall between the two restaurants.
And that, right-wing blowhards and Republican legislators, is how reality works. Piss off your constituents enough, and they'll put you out on your ass.
Oh yeah: Snopes reports that not only did David R. Kamerschen, Ph.D., not write the original piece, he doesn't know who did.
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