10 men at the bar: a parable for the times we live in

IN his column (December 14) Fergus Finlay said we are the first democracy ever to decide the poor must pay our debts.

He concluded: “When the going was good, all the tax breaks were given to people who had plenty ...” While his aspirations are laudable the problem is his argument is, at best, misleading.

Consider this short parable of “how the tax system works” (author unknown) which I have revised using the most recently available income tax data (2006). Suppose that every day, 10 men go out for beer and the bill for all 10 comes to €100. If they paid their bill the way we pay our taxes, it would go something like this: