| An economic lesson: What if all the restaurant tabs were collected and divided by the number of tables and everyone was given an average bill; would you order differently? If you and your spouse went to a restaurant and they sat all 50 tables at once. The menu had many items with widely different qualities and prices. Many different drinks, desserts, appetizers, and main dishes were there. |  |
 | Some people had plenty of money and wanted to live it up and was willing to pay for the best of everything and would probably end up with a bill of over $100. Others had a very tight budget and had just water and a simple, inexpensive meal. They could walk out for less than $20. All 50 tables had different tastes, means, and desires. Everyone took into consideration the cost of what they ordered. |
| After everyone had time to look over the menu and make their choices, but before the order was taken, the manager steps out to make an announcement. The manager stated they were going to take every tables tab and add them up and divide it by the fifty tables. Everyone was going to get the same bill for their food. |  |
 | The question is, are you and others going to order differently. Are you going to forgo the nice glass of wine? Is the next table going to add an appetizer? Is another table going to grab an extra meal to go? Is someone going to switch from an $8 hamburger to a $28 surf and turf? How many desserts are added by people that had no previous intention of getting a dessert? |
| Everyone knows economics when it comes to their own pocketbook. They change their minds very quickly when the circumstances change. Before the change, everyone realized that a $10 dessert would be paid for entirely by them. After the change, everyone only paid 2% (one fiftieth) of what they received, thus only 20 cents for that $10 piece of pie. |  |
 | The restaurant really increased their overall sales that night because everyone knew the extra cost was being split fifty ways. Some thought: why should that table get an appetizer, and not us, because I am paying for part of their food. The incentive and disincentive structure is entirely different. Now the question arises: are these customers coming back under this arrangement? What if they were forced to come back for every dinner? |
| Ask yourselves; is this similar to the states receiving funding from the federal government. There are a few differences; however, the fundamental incentive structure is the same. The federal government collects taxes from every citizen from every state. The federal government offers states funding for many projects. |  |
 | If the states collected taxes just from their own citizens for the same project, the taxpayers of just that state would have to pick up the entire cost of the project. If the money came in from the federal government, taxpayers from that state would only be taxed for one-fiftieth of the cost and all other taxpayers from the nation would be taxed for the rest. |
| There is a strong argument often made that if the state does not take the funding, then the funds will go to another state. Many people are rightfully concerned that they were taxed to fund another state’s project and our state did not get any benefit. The incentive structure is always to wait for the federal government to do it because then taxpayers from around the country will pay versus higher state taxes. |  |
 | Haley2024 the Movement calls for most government functions to be in the free enterprise system; however, whatever does stay in government, be taxed and funded by the same level of government. Haley2024, also calls for no general budget, instead, a very segregated tax for every program. |
