As a teacher of high school aged students for thirteen years, I taught the same lesson every year, and to my surprise (and theirs) I got the same result. The lesson was on how to calculate percentages and different areas of our lives where we might use this skill.

After teaching the basic operation we would then move to application. I would ask how much you should tip at 20% if your meal was $34.78. We would do this for many different scenarios and talk about how if your base number is higher than your percentage will be higher. To which all the students after seeing the facts agreed.

Then came the moment of surprise! I would then ask the students how much they thought a wealthy person made? Differing from year to year, in general the students said the wealthy make about $300,000 per year. Now the discussion would get really heated lasting for a couple of class periods as I would now state, “Now you see that the wealthy pay more in taxes than everyone else.”

“No way Mr. Leurquin!”

“Your Lying Mr. L!”

“They should pay more but they don’t!”

“Mr. L, what are you smoking!”

These were some of the most repeated responses I received to my statement throughout the years.

I would then proceed to write three examples on the board using Bob, Cindy, and Cliff.

If Bob makes $30,000/year and is taxed at 10% he pays $3,000 in taxes.  If Cindy makes $300,000/year and is taxed at 10% she pays $30,000 in taxes. If Cliff makes $3,000,000/per year and is taxed 10% he pays $300,000 in taxes.

Now usually the room was silent as I would bring attention to the fact that the wealthy (based on their definition of wealthy) do pay more in taxes. Every year the response was the same, “I guess they do pay more in taxes.” What gets me the most is that the kids I taught were generally not that good at math so of course they were not aware of this right? Nope! When I show this to adults I usually get the same stunned response.

Wouldn’t it be great if we were only taxed at 10% freeing up more of our money to spend as we see fit? Wouldn’t it be great if the handcuffs were taken off people so they could go out to become “wealthy” so they could pay the same tax percentage as everyone else yet pay so much more? Thus providing more revenue for this country to provide for the programs that are needed. Let’s encourage people to go out and make a lot of money, tax the heck out of them at the same percentage as everyone else. Raising their tax percentage as they make more only discourages the motivated one from pulling the cart and if nobody is pulling the cart, who will?

It’s crazy that when one just thinks on their own how much clearer things start to become. Enjoy the thinking journey, Steve Leurquin