The Price of Milk

Nolan Finley, in his Detroit News column, wonders what would happen if milk were priced on the same basis as the federal government uses to structure income taxes.

The average price of milk is $2.49/gallon, so everyone (ignoring for a moment the 47 million people on Food Stamps) now pays $2.49. But if the government applied it's unique way of thinking here, 40 percent of the public wouldn't pay a dime for it. In fact, the government would actually PAY them $1 for every gallon of milk they took home. At the other extreme, 1 percent of the public would be charged $109.81 per gallon for milk. Of course, these people would buy a lot less milk at that price, and most of the scheme would need to be financed by issuing milk bonds to China.

The current tax system is, indeed, unfair, but not because the wealthy don't pay enough.The Rich are paying more for their government milk than it's worth so that most others can pay less. Instead of saying thank you, we're trying to milk them dry.