The Laugher Curve and the Coop Bubble

Expanding my love of puns, I decided to write about trickle-down economics. A controversial policy to some, but if you really get down to the nitty-gritty of the facts, I think you'll realize that its the only tax policy that makes sense.

The easiest and most accurate way to see if a theory has any merit is to simplify it. Debase it until it can be understood by the lowest-common denominator of society, i.e. swing voters.

You own a farm. A horse farm. But you don't only like horses, you're also big into birds so you have sparrows. So you decide to feed them oats. Trickle-down economics says that instead of trying to feed both types of animals like normal. You should feed the horse all the oats.

As a horse-breeder, I know a thing or two about horses. They're mean-spirited and they loooove oats. So the horse digs into the oats, savoring it, chomping away with those buck-toothed jaws. But the horse doesn't have hands. Why? Because God designed them intelligently. So the horse has to use his mouth and inevitably he drops some oats. The sparrow can now eat the oats and he does.

The more oats you feed the horse, the more oats that are dropped, the more oats the sparrow can eat. You could almost say that the oats trickle from the horse's mouth to the sparrow's.

Now I know what you're thinking. Why not just feed the sparrow and horse separately? Well, that's a dumb question. Obviously, the horse needs more oats because it works harder and the sparrow is lazy and relying on welfare. So why should the horse give his well-earned oats to the lazy sparrow who just sits on his butt all day scratching around?

If the sparrow would do something with his life that was useful (like being a horse) then he could have his fair share of oats. What? No, it doesn't matter that you wouldn't have enough stables to hold the sparrow if he became a horse. Damn, the sparrow should be happy he has the opportunity to even eat oats. Why can't he buy his own oats and not depend on government entities like the oat bag.

So what if the horse benefits from the sparrow's grooming of his back? The horse don't owe the sparrow nothing. And neither does the farmer or the oat bag. That'd be socialism.

Wait, maybe the metaphor doesn't fit. Ok, say the sparrow and the horse were born as a sparrow and a horse. But then they had to fight each other, and the winner got to be the horse for the following day. Yeah, now the sparrow has no excuse. He's had his chance to be a horse. All he has to do is beat the horse in a fight. That's competition, right there. The free market wins again.

What? That's fairness. Oh don't give me that hippy liberal guff about barrier to entry for the sparrow. You guys always use that. No one even knows what that means. At least, I don't.

Let's change it around again. This time the animals can sell their oats to buy things. The horse can spend a portion of his oats on useful things like an apple or a pear. Those are called commodities.

But the dumb sparrow spends his money on trivial things like buying a sparrow coop. But he can't pay for it because he doesn't have enough oats yet. So the rat, who harvests oats, pays for the coop and the sparrow pays the rat a monthly oat fee. That's called a mortgage. The rat's a smart banker.

But then the rat tells the sparrow that if he buys a bigger, more pricier coop. then he'll be closer to the horse then all the other sparrows. So the sparrow gives in. But guess who owns the rat? The horse. So that means the horse is getting even more of the sparrow's oats. But uh oh, the sparrow lost his his job at the steel plant so he can't pay for his coop anymore. So then the horse is losing his investment capital. But no worries, the horse owns a few lobbyists. These are cows. The cows go to you, the farmer, for help, in exchange of campaign milk. So you start an oat commission and give the horse more oats. But the horse starts to eat less of the oats because he's afraid of losing his capital. See, capital is oats.

So then the sparrow starts starving and also he's homeless again and has started drinking.

Wait, what was I talking about again?