If your if is wrong, so is your then . . .

There were recently two letters to the editor in the same edition of the newspaper that caught my attention. Each was based on a faulty premise. If the premise is not correct, then whatever follows is moot.

The first letter had to do with tipping. Carl Savant saw a group of ladies leave a $2 tip for a $40 bill. In the first place, that was really none of Carl's business. In the second place, while I believe in tipping well, a tip is not a service charge -- it is something freely given, so whatever the server gets should be appreciated and not grumbled over. Anyway, Carl says that we should know that servers make only $2.50 an hour. That's not quite correct, Carl. Servers make a base of $2.50 an hour. If their tips do not bring their total to $7.25 (or whatever the current minimum wage is), the employer must make it up. So servers, in effect, make at least minimum wage.

The second letter had to do with a national sales tax. A national sales tax is a great idea if we write into the legislation that no other tax may be assessed as long as the sales tax is in force. Charles J. Mikkelsen doesn't like the sales tax idea. He says it is regressive -- that the poor person will pay a greater percentage in taxes than a wealthy one. Again, the writer begins with a faulty premise. His premise is that the wealthy person and the poor one spend the same amount of money. That's not true. Let's assume that the wealthy person makes $250,000 a year, and the poor one makes $25,000 a year. The wealthy one shops at Nieman Marcus and spends $50,000 a year on clothes. Let's say the sales tax is 10%. That means he's spent $5000 in taxes. The poor one shops at Wal-Mart and spends $500 a year on clothes. His tax is $50. The wealthy person eats in nice restaurants, and buys his food at the gourmet food store. This costs him about $2000 a month. His tax is $2400 a year for groceries. The poor person buys Great Value brand at Wal-Mart and eats at McDonalds. This cost him about $150 a week, so his tax is $780 for the year. You can extrapolate this to all areas of consumerism. As a rule, the wealthy spend much more than the poor; therefore, they will pay more tax. As percentages of income go, it's probably going to even out.

So Mr. Savant and Mr. Mikkelsen, you have offered us two more examples of "it sounds good, but when we analyze it, it's full of holes."

"Don't short-change servers." "Raise taxes on the poor?" The Dallas Morning News; July 24, 2010; p. 20A.