The next time you hear a push for more “progressive” income tax rates, you might want to reflect on the following analogy:

This is known as getting the most feathers possible from the fewest geese in order to minimize the … quacking.

And talk of “tax reform” might lead to consideration of the following:

When [government] talks tax reform on the eve of an [election] year, you can bet whatever they do will be based on the time-honored principle of robbing Peter to pay Paul. And the idea is to see that there are more Pauls … than there are citizens named Peter. … But what [government] … can’t seem to realize is that we’re all named Paul … — Peter went bankrupt quite a while ago.

Ronald Reagan uttered those words nearly 30 years ago, in radio commentaries collected in Reagan In His Own Hand (Touchstone, 2001).