Ten men go for a pint

It starts off with making the initial comparison of 'things the government spends money on' to 'going and getting pissed at the pub'. Personally, I rate the NHS, the roads, and all that jazz as being rather more useful than a pint.

It has the rich man paying the majority of the bill. Which is quite an arguable point; yes, the very rich pay a fair chunk of the income tax bill, but 60% seems a rather over-exaggeration.

Especially when you take into account the more regressive taxes like VAT — those sorts of charges make up a rather larger proportion of the expenditure of people on lower incomes than they do for the rich.

The reduction in costs is a rather random addition to the mix; again because it's all about beer, there's no look at whether that money saved could be better spent elsewhere, or what the effects of the reduction is.

It presupposes that the reaction of the poorer is to complain at the richer getting more of a saving from cost reduction. Is this a fair comparison? Sure, people have complained at the reduction in the top rate of tax recently, but that's not quite the same — they're complaining that in a time of austerity, the taxes are being reduced on claimed grounds of 'promoting growth' rather than a reduction in the bar bill, and at the same time the support for the poorer parts of the society has been reduced on the claims we can't afford it.

To get all technical, it also misses out on the 'decreasing marginal utility of money'. Or to put it another way, taking £10 from a millionare and giving it to someone in poverty, creates more happiness overall, as that £10 is much more useful to the poorer person.

Finally, it ends with a fairly meaningless pair of statements presented as a truism.