Geese

Sometimes an analogy sticks with us.

• We hear about not killing the goose that lays the golden egg -- perhaps an argument for conservatism, if we're not entirely sure how things work. (A Georgist might be led to ask "whose golden egg?" and "shouldn't we all be sharing that egg, if we're all feeding the goose?")
• We hear about stealing the goose from the commons, and stealing the commons from the goose.

Louis Post: Outlines of Louis F. Post's Lectures, with Illustrative Notes and Charts (1894)

The shifting of indirect taxes is accomplished by means of their tendency to increase the prices of commodities on which they fall. Their magnitude and incidence 6 are thereby disguised. It was for this reason that a great French economist of the last century denounced them as "a scheme for so plucking geese as to get the most feathers with the least squawking."7 ... read the book