gregspace.com » Ramblings

Taxidermy – Why we are all stuffed

Greg Anderson — Mon, 21 Mar 2011 04:32:01 +0000

This arrived in my email inbox today – original author unknown to me (I’d love to be able to credit them for it). Hopefully enough people will read this while I can still afford my own web hosting, have a full-time career & run businesses. Hopefully people will read this while it’s still possible for manufacturers to operate in Australia, requiring people such as myself to perform operational tasks.

Tax analogy

Suppose that every day, ten men go out for beer and the bill for all ten
comes to 100.
If they paid their bill the way we pay our taxes, it would go something
like this …

The first four men (the poorest) would pay nothing.
The fifth would pay 1.
The sixth would pay 3.
The seventh would pay 7.
The eighth would pay 12.
The ninth would pay 18.
The tenth man (the richest) would pay 59.

So, that’s what they decided to do.
The ten men drank in the bar every day and seemed quite happy with the
arrangement, until one day, the owner threw them a curve ball.
“Since you are all such good customers,” he said, “I’m going to reduce
the cost of your daily beer by 20″. Drinks for the ten men would now
cost just 80.

The group still wanted to pay their bill the way we pay our taxes.
So the first four men were unaffected.
They would still drink for free. But what about the other six men?
The paying customers?
How could they divide the 20 windfall so that everyone would get his
fair share?

They realised that 20 divided by six is 3.33. But if they subtracted
that from everybody’s share, then the fifth man and the sixth man would
each end up being paid to drink his beer.

So, the bar owner suggested that it would be fair to reduce each man’s
bill by a higher percentage the poorer he was, to follow the principle
of the tax system they had been using, and he proceeded to work out the
amounts he suggested that each should now pay.

And so the fifth man, like the first four, now paid nothing (100% saving).
The sixth now paid 2 instead of 3 (33% saving).
The seventh now paid 5 instead of 7 (28% saving).
The eighth now paid 9 instead of 12 (25% saving).
The ninth now paid 14 instead of 18 (22% saving).
The tenth now paid 49 instead of 59 (16% saving).

Each of the six was better off than before. And the first four
continued to drink for free. But, once outside the bar, the men began
to compare their savings.
“I only got a pound out of the 20 saving,” declared the sixth man. He
pointed to the tenth man, “but he got 10!”
“Yeah, that’s right,” exclaimed the fifth man. “I only saved a pound
too. It’s unfair that he got ten times more benefit than me!”
“That’s true!” shouted the seventh man. “Why should he get 10 back, when
I got only 2? The wealthy get all the breaks!”
“Wait a minute,” yelled the first four men in unison, “we didn’t get
anything at all. This new tax system exploits the poor!”
The nine men surrounded the tenth and beat him up.

The next night the tenth man didn’t show up for drinks, so the nine sat
down and had their beers without him. But when it came time to pay the
bill, they discovered something important. They didn’t have enough money
between all of them for even half of the bill!

And that, boys and girls, journalists and government ministers, is how
our tax system works.
The people who already pay the highest taxes will naturally get the most
benefit from a tax reduction.
Tax them too much, attack them for being wealthy, and they just may not
show up any more.
In fact, they might start drinking overseas, where the atmosphere is
somewhat friendlier.

For those who understand, no explanation is needed.
For those who do not understand, no explanation is possible.

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The generosity of community banks

Greg Anderson — Thu, 10 Feb 2011 07:40:09 +0000

This is an open letter, because I can no longer afford a stamp.

Dear Mr Vigus,

I refer to your letter dated February 7 regarding my overdrawn account. You ask whether I was aware that my account was overdrawn by $10.54 at the time of writing. I must answer truthfully that I was not.

You state that “Believing this was merely an oversight and as we were unsuccessful in contacting you, we have transferred $10.54 to your overdrawn account from the available funds in your account number xxxxxxxx”. Thanks dude! You were right. It was an oversight. Last time I looked at the account it had a few cents in it. I forgot to allow for your banks’ bullshit fees for 1) being a customer and having an account in the first place; and 2) actually using the account approximately three times last month. Thank you for pointing out the obvious oversight, because I now have cause to actually look into your fee structure.

I’m most pleased that the other account had sufficient funds to cover this. Actually it had roughly 1,000 times the amount needed, a sickenly obscene amount of money given the pathetic and minuscule interest rate your bank pays me for leaving it there.

You state that you completed the transfer on my behalf “to avoid the possibility of you (me) incurring a $27.50 overdrawn account fee”. No, you did it because you can. To charge me an overdrawn fee when the overdraw is simply your fees, would be illegal. To swipe money from another account, without a standing arrangement to do so, is also illegal. But a theft I’m much less likely (or any other customer for that matter) to complain about as you then write to explain how magnanimous your institution has been towards me, the poor customer.

You ask that I ensure my account is conducted on a credit basis and has sufficient funds for all future debits. I promise I will. On the off chance that I don’t, please help yourself to any of my accounts that I hold with Bendigo Bank that have thousands upon thousands of dollars in them. Be quick, I’m closing them all.

Regards,

Greg Anderson
10 year account holder

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Car Hire

Greg Anderson — Sun, 19 Sep 2010 01:04:38 +0000

On my last visit to my home city Melbourne, I had arranged a rental car with Hertz or Avis. I was only visiting for one night for a birthday party so just needed something basic (read: cheap) to get from the airport to the Eastern suburbs where I was staying with family, into Southbank for dinner, back to the ‘burbs afterwards and to the airport the next day. The flight from Coolangatta to Melbourne was uneventful, well, as uneventful as 800km/hr at 30,000 feet can be. I booked a Corolla hatchback – or equivalent – and made my way to the carpark at Tullamarine airport to collect it.

This is where things took a turn for what I at first thought was the worse. An irate young guy, maybe in his early twenties, had become all worked up and begun a rant about the car he was allocated. It was clear from what he was saying that he didn’t feel a Hyundai Excel was remotely equivalent to a Corolla, which is what he had expected when he booked and paid. It was equally clear this kid hadn’t travelled much, and likely never hired a car before in his life. He expressed an unpleasant sense of entitlement for his $59/day and started to act like an upset Donald Trump or CEO of a major corporation. Raising his voice and arguing the point was making things worse and the car hire operation fell into a bit of disarray.

I waited for a break in this conversation of sorts and handed my receipt to the lady attendant. She excused herself momentarily and returned with a set of Hyundai keys – I admit I was a little disappointed myself because the Corolla I hired the previous trip was a great little car and perfect for my needs, but I understand the meaning of “or equivalent” and made my way to the nominated parking space.

Arriving at A17 though I found no Hyundai, but a very nice Camry Altise.

I know the Camry to be a reasonably good car, they even have those headlights that turn on automatically – for people who apparently qualify for a drivers license but are still too stupid to realise when it’s dark.

Sighing, I returned to the booth and said there had been some sort of error, no hatch to be found. By this time our young friend was demanding a free upgrade as he was not going to accept his allocated car and the scene was becoming increasingly heated. I smiled and politely said that there was no hurry and I was happy to wait until they worked out which cars were where.

The lady apologised for the mistake and said there was no need to wait, she swapped my keys for those of the fancy Camry and wished me a nice visit to Melbourne. The other guy finally shut the fuck up and got in his Hyundai.

-Greg

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