Taxes and the common man's party

There are again 3 things in todays papers which have caused me to stop and think. I do apologise for the length of the article but there are a lot of things to be said today:

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The first is an excellent article by Jugs Surayiya who is perhaps one of my favorite writers, it talks about the comment by Mr. Manmohan Singh our illustrious economist prime minister where he has asked Corporate houses to trim the fat and reduce the salaries of the CEOs.

Jugs then goes on to compare Cost to Company of our CEO's (who are responsible for profit making companies ) against the cost to Company (Nation) of our fat cat politicians ( who under no circumstances run a profit making company as can be seen from the budgetary deficits in almost every ministry)

He compares the fact that a select few draw more than 1 Cr a month as CEOs but the cost of maintaining a Politician what with his Z class security, his charter flight junkets, the possible rent on his Luytens Rd bunglows, etc all comes to well over a Cr. That too for someone who the world and his brother knows is not moving the Company (nation) forward even an inch.

He ends by saying ( paraphrased) " Mr. Prime Miniter . leave things alone where they are working and clean your own house first where things definitely aren't".

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The second article was about the new movie "Cheeni Kum" staring Amitabh Bacchan aka The Bade Bhaiya aka The farmer who never was.

In the movie , it seems that there is a six year old girl called "Sexy". There are multiple articles about the absurdity of calling a six year old by that name so I dont need to get into that aspect of the movie.

The one article I saw which made the maximum sense talks about how we as a culture dress up our children in fancy glittering clothes, and bring them out to perform at every family gathering not to nursery rhymes but to "sexy sexy, log mujehe sexy kyun bole" or dress them like Aishwarya Rai and get them to perform to "Crazy kiya re" mini skirt flying and all. Then sit around clapping and beaming smiles.

How is a child supposed to know the difference between a group of people cheering her every move at a family gathering or the smiling face of a paedophile whose very dream shes fufilling in that gathering and who may have her alone later.

If such parents do not have as much brains that instead of shouting at rallies banning a Deepa Mehta Film they should stop parading their daughters and sons in crotch hugging ,cuts on non-existant breast dresses. How can we blame a single movie producer when our whole culture is rotting away at the seams.

I have many a time walked down Lokandwala of many a starlet fame and wondered as to which mother walks into the clothing stores with her daughter to by the clothes which would perhaps be more in place in a shop for colthes designer for Deepa Bar than in a family dress store.

But buy them they must since there seems to be a whole profusion of them all over and no Kutchi shopkeeper worth his salt would display them unless they were in demand.

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The last article I saw would have been hilarious if it wasn't so tragic. It basically said that the residents of other Slum redevelopment programs are complaining that Dharavi residents will get better facilities than they will.

SAY WHAT !!!!!!!!

Let me reiterate, these are people who have captured large amounts of space which never belonged to them, then blackmailed the government to give them 225 sq feet or more built at a cost to us the normal tax payer with money which could have been put to better use. The same self centered land grabbers who have held up infra structure projects like Airport expansion, Metro, etc all of which has ended up costing the tax payer more money.

AND these are the people complaining they didnt get MORE FREE FACILITIES like some other free loaders.

My respect for the government may have gone up a notch from eunuchs to impotent if they had suggest items such as same 225 sq ft to be given to tax payers too. People who actually contribute monetary wise to society. Instead we get the stupidity where they cave in and extend the deadline from 1995 to 2000 for the 80,000 (thats right EIGHTY THOUSAND) slums inside the airport premises.

This whole thing brings to mind a story which I'm reproducing below and the slum dweller and his unholy bedfellow the politician should wisen upto the fact that the common tax payer have had almost upto here with their greed and will soon start to take our drinks somewhere else.

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One day ten friends decided to go out for drinks and the bill came to Rs. 1000/-

The accountant among them decided that perhaps it may be good for them to pay their bill the way they paid their taxes, so he divided the bill as follows:

• The four poorest among them paid nothing
  


• The fifth paid 1%


• The sixth paid 3%


• The seventh paid 7%
  


• The eighth paid 12%
  


• The nineth paid 18%
  


• And the tenth who was the richest paid 59%
  

The next time they came into the bar, the bill again came to a Rs. 1000/- but the owner said " Since you are repeat customers , I’ll give you a 20% discount, so you need to pay only Rs. 800/-"

The accountant decided that since the last time they had divided the bill was so efficient, they should do it again. Everyone agreed unanimously.

They decided that since the first four would still drink free since they were the poorest, the Rs.200/- discount should be divided equally among the six who had actually paid the last time.

But then someone realized that a funny thing would happen this way, Persons 5 & 6 would end up being paid to drink their beers.

The owner then intervened and said that perhaps he should divide it approx in the proportion in which the payments were made by the individuals, so he made the following suggestion:

So now the fifth man too got his beer free like the first four poor folks and they all walked out happily since all six men who had paid the first time were better off then before.

Once outside they started comparing what a good deal they had got from the bartender and the sixth man suddenly exclaimed- “I got only Rupees 10 back but he got 90 " pointing to the tenth person.

Oh yeah shouted the fifth man “ I saved only Rs. 10/- but its unfair that he got 9 times more savings than I did”

“That’s true” said the seventh man “ He got Rs. 90/- to my Rs. 20/-, its not fair that the rich get all the breaks”

“Wait a minute” said the first four “ we didn’t get anything at all, the poor are always taken advantage of”

The nine men surrounded the tenth and beat him up.

The next time they decided to go out for drinks, the tenth man didn’t show up at all. The nine went ahead with the party but when the bill for Rs.800/- was presented, they realized that without the tenth’s contribution they didn’t have enough to pay even half the bill.

And that, boys and girls, journalists and college professors, is how our tax system works. The people who pay the highest taxes also must get the most benefit from a tax reduction. Tax them too much, attack them for being wealthy, and they just may not show up anymore.

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