As a kid, I always used to fancy eating cookies and “ham”burgers without knowing its ingredients.
Thanks to my comic reading addiction, the craving got stronger with each book. Then I realized that the craving was not because I was reading comics all the time. But because it was not available at that time – let alone easily.
Then I noticed a correlation. During exams, I would be refrained from watching TV and would be asked to concentrate on my syllabus for the upcoming exam. The more the refrain, the more I would feel like rebelling and watching TV while as such I never gave a damn.
Then when I started to work, in various companies, I noticed a difference in culture.
Some would provide coffee and tea to employees but only twice a day or some would let the employees pay. A few would have vending machines for people to have “as much” tea/coffee as possible free of cost. That was the first time I heard this debate that the ease of access will increase the demand in the initial stages while in the long run, it will actually bring it down. And that was indeed the case.
In the pretext of enjoying the privilege of a free tea/coffee, I did not realize two things. I got sucked into work so much that I did not measure the time spent at work. I also never bothered the amount of tax that I was actually paying. I’m not careless to ignore the direct taxes. It’s the indirect taxes that I never paid attention to, let alone understand it. Come to think of it, I still don’t.
Recently, I read a survey that says vis-à-vis the standard 33% direct tax; we actually end up paying more than 55% of our income as taxes in various forms and shapes.
If we apply the coffee vending machine logic, the very first time someone found out loopholes in our taxation structure and evaded tax, instead of making it any complex, had they simplified it, we would have ended up paying 55% direct taxes. At least we would not have felt cheated with a fake 33%.
Must say, this 33% is an elusive number.
Another interesting correlation is that we are supposed to sleep for 8 hours of a day. We are supposed to work for 8-9 hours. Technically we have the remaining 7-8 (33%) hours to enjoy LIFE.
Do we?
We spend more number of hours in the office for this elusive 33% of LIFE. Eventually, it boils down to 10 days of vacation with effortless interruptions by mails on our smartphone and intermittent calls.
10 days out of 365 days is a mere 2.7%.
Some smarty pants have declared the 52 weekends (28%) as a part of our holiday or enjoying LIFE.
We still don’t have the 33% life for which we literally slog our butts off.
So what are we running for?
Maybe to sit on a comfortable chair and tap such silly thoughts on a fancy laptop… Hmmm!
Thanks to my comic reading addiction, the craving got stronger with each book. Then I realized that the craving was not because I was reading comics all the time. But because it was not available at that time – let alone easily.
Then I noticed a correlation. During exams, I would be refrained from watching TV and would be asked to concentrate on my syllabus for the upcoming exam. The more the refrain, the more I would feel like rebelling and watching TV while as such I never gave a damn.
Then when I started to work, in various companies, I noticed a difference in culture.
Some would provide coffee and tea to employees but only twice a day or some would let the employees pay. A few would have vending machines for people to have “as much” tea/coffee as possible free of cost. That was the first time I heard this debate that the ease of access will increase the demand in the initial stages while in the long run, it will actually bring it down. And that was indeed the case.
In the pretext of enjoying the privilege of a free tea/coffee, I did not realize two things. I got sucked into work so much that I did not measure the time spent at work. I also never bothered the amount of tax that I was actually paying. I’m not careless to ignore the direct taxes. It’s the indirect taxes that I never paid attention to, let alone understand it. Come to think of it, I still don’t.
Recently, I read a survey that says vis-à-vis the standard 33% direct tax; we actually end up paying more than 55% of our income as taxes in various forms and shapes.
If we apply the coffee vending machine logic, the very first time someone found out loopholes in our taxation structure and evaded tax, instead of making it any complex, had they simplified it, we would have ended up paying 55% direct taxes. At least we would not have felt cheated with a fake 33%.
Must say, this 33% is an elusive number.
Another interesting correlation is that we are supposed to sleep for 8 hours of a day. We are supposed to work for 8-9 hours. Technically we have the remaining 7-8 (33%) hours to enjoy LIFE.
Do we?
We spend more number of hours in the office for this elusive 33% of LIFE. Eventually, it boils down to 10 days of vacation with effortless interruptions by mails on our smartphone and intermittent calls.
10 days out of 365 days is a mere 2.7%.
Some smarty pants have declared the 52 weekends (28%) as a part of our holiday or enjoying LIFE.
We still don’t have the 33% life for which we literally slog our butts off.
So what are we running for?
Maybe to sit on a comfortable chair and tap such silly thoughts on a fancy laptop… Hmmm!
As always, thought provoking...
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