Social Responsibility
Jens Meiert, December 24, 2008.
This entry is filed under Politics.
Politically, there are several things which displease yet anger me, including critical trends like the desire to sacrifice civil rights to buy imaginary safety (think surveillance), the general phenomenon to make populist, opportunistic, but totally shortsighted, no, stupid decisions (think using children to decoy adults, as suggested in Germany), or implicit, obvious incompetence in some authorities (think employment agencies which probably hire the last people you’d possibly want to talk to in order to go in for a career).
I’ve got similar concerns when it comes to some concepts of “welfare states” and “social market economy”, including side effects like having different tax rates. The very simple version of how I suggest things to see is to keep things simple and in relation; when it comes to taxes, for example, everybody should pay the same rate, n %. I’m not a millionaire, but still I don’t get why people with a ton of money should pay more than others, seen relatively. Simply put, these approaches are not fair, and they make things unnecessarily complex.
Keeping things simple in this post too, I think that once you don’t need to worry about having enough food and paying your rent anymore, and are working enough to have a solid, probably even more than a solid foundation to go on with your life, it’s good to feel some kind of responsibility. Responsibility to share with others, not involuntarily, as some might want to propose or even enforce, but voluntarily.
I’m donating money to both charity as well as nonprofit projects for years now, ultimately resulting in a 1,000 dollar donation in March. Now I feel like I could actually turn it up a bit, and donate some part of my salary on a monthly basis. Today’s the day on which I can make this official: I’ll from now on, every month, donate 100 francs to local food programs, organized by Schweizer Tafeln.
It might be considered a humble beginning (it might very well be seen this way, actually), but my hope is that this will not just be helpful, here in Germany’s adorable bordering country, but also encourage other people who’re not quite about to starve to do something similar, and be it regularly donating 5 francs, or euros, or dollars. Let’s go for voluntarily proving responsibility.
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Comments
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On December 26, 2008, 17:12 CET, Amber said:
First, I completely agree with you on the tax percentage! It is becoming quite a tug of war when you address this among the different salary “classes” and their feelings. Necessarily complex is an elegant way of putting this point.
I would be interested to hear your points on the TBL (triple bottom line) which is inline with your “giving back”.
TANSTAAFL
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On December 29, 2008, 15:48 CET, Alan Gresley said:
Jens, Jens, wake up!
Once you climb the rungs of wealth above the top level tax rate, that’s when you begin to pay much less tax than the people on the lowest rung. In Australia we had a rich elite scum called Kery Packer. He was proud to state that “you were a mug if you paid more then 1 percent tax.”
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On December 30, 2008, 11:54 CET, Jens Meiert said:
Alan, there is definitely something about that, and I did oversimplify a bit when I wrote about the ideal of just a single tax rate. Some things would need to be changed too meaning less ways to avoid paying taxes (at all), while other things probably won’t change (at all), as clever people will always find ways around a system.
Oversimplifying again I may just find it interesting that this situation is so international … knowing where to save taxes seems to be a common sports.
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On January 6, 2009, 10:28 CET, Neovov said:
Jens, don’t live in France
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On January 9, 2009, 17:21 CET, Alan Gresley said:
Jens…………. ?
No beating around the bush..
This phenomenon which you aptly put as an “an international situation” can be downright simply expressed as greed (a cognitive addiction). I have looked upon the people of this world with sheer amazement for over a decade. If I earned billions of dollars a year, I would happily put over half of this income into a new charity to improve the living standards of every person on this planet.
If this was seen as a challenged to the criminal murderous ruling elite of this world. So be it. Since I do witness that there’s something greatly wrong in this world, I now tend to believe in theories that involve conspiracy and high treason to make sense of it.
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On February 20, 2009, 16:59 CET, Tina Langely said:
Hi Jens,
The wealthy people that I know don’t pay any taxes at all! They also are too selfish to help anyone out that is in need. In a perfect world that would not be the case, but, alas, it is not a perfect world!
