About Tax and Dysfunctional Economies

For three days I was buried, not sure if I’ll ever emerge. Three days of energy drinks and stress reducers during the day and sleeping pills for the nightmare-infested nights. Three days of digging through piles of papers and spreadsheets, striving to reach the ‘send’ button on the other side and watch my 2012 tax forms rolling away into the temples of those whom I pay for their right to enslave me.

Eighty pages in total. The USA is the 6^th country I have had the displeasure to file tax in, and in no other country I have filed more than twenty pages.  What does it say about the USA?

Does it say that we are more detailed than anyone else, or that we deeply appreciate subtlety? Or maybe it’s the opposite, and we just don’t see the beach for the sand?

But most likely, this is just another manifestation of a dysfunctional system that believes that strong economies are built on bad manufacturing of broken machines that require the employment of hoards of repairmen – accountants in this case.