Taxes

Where Your Taxes Go: 29

On 62 sandstone elephants in Lucknow. Their cost, according to CNN-IBN: Rs. 38 crore. They will be part of the Ambedkar Memorial, which, according to The Economic Times, is being built at “a whopping cost of Rs 7 billion.”

That’s Rs. 700 crore.

Yes, yes, I know that’s your money, and mine. But it’s not like we were planning to do anything useful with it. The nation needs an Ambedkar Memorial. And the memorial needs sandstone elephants. No?

(Link via email from Akshat Kaul. For more on how our government loots us, check out my Taxes Archive.)

Where Your Taxes Go: 28

DNA reports:

Taxpayer money running into several hundred crores is being splurged annually on the upkeep of bungalows in Lutyens’ Delhi.

These bungalows, used by India’s political and bureaucratic leadership, are white elephants in terms of running costs, thanks to their elaborate colonial style construction, huge lawns and staggering security paraphernalia.

[…]

The residences of the Gandhi family — Sonia, Rahul and Priyanka — saw a spend of nearly Rs47 lakh collectively during these three years.

I don’t have an issue with senior functionaries in the government getting perks with their jobs, but why on earth should the taxes you and I pay go towards Priyanka Gandhi’s plumbing and electricity expenses? Truly, the Gandhis are a royal family. I suppose I should just be glad that we live in the 21st century, or they’d have me hanged, drawn and quartered for my audacity in questioning their entitlements.

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For more on how our government loots us, check out my Taxes Archive.

Where Your Taxes Go: 27

Towards establishing a professorship in Jawaharlal Nehru’s name in Cambridge.

I rather like R Vaidyanathan’s comment on the matter:

It is also ironical that the professorship is for business studies, while Nehru was the architect of the licence permit quota Raj in India. It is like the butchers’ association of Texas providing a chair to study Gandhian thought in some US university.

The butcher’s association, of course, would presumably do so with its own money. The Nehru Professorship is paid for by money taken forcibly from us. Such it goes…

(Link via email from Rajeev Mantri. For more on how our government loots us, check out my Taxes Archive.)

Long, Healthy Lives…

… are hazardous to the taxpayer, reports IBNLive.com. A study has found that “the health costs of thin and healthy people in adulthood are more expensive than those of either fat people or smokers,” and “healthy people live longer and may develop long-term diseases in old age like Alzheimer’s which are very expensive to treat.”

The solution here is not to prevent people from living long and healthy lives. Instead, it is to question what our governments do with the money it coerces out of its citizens. Is it fair to take money from the obese to pay the medical costs of the relatively healthy, as is effectively the case here? Would it be fair the other way around? Is the government taxing us to provide certain basic services like law and order, or to redistribute it according to the interests of a few politicians in power?

I hope to live a long and healthy life— and even if I don’t, to be a burden on nobody. Is that unusual?

(Link via email from Andy.)

Where Your Taxes Go: 26

IANS reports:

Rising hemlines saw temperatures going up in the Tamil Nadu Assembly on Tuesday with an actress’ short dress triggering a demand from the PMK for a law imposing a dress code and the ruling DMK counselling its ally that it should exercise restraint.

While the DMK advised the PMK that restraint, not the length of a skirt, was the solution, M K Kanimozhi, daughter of Chief Minister M Karunanidhi and MP, was attacking the ‘hypocrisy’ of imposing a dress code on female actors elsewhere in the city.

The fundamental problem here is that our governments want to rule us, not serve us. And that negates the purpose of parting us from the taxes we pay. No?

(Link via email from Karthik. For more on what happens to our taxes, click here.)

A Fee For Patriotism?

Headline of the day:

Don’t pay us to be patriotic: Muslims to UPA

It seems that the central government “has proposed to offer additional grants to nearly all the 12,000 madrassas, which get Government funds, to celebrate national festivals namely Independence Day and Republic Day.”

If politicians wish to bribe or pander, they are welcome to do with their own money. But why on earth should you or I have to pay for it? Immense disgust comes.

(Link via email from Vikram Chandrashekar.)