Wednesday, July 7, 2010

My Son and Tax Revenue Thoughts

My son has issues with German taxes. Mind you...he's just an apprentice who makes barely 350 Euro a month after taxes.

His comment yesterday...was kinda true.

There was this point in the 1950 and up through the 1970s...where every town in Germany was building a water treatment plant. The funny thing was that they'd have a population of 5,000 and then build a plant for 15,000. It was intended for growth...but there were never statistics to prove this was right in the first place.

Then, these plants started to show up even in towns of 2,000 people.

At some point, in the 1990s...the government began to realize the amount of water treatment....was many times over the German population....probably enough to supply all of France free water if they asked for it.

In my local area....with a 4-mile radius from the town center....there were around five water treatment plants in the circle. It didn't make any sense.

At some point, they started a renovation deal and then told various communities to start shutting down their plants and hook up with a bigger town next door. There probably was hundreds of millions spent in the 1950s and 1960s on their grand scheme....mostly all wasted.

Another note by my son?

Our village has a local school for the 6-10 year old kids. For three decades...it functioned without a gym. A bus pulled up each afternoon and loaded up a group and took them to the town gym about a mile away.

I have no idea what they paid for the bus, but it was a simple pick-up-and deliver scheme. The town gym? Free. It was heated and maintained by the village....at no cost to the school.

Parents in town were unhappy about this arrangement, and eventually talked the school into buying property and spending around $250k on a gym building and property about 250 feet away from the school.

As my son points out...the school now pays for heat and cleaning for the tiny gym....just big enough for half-a-basketball court.

My son says they could have kept going with the village gym which sits there free...and just kept the bus deal going.

I'm kinda thinking he's right. There's issues over how the German government funds just about any project...and folks just need patience to eventually get their favorite project done.

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