Tried to mail a graduation card to Tay today during my lunch break. I checked the websites of nearby post offices to make sure I wasn't landing on the lunch break. The one I went to, however, had different hours.
So I walked to the train station, looking for the post office which must surely be there. Nope. Nada. Keine. It's frustrating. Ended up walking back up the hill to the office since at that point, I'd spent about 40 minutes walking. I did discover a beautiful park I didn't really know existed before, however.
Sunday, on the bus to work, I passed a man on a bicycle puffing his way up the long hill where I live at the top. He was dressed in tweed and tweed shorts, with a newsman's cap. And then another. And two women with pillbox hats. A huge group of people, dressed from the 1940s, with number tagged to the back of their tweed jackets, dapper and hair gelled, racing to the top of Zeppelinstrasse. Stuttgart gained a few enjoyability points.
I drank two expressos this afternoon around five. I thought we would be working late, but we figured out the issues we needed and I sent out our models to be handmade just before 8pm. The usual guy who makes the models for the office was unavailable, so we went with plan B, the guy who used to head Herzog&deMeuron's model shop. Very expensive. But then, we don't have a very complicated model to make.
I got paid last week! I was really excited to actually have cash, pay the rent, renew my bus pass, and buy lunch that cost more than the two euros in my coin purse.
Sunday night, I sat down with Saori and we walked through filing taxes. Americans residing abroad get an extra two months to file their taxes. The catch, and boy is it a doozy of a catch, is that if you owe taxes, you still have to pay them like everyone else, by April 14.
The US tax system is awful. It's flat out stupid, unfair, and needlessly complicated. And the international taxes are worse. Why do we even need to file taxes with the US? We are not using US services, and there are even agreements in place between the US and Germany stating that generally speaking, if you pay taxes in Germany, you don't need to pay taxes in the US. So why all the paperwork for a null value?
If I were to create a federal tax system, I would eliminate all tax breaks, tax credits, and deductions. No rewards for marriage or kids or homeownership. (help for families should be provided elsewhere, not in the tax system). Tax would be based on income on a graduated curve- Capitalism favors wealth as a wealth generating device. The poor get the unfair burden of lowest rates of return on investment plus the highest risk. They need lower taxes than the rich, even percentage-wise.
Also, generally speaking, the greater the income inequalities, the greater loss of social stability and democratic processes.
Taxes would be deducted directly from income sources, and every year at tax time, everyone with income would get a notice indicating how much taxes they'd paid that year, and a breakdown of that year's federal budget. People would look forward to it.
So I walked to the train station, looking for the post office which must surely be there. Nope. Nada. Keine. It's frustrating. Ended up walking back up the hill to the office since at that point, I'd spent about 40 minutes walking. I did discover a beautiful park I didn't really know existed before, however.
Sunday, on the bus to work, I passed a man on a bicycle puffing his way up the long hill where I live at the top. He was dressed in tweed and tweed shorts, with a newsman's cap. And then another. And two women with pillbox hats. A huge group of people, dressed from the 1940s, with number tagged to the back of their tweed jackets, dapper and hair gelled, racing to the top of Zeppelinstrasse. Stuttgart gained a few enjoyability points.
I drank two expressos this afternoon around five. I thought we would be working late, but we figured out the issues we needed and I sent out our models to be handmade just before 8pm. The usual guy who makes the models for the office was unavailable, so we went with plan B, the guy who used to head Herzog&deMeuron's model shop. Very expensive. But then, we don't have a very complicated model to make.
I got paid last week! I was really excited to actually have cash, pay the rent, renew my bus pass, and buy lunch that cost more than the two euros in my coin purse.
Sunday night, I sat down with Saori and we walked through filing taxes. Americans residing abroad get an extra two months to file their taxes. The catch, and boy is it a doozy of a catch, is that if you owe taxes, you still have to pay them like everyone else, by April 14.
The US tax system is awful. It's flat out stupid, unfair, and needlessly complicated. And the international taxes are worse. Why do we even need to file taxes with the US? We are not using US services, and there are even agreements in place between the US and Germany stating that generally speaking, if you pay taxes in Germany, you don't need to pay taxes in the US. So why all the paperwork for a null value?
If I were to create a federal tax system, I would eliminate all tax breaks, tax credits, and deductions. No rewards for marriage or kids or homeownership. (help for families should be provided elsewhere, not in the tax system). Tax would be based on income on a graduated curve- Capitalism favors wealth as a wealth generating device. The poor get the unfair burden of lowest rates of return on investment plus the highest risk. They need lower taxes than the rich, even percentage-wise.
Also, generally speaking, the greater the income inequalities, the greater loss of social stability and democratic processes.
Taxes would be deducted directly from income sources, and every year at tax time, everyone with income would get a notice indicating how much taxes they'd paid that year, and a breakdown of that year's federal budget. People would look forward to it.
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