“Let’s put tax cuts in terms everyone can understand. Suppose that every day, ten men go out for dinner. The bill for all ten comes to £100. If they paid their bill the way we pay our taxes, it would go something like this:

• the first four men, the poorest, would pay nothing;
  
• the fifth would pay £1;
  
• the sixth would pay £3;
  
• the seventh would pay £7;
  
• the eighth pays £12;
  
• the ninth would pay £18;
  
• and the tenth man, the richest, would pay £59

“That’s what they decided to do. The ten men ate dinner in the restaurant every day and seemed quite happy with the arrangement — until one day, the owner threw them a curve (in tax language, a tax cut).

“‘Since you are all such good customers,’ he said, ‘I am going to reduce the cost of your daily meal by £20. So now dinner for the ten only cost £80.00.

“The group still wanted to pay their bill the way we pay our taxes. So the first four men were unaffected. They would still eat for free. But what about the other six–the paying customers? How could they divvy up the £20 windfall so that everyone would get his ‘fair share?’

“The six men realized that £20 divided by six is £3.33. But if they subtracted that from everybody’s share, Then the fifth man and the sixth man would end up being PAID to eat their meal. So the restaurant owner suggested that it would be fair to reduce each man’s bill by roughly the same amount, and he proceeded to work out the amounts each should pay:

• as before, the first four men paid nothing;
• now the fifth man also paid nothing;
  
• the sixth man now paid £2;
  
• the seventh paid £5;
  
• the eighth man paid £9;
  
• the ninth man paid £12;
  
• leaving the tenth man with a bill of £52 instead of his earlier £59

Each of the six was better off than before. And the first four continued to eat for free.

“But once outside the restaurant, the men began to compare their savings. ‘I only got a pound out of the £20 reduction,’ declared the sixth man, but he, pointing to the tenth. ‘But he got £7!’. ‘Yeah, that’s right,’ exclaimed the fifth man, ‘I only saved a pound too; it’s unfair that he got seven times more than me!’

‘”That’s true,’ shouted the seventh man, ‘why should he get £7 back when I got only £2? The wealthy get all the breaks!. ‘Wait a minute,’ yelled the first four men in unison, ‘We didn’t get anything at all. The system exploits the poor!’

“The nine men surrounded the tenth and beat him up.

The next night he didn’t show up for dinner, so the nine sat down and ate without him. But when it came time to pay the bill, they discovered, a little late what was very important. They were now £52 short of paying the bill.

And that, boys and girls, journalists, and college instructors, is how the tax system works. The people who pay the highest taxes get the most benefit from a tax reduction. Tax them too much, attack them for being wealthy, and they just may not show up at the table anymore.”

I went to Czech Republic and after installing wi-fi in my apartment I was good to go! I tell you that nothing beats making money in the sunshine drinking beverage of choice while it’s raining cats and dogs back home – not to mention that I managed to get a lot more done, and i mean a lot more! The distraction level was really low and really felt motivation kick – not to mention that pound/dollar goes there much further than in UK/US respectively.

I will update this post soon with some ground rules of remote working and how to convince your boss (if you have one) that granting you permission to go away is just the best decision he/she can make.

I also applied a lot of 80/20 theory (Pareto’s principle) in last few months and it’s all comming to fruition now – stay tuned!

Tom

I will update my “about page” ASAP together with LinkedIn profile and some credentials.